The Basic Practice Process

On the whiteboard in my studio for the past year or two has been (among other things) the following:


1. Stop
2. Change
3. Easy
4. Add Something


I think of this as the basic practice loop or process. I refer to it often during lessons, and I'll briefly elaborate here.



Stop. The slightly longer version of this would be "stop long enough to think." As I have said in earlier posts, the most important factor affecting productivity in practice is awareness. When you notice something that needs improvement, you have to be able to stop in order to do something about it. For very experienced practicers, this may not take more than an instant, but there is plenty to think about, and if you are just going on, you are thinking about new stuff instead of the thing you noticed that needed fixing.


Change. This is fairly obvious. It means fix the mistake. Make the correction. Try until you can do the thing the thing the way you want it. Sometimes this means breaking down the problem into several smaller ones and changing things step-by-step. The important thing is to figure out the next thing to fix and to be able to get one right.


Easy. Once you've done one right, you may be tempted to go on to the next problem. Develop the habit of making each correction easy before going on. I suggest doing at least three correct ones before even making a decision about how easy it is. If it takes you eight tries to get three right, it isn't easy yet. If you get three in a row, you may be there already. Anyway, anything gets easier if you do more of it. I like using practice beads for this step frequently, but the point is to do enough that the corrected version is not only possible, but easy.


Add Something. Whenever something you can do gets easy, you will have some extra brain space available to think of other things. This is key to practice and performance. In ensemble playing, your own part needs to be "easy enough" that you can pay attention to your colleagues. In practice, there is often another layer to add to your awareness. If you have been working on getting the bowing right, perhaps it is time to play the same passage while focused on tone or intonation or playing with a more released body. Perhaps it is time to expand your passage by starting a few beats or measures earlier (or going on a bit). Perhaps "add something" means trying the same thing a bit faster. There are lots of choices. You are trying to increase the challenge by just enough that you'll probably fail again, but not so much that you'll not be able to make corrections.


Happy practicing!