PRACTICE TIME

Use your time with your instrument to find fruitful investments and abandon fruitless ones. Spend ZERO time multi-tasking (do NOT watch TV while you warm up!). Set goals for your practicing and find ways to reach them. Choose a length of time, a piece of music, or a kind of technique you’d like to devote yourself to and then create a frame for that work. Start with an idea, make it better, cultivate your best rituals. Naming your goals each day helps you accomplish more and feel great about your progress.

● Decide when to start

● Eliminate all distractions (this means you must allow full use of your mind during your whole practice time)

● Provide yourself all tools you need to succeed: drone, metronome, mirror, recording device, and possibly a timer

● Name your goal

● Begin

You must choose to practice well and usefully frequently. You should try to extend your practice time if you are not able to practice long, or learn to be a better learner if you are practicing all day and night, and learn how to focus immediately. As an advanced student/early professional you should be able to grow and learn well within 4-6 hours a day. It’s enough time to build physical endurance, mental endurance, and grow as a player, but not so much that you are ceasing to be a whole human, and it will allow time to recover physically from your labors. You should be practicing 5 or 6 days a week; you should be taking a day off every week (if you can). As an advanced student I found practicing in 2-hour chunks to be useful. Do not be bashful about including vital wellness elements into your practice time. Include stretching in your practice time if it helps your keep your momentum, for example, if you have a hard time getting started. You can always add that time to the end of your practice session if you feel you cheated a bit. Also, include post-practice wellness in your sacred, carved-out time if it helps you remember to do it.

TOOLS FOR EXTENDING YOUR CONCENTRATION:

● take off shoes or change shoes ● switch from sitting/standing ● face another way in the room ● go to another room

● switch pieces ● change tempos ● change from detail/run-through ● record yourself

● have a little water/tea/snack… ● pet an animal ● set a timer ● pause your timer, but set a break timer

● smile ● swear/scream into a pillow ● practice longer incrementally ● [insert your favorite extension here]

Being able to structure your practice time will help with self-confidence, a measurable sense of progress and accomplishment, the skill of performing at a specific time and place regardless of how you happen to feel at the time, developing a familiar ritual for getting to a place of mental focus and physical preparedness to play, and teach you about your needs (how long your warm-up needs to be, the specifics of your warm-up needs, the mental path to focus, etc.) to be ready to perform consistently at the highest level you are capable.

TOOLS FOR FOCUSING YOUR PRACTICE:

● every problem (except a couple) is in your right hand; do not waste time solving a right hand problem with your left hand

● imagine a conductor asking for the change you want and then never do it the old way again

● imagine how you will play the new way before you actually do it so you are clear in your mind about your intentions

● consider the actual problem (almost 100% of problems are RIGHT HAND PROBLEMS! Do not try to solve a right hand problem with your left hand—it takes a LONG TIME!)

● find ways to use fundamental viola skills in your repertoire work to solve a problem immediately and forever (e.g. most shifts get fixed if you leave/put 1 down)

● add or remove information in the music to serve your needs—this may be a skill you are surprised you need to develop

● practice by memory/look at your sounding point. Use your eyes to tell your brain what to think about.

● record yourself to ensure you are practicing the things you actually need to fix (this means you need to listen to the recording)

● find a way to help a weak part of your playing with a strength (use your grooving bow changes to help your left hand if you are having a pulse problem, for example)

● sing—not just to develop your sense of line but to reveal to yourself any weird habits you’ve trained your ear/brain to expect

● use the metronome while it is a crutch to help you walk, then set it aside when it becomes a crutch that slows down your run.

● imagine that the metronome is some colleague you are trying to support musically, not a machine forcing you to be robotic

● imagine what you are doing is easy (I watched my colleague Leah Ferguson make everything look easy and found that very inspirational and helpful!)

● remember that perception is more important than reality—you must be able to play with the metronome, for example, but you must feel like you have great pulse away from it

● fill all the holes in your technique. Tackle your problem areas! Identify them all, solve them all. You must know you will meet with success in your executions, be available for anything

● incorporate gesture into your solutions. Cue yourself. Imagining cuing your whole section behind you, or being a conductor. Use your breath to bolster your playing

● consider yourself an actor whose main job is to mime energy—allow your whole self to embody the direction of the energy, the dynamic, the character—completely, unselfconsciously

● begin from a framed silence—do not forget to start from zero! If you don’t like the start, do not mess around until you like it. Stop, imagine, restart. Repeat!

● refine your playing, but keep a sense of your big musical priorities

● expect to learn and then get out of your own way—allow yourself to grow!!!

● remember that you are not learning how to play the viola, you are training your brain. ***Always use your mind*** Train your mind to manage your playing in real time. As a professional you become your own teacher. Allow yourself to set expectations and meet them.

● also remember that essentially all professional-level playing is about the right hand. Learn to think about it all the time. Learn to look at music and think about your right hand. You may feel like your eyes are a little glazed. Practice your whole warm-up with the goal of thinking about your right hand. Even when you think about your left hand, think about your right hand.

A LITTLE TESTIMONIAL:

I find transitions very challenging so my biggest obstacle to practicing well was getting started. I found setting a timer for starting inexplicably compelling. It transformed my ability to begin. I heard the beeping and I just stopped whatever I was doing and headed toward my viola. I reset the timer for my practice sessions and found it useful to set the timer for two hours and click GO and then get my viola out. It was too humiliating to turn the timer off instead of proceeding with my practice session, and the accountability I felt toward the timer helped me create the momentum I needed to practice. During a long injury with a slow return to playing, I found the timer useful once again, even in 2 minute increments. In those practice sessions I set up everything and waited until the very last second to start the timer so I would get as much time as possible playing the viola. I also tried to spend the whole time solving problems quickly and didn’t write things down until after the session ended so as not to waste any seconds of my precious practice time. Can you find ways to feel so compelled by your time with your instrument? You can play games with yourself to make it fun. Set a timer for a ridiculously small amount of time and see if you can learn something in that amount of time. Try 2 minutes!

If your practicing is going poorly (you are not listening well and engaged in resolving your obstacles), set your viola down and decide when you intend to try again. Forgive yourself immediately, but make a plan. I believe it is better to stop practicing than to practice half-heartedly. Do not watch TV while you warm up. Do not read a book. Give your whole self to the viola or set it down for now.