December 1997:Motivation to Practice

Let's face it, playing is fun, getting that beautiful sound is fun, sharing your music with others can be fun, but practicing - that's work no matter how you cut it. One of our readers asked how she can motivate herself to practice especially when it is taking so very long to accomplish a piece. So here goes...

• Practice needs to become a habit.

This is best achieved by setting your practice time into a consistent place in the day such as just after supper or perhaps in the morning just before you start your work -whatever fits your needs.

• Set a practice goal.

Herein is the key to success! Decide what could possibly be accomplished in the amount of time you have available in this practice session. Do not set out to "learn the piece". That is a recipe for failure. Instead, choose a few measures ( the fewer the better) and work to accomplish them completely.

Use the following stages to achieve the day's goal:

a) Play one hand at a time very slowly. Work it out. Then try to play it with no errors at all but allowing yourself to hesitate if you are not sure what note/finger etc. you want. Gradually get it to the point that you can do it perfectly and evenly (no hesitations). At this point, repeat it perfectly 4-8 times, mimimum. Remember, you must repeat perfection to offset all the zillions of times you did it incorrectly.

Perhaps this is enough for one practice session. Success does not depend on how much you have achieved but rather that you have achieved something positive and can go away feeling that you have grown beyond where you were when you started.

b) Now try to play hands together working very, very slowly at first. See how the hands line up relative to the beat points. Maybe just the "working out" stage is enough for one session. Then perhaps try to get to the point at which you can play the section - or even a section of the section - perfectly (accurately) but allowing hesitation in order to think. Again, this may be enough for one session. Finally, get to the point of playing the passage very slowly and evenly with 100 % accuracy. Then repeat, repeat, repeat the perfected product trying to sustain that accuracy. Another reasonable type of goal is to try to achieve "X" number of perfect times in a session. Start with 1 and work your way up to 4 or 5 in a row.

Any tiny part of the procedure listed above can constitute a practice session goal. The single most important principle is to set the smallest possible goal that assures success within the session. It is better to have achieved a tiny goal in less time than expected and then set another as needed, than it is to have set too high an expectation and then fail.

See you next month.

Stephanie

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