New Year’s Resolutions for Successful Piano Practice!
Published: Dec 31, 2015 | Category: Motivation
New Year’s Resolutions for Successful Piano Practice!
If you avoid your piano practice for long enough, you may develop a sense of guilt and frustration. Only one thing is certain: you won’t get your work done. Worse yet, the more you avoid practicing, the greater a void you create. Like Nietzsche’s abyss, this void may begin to stare back at you.
Fear of making a mistake, procrastination, and faulty methods are only some of the obstacles that stand between the musician and progress. These approaches can sponge up hours of time and yet yield fruitless results.
This New Year 2016 let’s resolve to say “no” to these obstacles. Let’s grasp a variety of methods proven to create pathways to success. Let’s make this a year of unprecedented productivity!
Main Theme -- A Time and Place
Each of us works best at certain times of the day. You will progress best if you can schedule your practice during your peak time of productivity: morning, afternoon, or evening. For others, you may need to schedule practice time around work, school, or family responsibilities.
Be sure your family knows of your schedule, and respects your need to be free of distractions, notably sharing the space. If you stick to your routine, your family will also adjust, regularly allowing you a free work space. In turn, you will be less likely to procrastinate.
Importantly, determine what time works best for you to practice, clear your surroundings of any distractions, and make it a routine to sit down at the piano every day at that time. If you make practice a routine, you will soon see prosperous results in your musical progress.
Form and Development -- Good Habits One Goal at a Time
Once you have determined a practice routine, develop your structure. Here you may rely on the expertise of your teacher to help you set out short- and long-term goals. Each day, determine a daily goal. You may wish to begin with some “warm up” technical exercises followed by some review of what you accomplished yesterday, then focus on a main task. Be sure to limit the time you spend on corrections of this work if you are a perfectionist given to over-practice. Instead, for example, you may wish to focus on one particular element either in reviewing the newly learned material from yesterday (correct notes, dynamics, fingering) or in the new material for the day. You may wish to schedule one day of the week to do a general review, fine-tune particular passages, or to strengthen memory.
Fine-tuning particular elements as you go is fine. However, avoid giving in to frustration that snowballs into tears if a mistake is not solved on the spot. Sometimes technical fluency takes repeated efforts before a passage flows smoothly. What is important is that you persist in learning, armed with various methods to address the challenges.
When facing difficult challenges in your musical progress, it’s a good idea to break the music into smaller units. For example, you may be more productive focusing only on one phrase or section of a piece. A one-hour practice session, as a model, could be timed into three twenty-minute sections, each followed by a five-minute break. In each of these short units, you can practice some technical exercises for five minutes, then work on particular goals in one piece or main section of a composition for ten minutes, followed by some review and fine-tuning for five minutes. Take a short break to stretch, relax, then come back and work on a second composition the same way.
Recapitulation -- Resolve Discord
The first theme of this article addresses a common issue for musicians – avoiding piano practice. To begin is important. To begin practicing is often one of the greatest issues.. If you find yourself staring at the music on the page for several minutes, though you have not yet started to practice this music, do you continue to procrastinate? Certainly, it is preferable if you can begin practicing the most challenging music first, while you are most alert and rested, but if you feel stuck then simply move on to the next piece.
If you find yourself continuing to procrastinate with the next tasks, there are other musical activities that can restore your sense of musical joy and confidence: play some fun review pieces, work on your technique, practice aural skills, finish some theory, or practice performing a piece that you have memorized. Often, this is enough to invoke your musical creativity and restore a sense of accomplishment, so that you can return to the more challenging tasks. Having a “practice buddy” also helps!
Coda
To avoid procrastinating musical practice, this advice may be helpful to a point. Avoiding practice – despite having a clear schedule, goals, and methods – may be caused by something deeper: low self-esteem and a lack of self-motivation. If you find yourself full of doubts, discuss your abilities and progress with your teacher. Stay motivated by knowing you are well supported by your teacher, family, friends, and fellow piano students. Remind yourself of the joy you experience from playing your instrument and learning about music. Observe how far you have already come, and how far you can still go. Stick to your daily routine, keep your long-term goals in mind, and persist! Let’s make 2016 the year that you keep your New Year’s resolution to committed musical practice in 2016 – your best year of musical progress yet!