Practice Tips for Musicians

The road to becoming the best musician you can potentially be is rough one.  It involves the consumption of one of our most scarce resources, time.  Time is what one needs for practice and practice is what one needs to become better at their given instrument.  I want to share some tips I have learned over the years to make sure that you are never wasting time while you practice.  Practicing one's instrument is good but efficiently practicing is not just good, it is always good.  These practice techniques will put you in the right direction on your journey to reaching your fullest potential, no matter if you are a serious musician or just learning an instrument as a hobby.

• Slow Practice – I cannot stress this enough with my students. When learning a brand new piece of music, no matter what it is, more likely than not, the speed at which it is performed is something that cannot be achieved immediately. Take your time! It is never a race to learn a piece of music. Slow practice allows one to truly pay attention to every detail that is involved with playing the piece correctly and efficiently. It is always better to learn a piece at a slow tempo and then speed it up over time. I guarantee that you will play the piece better in the long run if you learn it slow and pay close attention to every movement and motion that is demanded by the piece as oppose to immediately trying to play it up to speed. (Keep in mind the metronome is a wonderful tool!)
• Isolation – Having trouble with a section of piece? Well, why practice the entire piece instead of working on these small sections that are giving you trouble? STOP! Isolate that section and then work from there. Sometimes it's only a transition between two notes or an entire section. Slowly work on what is giving you trouble and then work your way to the beginning and end of the piece until you are ready to attempt the entire piece again, now with that part or section correct since you took the time to isolate it.
• Visualization – This concept is a bit abstract to most players, so bare with me for a second. Look through the piece and just envision yourself playing it. Finger the notes on whatever instrument, but do not play anything. This technique allows your mind to concentrate more on each note as you move from one to the next.
• Sing the melody – I apologize that this one cannot really apply to vocal music, so instrumentalists pay attention. Try and sing what you are playing. Don't be shy. If you are, then just try this out of range of any foreign ears. Attempting to sing a piece is another way your mind learns the melody. You will then be able to hear the melody better in your head as you play it on your instrument, which will only help your performance of the piece.
• Consistency – Make sure that you are practicing a piece the same way every time. Consistency is the key to efficiency. While you are practicing the music, the muscles in your hands, mouth, and/or fingers are being trained to execute exact movements at exact times. Practicing the same way each time strengthens the memory of the muscles so that these movements will become easier and easier over time and will lead to learning a piece of music much quicker.

I hope all of this helps and remember to keep practicing!  You can never practice too much!