How to Practice

The biggest problem that young musicians have is knowing how to practice. Practicing is more than just trying to play through a piece of music over and over again. Some people think that every time they play their instrument that they are practicing. That is simply not true!

In order to be effective in your practicing you must know how to practice. A former teacher of mine said, "When you practice you should sound pretty bad." Of course when I heard that I was quite shocked. However, upon further explanation it made perfect sense. Whenever you are practicing the goal should be to improve. That means you must be trying to play the things that you struggle with. Playing things that you can already play may seem more fun but is not going to help you get much better.

When you are going to practice you should have a set a exercises that you go through before you begin to work on a piece of music. The warm-ups that we use are a good starting point. They work on all of the essential techniques that you are going to need to be able to play the parts. You do not need to spend a great deal of time on these, but at least play through them a couple of times. This sets your mind up for the work you are about to do and stretches the appropriate muscles that you need for playing percussion.

Once you have finished the warm-ups, have a plan of what you are going to work on. Pick out the areas of a piece that you struggle with and start there. Work on exactly what gives you trouble and then work out. Make sure that you can get into and out of the trouble spot. Once you have fixed the issue or at least done all you can for that practice session, move on to the next trouble spot and repeat the process. Continue this process until you have worked on all of the areas that you planned to address during that practice session. Once you have done that try to put those sections together and then finally try to play through the music. If after all of that you have time to just play for fun, by all means do it. Playing music is supposed to be fun, but it also takes a lot of work and dedication. Practicing is the only way to get better. As your skills imporve and you can play more complicated music, your confidence rises and playing becomes even more fun.