How to Practice your Instrument

Yolanda’s Insights to Success from her Book “On Playing the Harp”

“There is an old joke where one mans who is lost asks another man, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”  The other man replies, “Practice, Practice, Practice.”  As corny as the joke may be, the message is quite true. But exactly how does one practice?  Do you just play the same thing over and over until you can do it, or is there some kind of secret routine that only the really talented people know?  As with everything in life, the answer lies somewhere in between these two extremes. Here are some ideas that I recommend for developing good practice technique:

1. Think Like an Athlete in training - Daily consistency and accumulation of strength, endurance, and control are essential to making progress.

2. Set Goals for each practice session, each week, each month and each year. If you have a clear vision of what you expect from yourself, you will have a much greater chance of making it happen.

3. Keep a practice log.  Track your practice patterns and see how often you meet your practice session goals, Are your goals too high, too low or just firth?

4. Don’t let practicing be the thing you do when everything else is finished.  Make it a regular priority.

5. Always begin work on a new piece by practicing slowly.  Do not try to bring a piece up to temp prematurely.

6. Don’t keep plodding through a difficult spots.  Stop, take a close look at the trouble spot or passage then slowly work through it at the practice it many times separately until lit begins to feel more comfortable.

7. When you have been working on a difficult passage separately, be sure to practice attaching it to the parts directly before and after. 

8. Make sure you aren’t reinforcing mistakes by trying to play through things “just to get the overall idea”- practicing without attention to detail can ingrain band habits that will be difficult to reverse.

9. When you are learning a piece worth many page turns, make a copy of your music so that you can spread out the page turns appropriately during the learning process.

10. Don’t waist energy getting frustrated or angry when you make a mistake.  This will wear you out far sooner than necessary and develop habit of showing a mistake with your behavior or facial expression

11. If you reach the point of fatigue and diminished concentration, never underestimate the benefit of a short break.

12. Remember that the more you know about the music you are practicing the more interested your practice time will be.