I'm glad that you found this blog today, because I'm going to try and help you better understand why we practice and how to practice better. As musicians, we've all hit that wall when we are facing what seems to be an impossible challenge on our own. Our teacher has given us a task to practice at home independently, and our job is to be disciplined to get our weekly tasks completed.
What if I were to tell you there is a better way? A way where you won't have to face difficult challenges alone! A way where frustration won't get the better of you. Well... brace yourself... there is a better way.
Practice shouldn't be the art of doing something you can't do until you can do. It should be the art of narrowing down your main goal, or goals, breaking up the goal into objectives and then breaking those objectives into tasks. Once you can see a main goal broken down into pieces, and then pieces of the pieces a game plan can take place.
Now this is the most important part! - If you get one thing out of this posting, this should be it:
Practice is the art of finding the just right learning level!The goals, broken down into objectives, broken down into tasks can be ranked. You can use the form that I've attached in the resource page called "The Practice Guide" to rank the tasks by difficulty. There are three levels, New Skill, Just Right, and Independent.
A New Skill is a task that you and your teacher are working on together. This task is difficult and causes a fair amount of frustration, and therefore should only be worked on when you are supported by your teacher. As you progress through your goals these New Skills will move into the next stage called, Just Right, when your teacher and you agree together.
A Just Right Level task is where you want to focus your practice on for about 80% of your practice time. These tasks you can do, but it doesn't feel natural. If you get it perfect sometimes, and still make little mistakes here and there that aren't consistent, you are playing at the Just Right Level. When you start playing the task a number of times where it feels natural and mistakes hardly pop up, you've moved into the Independent Level.
The Independent Level is where you are always aiming. Its feels great to play in this level, and it feels like play, not work. I always recommend my students start all of their practice in the Independent Level. The reason is simple... if you start your routine with playing, it will make the work in the Just Right Level more rewarding because it will show you where you will be working towards. If this means you have to go back to a previous big picture goal and play some of the tasks, objectives, or goals in the Independent Level, I highly encourage it.
When bands sit down to work through songs, they don't often start with the hardest tasks first. At least, I've never been in a musical ensemble that works that way. Most often we start with a piece that we all love playing so that we can start on a happy and easy note. We warm up with play. Its similar to working out... you can't just lift the heaviest thing first, you have to warm up your muscles and get the blood flowing. Get your creative juices flowing with playing in the Independent Level, then move to focusing in on tasks at the Just Right Level, and save the New Skills for when you sit down with your teacher. All the while, you and your teacher can be making little comments about what you are specifically focusing on in the Just Right Level.
I've created the Practice Guide for you... all you have to do is download it and print it. Check it out here.
If you found value in this entry, please leave a comment in the feed and share it with someone who you feel this can help.
Thank you for Reading and Happy Music Making
Chris Eakins
No comments:
Post a Comment