I don't have enough time to practice!

Practice Clinic

29/05/2008 - 11:14 by How To Practice

A change for this weeks advice column. Usually we answer a question that has been sent to us, however this week the question has been mentioned so many times in various discussions and forums that it is worth dealing with here.

I don"t have enough time to practice! There aren"t enough hours in the day for me to work, got to college and do several hours practice. Other than not sleeping what can I do?

Our reply:

Firstly, on a very positive note, it is good to see you are musician that is committed to improving and that actively wants to put in the time needed to get better.

I Don't have time to practice stressed More worrying is the teacher that tells a student that they need to be putting in a certain amount of practice time. In the cases seen recently the periods for practice suggested are long 4-6 hour sessions.

As a committed student you feel compelled to put in the prescribed amount of practice time on top of other commitments such as work or college. This can lead to days comprising of 8 hours of work and 5 hours of practice. Whilst this is manageable in the short term in the longer term you will become tired and disenchanted with what is an onerous schedule.

There is one fundamental issue with the problem outlined above - there is too much focus on time. Time is not important. In fact it is really irrelevant when it comes to practice. A person can "practice" for hours and achieve nothing. Measuring your practice by using the clock is not a good measure of achievement.

The focus on time misses some vital questions that need to be asked when practising:

What are you trying to achieve?
How are you going to achieve it?
How will you know when you have met your target?

If you find yourself in this position there are steps you can take to relieve the pressure and gain back some time and sanity.

The Road To Improvement.

Firstly if your teacher has stated that you need to do X many hours practice ask them to justify this. I would however question any teacher that stated what you need to do in terms of hours - not a good example to set in my opinion.

Next remove all focus on time - it is irrelevant. Instead what you need to do is to focus on goals and tasks. Again speak to your teacher (spend a whole lesson if you have to, it will be time well spent) about what it is YOU want to achieve on your instrument. Ask yourself:

What standard do I want to get to?
What pieces do I want to learn?
Which techniques do I want to master?
Which other players do I want to emulate?
Where do I want to play?
How do I want to play?

These questions are only a start, you and your teacher will have more.

These questions will show what you really want to do and you can then set realistic goals with your teacher to help you reach where you want to be.

Music Practice Task List Having set goals you cannot leave it there. You need to take it a stage further and turn them into a plan. Split the goals into smaller steps and the split these steps into smaller pieces still. Split these smaller pieces into tasks that you can do each and every day to meet your gaols.

For example: I want to learn a guitar solo from a certain piece but at this stage it is too difficult for me. It has lots of pentatonic scale runs and also my hands are not quite strong enough to play it yet. So my long term goal would be the solo. Shorter term I want stronger hands and to be able to play pentatonic scales. I split the scales into several keys and also split my hand work into separate fingers. Each day I will then work at a single pentatonic scales and also strengthening a different finger. I will also use a metronome to track my progress. The metronome will also help me know when I have achieved my desired strength and speed.

It is very motivating to be able to tick off tasks everyday - you can then see progress towards your goals. This is a far better measure of practice than time will ever be.

Also if you have a good notebook such as our Music Practice Diary you can track lesson tasks and goals in that.

If you do like to practice a lot that is fine. You can still put in many hours of time. The advantage of having tasks and goals is that at the end of every session instead of saying "I did four hours practice" you can instead list all of the tasks that you achieved. Tracking yourself with tasks you will find that you are far more focused and get more done in the time you do have.

If you are unable to devote many hours to practice it won't matter. You can feel very good about the practice you have done because you know you will have achieved the goals you set yourself.

Enjoy your practice!

Information for Teachers

A plea to all teachers - please don"t insist that your pupils spend a set amount of time practicing. Instead be very clear about what things you are asking them to do. Write them out so there is no confusion, discuss the standard you expect at the next lesson and the progress you would like over the coming weeks. This will be of much more value to the student.

Information for Parents

Just as it is important for your child to lose the hang up on time it is also important that you don"t insist they do a prescribed amount of practice each day. Instead pop your head round the door of the practice room every so often and ask what they're working on and importantly ask them how they know they will be finished.

Photo coutesy of BrittneyBush and laffy4k