.jpg)
Recommended Reading
At various points in my musical development, I have found myself asking teachers and colleagues for ideas on how to practice. I continue to do so to this day. It is a topic that I find fascinating, and one about which nobody can ever know too much.
However, every so often I have received an answer to a different question. I asked how to practice, and was given a unit of time (e.g. x-many hours per day) as a response. To me, this seems a little like asking your doctor what kinds of food you should eat for a healthy, balanced diet, and being told to spend half an hour eating lunch!
Obviously the situations do not match entirely. It is very easy to find the motivation to eat; stop eating for long enough and you will die of hunger! However, the same cannot always be said of practice, even amongst people for whom music-making is life’s biggest joy (although I hasten to add that the violinist Leonidas Kavakos is reputed to practise for many hours every day, simply because he enjoys it!). So because one cannot improve without practising, teachers are quick to push their students to spend more time with the instrument.
This in itself is perfectly noble – but when recommending quantities of practice time comes instead of recommending ways to use the time, problems can arise. The most typical is that the student is given the idea that more repetitions will magically sort everything out – this is only true if things change from one time to the next. “Practice makes perfect” is a well-known saying; however, “practice makes permanent” is far more accurate.
As teachers, it is vital that we give our students as clear an understanding of how to practice as possible. However, this can prove challenging sometimes. Practice is for many a very personal thing, and understandably so. It is a time when you are alone with your instrument, conducting your own experiments, making your own discoveries, and bonding with your instrument. There are many tried and tested approaches to practice, but ultimately no two people will practice in the same way. Perhaps because of this, practice can become a very sensitive topic of discussion.
However, this need not be the case. In my experience, if practice is openly discussed from the very beginning, students will talk about it without reservation; it is only when practice is allowed to be a secret matter for long periods that students feel uncomfortable with the subject.
So teachers, we must make practice a comfortable, natural topic of exploration from the very start – because the more our students understand practice, the quicker they will improve, and the more empowered and happy they will be!
