Why is it so hard to improve on your instrument, even though you know you've practiced? Unfortunately, the adage "practice makes perfect" isn’t always true. Instead, improper practice often leads to poor results, not perfect playing. Why? Many of us simply don't know how to practice productively. The following overview of the fundamentals of practicing will provide you with useful ways you can create your own productive practice sessions.

Know what to work on

Know what needs to be achieved in each practice time

Work on small sections of a piece

Small sections practised slowly and thoroughly are always more successful than longer passages given less care

Don't over practice

Know when to stop. Focused work for a short period is better than playing through for longer

Take hard things slower

What you can't play slowly you can't play fast

Practice sightreading

The only way to learn to sight read is to sight read

Don't practise when you're tired

You will make more mistakes

Don't make practice a chore

The more like a chore the practice it, the less enjoyable it is

Practice daily

Daily practice is best. If you need to take off one day a week, that's OK, but don't skip the day just after your lesson. Right after your lesson is when your memory retention is at its peak - your best practice time!

Quality practice

The quality of your practice is at least as important as the quantity. You will get more benefit from really concentrating for 15 minutes than from mechanically going through songs for 30 minutes

Remember dynamics and phrasing

Once you know the notes and the rhythm, add the dynamics and phrasing

Have a Pencil

In your practice area... at rehearsal...at lessons... havea pencil at hand! Yes, I know we all have astounding memories, but a pencil never forgets. A mistake such as a wrong note or incorrect dynamic is forgivable ONCE! Mark it and it won't happen again. Besides these obvious mistakes, a pencil can remind you of alternate positions, accidentals, or certain inflections in a given phrase. In short, the pencil IS your memory! Many great players have developed their own "shorthand" of symbols and markings they use to help them in performance.

Musical Lines

No matter what lies in front of us on the stand, we should always treat it as MUSIC. This goes for warm-ups, scales, etudes, concertos,... absolutely everything that you play. Don't allow your brain to go on "auto-pilot" when warming up; try to make expressive and meaningful musical lines from the most mundane material. This can be very challenging indeed when working on scales! But remember, 99.9% of the music you'll play is based on scales.

Location

When you practice, find a quiet room where you won't be disturbed. Turn off the TV, put away your CD player, and turn on the answering machine.