7 Most Common Practice Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)
Posted By: Matt Rupert
Learning music is such an exciting and rewarding endeavor, but it does require hard work, patience, and practice. Regular practice is essential to excelling at music, but it’s easy to fall into some bad practice habits. Here are the seven most common practice mistakes and how to fix them:
- You always start at the beginning.
- Problem: You’re accustomed to always starting at the beginning of the piece, playing through, struggling your way through some tricky measures, and maybe you stop before the next section or before getting to the ending. When you do this, you’re ignoring large sections of the piece, including any tricky spots, and the end!
- Solution: Focus on the tricky spots and ending first. What’s the thing most people will remember about your performance? Probably the ending, as it’s the last thing they heard! Very often students only always start at the very beginning, which of course will make the beginning feel really solid, but then they ignore the ending. Before playing through any piece, hone in on the couple measures that you think are the trickiest and practice those first. Then practice the last few measures a few times. After you’ve done both of those things, then go back and you can play through the whole piece.
- You ‘play’ instead of ‘practice’.
- Problem: You’ve learned lots of music and of course have your favorites pieces. So during your practice session you start by sitting down and playing those favorite pieces, but then you run out of time to actually practice your new material for your next lesson.
- Solution: Save your dessert for the end! You should, of course, always go back and play any music that you truly enjoy! But save that for the end of your practice session. First, you need to have your veggies (technique, exercises, scales) and main course (new repertoire); once you’ve done all that, then definitely reward yourself with some musical dessert in the form of your old favorites.
- You set a time limit on your practice session.
- Problem: You think that exactly X-minutes of practice means you’re done. This is very common with young students, who’s teachers will often recommend to practice for at least 20 or 30 minutes. The problem here is that many students ignore the ‘at least’ part of that statement and simply set a timer for 20 minutes. Once the bell rings, they stop.
- Solution: Practice until you’re done. This might seem straightforward, but make sure you’ve touched everything on your list to practice. Our teachers here all write out detailed practice lists and notes for each student. Getting to everything on your practice list might mean coming up with a solid practice plan (see number 4), or prioritizing tricky sections over easy sections, especially if you do have limited time; but you should always plan to get through your full practice list.
- You don’t have a practice plan.
- Problem: You know you have things to practice, but you don’t know where to start. You start practicing one thing, get bogged down on a section, then realize you’ve spent most of your time there and not on anything else.
- Solution: Have a detailed plan and list of things to practice. As we mentioned in number 3, all our teachers here write out detailed lists and notes for every student’s weekly practice; use those lists to help you plan your practice session! A good practice session plan might start with warm-ups, move on to some technique exercises, focus in on specific sections or measures of your repertoire, and include other specifics to focus in on for each piece, such as metronome markings, dynamics, breath, and more. Take your own notes on what you accomplished each day, or maybe what you didn’t get to, that way you know where to start the next day.
- You don’t use a metronome.
- Problem: You march to the beat of your own drum, literally. You ignore tempo markings, and don’t refine your sense of rhythm and timing by using a metronome. All students, even experienced players, need to use a metronome to keep ourselves honest with the rhythm and timing of a piece.
- Solution: Turn on the metronome! Start at a slow tempo where you can play the passage successfully, without any pauses or hesitations, then gradually increase the tempo on the metronome and repeat until you can play at the goal tempo.
- You practice too fast.
- Problem: You play through a piece at an unmanageable tempo, with many mistakes, pauses, or hesitations along the way. This is a waste of practice time. In this manner, practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. Unless you slow down and play at a manageable speed, you will practice in all those mistakes, pauses, and hesitations, making them even harder to get rid of.
- Solution: Slow down! You should not play a passage any faster than you can play it without any mistakes, pauses, or hesitations. Then use your handy metronome from number 5 to help yourself gradually increase your tempo.
- You don’t write things down.
- Problem: You think you’ll remember everything, including that fingering you liked, the crescendo you want to do in measure 5, the breath in measure 7, the tempo change in measure 8, plus the interpretation and tone you and your teacher discussed last lesson . . . except you don’t remember most of those things when you actually play the passage.
- Solution: Have a pencil! And write down everything! Making music is difficult enough without all the extra things to think about and try to remember, especially as you’re learning a new piece. Give yourself some help by writing in fingering, circling or highlighting important dynamics or articulation, and writing notes in your music based on what your teacher discussed with you in your last lesson.
