Having limited practice time is something every musician—myself included—deals with at some point. Busy spring and summer schedules and the changes to routine they bring can make practicing a challenge. It’s easy to forego practicing altogether when we don’t feel like there’s time to show up to practice in the exact way we’d hoped. But here’s the truth: great practice is imperfect. Consistency in simply showing up in whatever way we can every day is key. Practice doesn't have to be all or nothing!
What We’re learning about practice this spring
My students spend quite a bit of their lesson time learning how to practice and replicating the practice techniques they’ll eventually use at home. Recently, we’ve been testing out different time constraint scenarios to see how much we can achieve in short bursts. Although longer practice sessions are usually ideal, I do think it’s important for student to know how to handle situations when time is limited. We’ve learned a lot from this process, including four big takeaways.
Don’t underestimate the power of just a few minutes
We’ve been experimenting with timing mock practice sessions within our lessons and have found that as little as five minutes is enough time to make improvements to a piece of music! Repertoire doesn’t have to become spectacular overnight. The steady culmination of small improvements over time is what ultimately creates the wow-factor we all strive for.
Focus less on what already sounds good
This is so much easier said than done—it’s fun and satisfying to play what we already know. However, if our repertoire always feels effortless under our fingers and always sounds great during practice, it could be a sign that our time would be better spent in a less-comfortable passage. Focusing on what is less stable could look like starting somewhere other than the beginning of a piece and resisting the urge to start every practice session with a full run-through of repertoire.
CHOOSE TECHNICAL WARM-UPS WISELY
This year, students have been learning to curate their own warm-up exercises for each piece they’re studying. Warm-ups are related to the key signature and technical demands of each piece, making them quick and targeted.
MAKE USE OF HIGHLIGHTER TAPE AND PRACTICE SQUARES
When we can’t do it all in one practice, having some tools on hand to mark sheet music or take notes helps plan future practice sessions. For example, my students draw a square around the measures that felt the most challenging in their lesson so that their next practice session can be planned around what needs the most effort. Because what feels challenging often changes from week to week, removable highlighter tape has become an essential tool for students across ages and levels. It’s comforting to know exactly where you left off, and we’re more motivated to return to practicing when we have more time if we know where to begin.
REAL-LIFE EXAMPLES
Scenario: 15 Minutes to practice
The Spider’s Masquerade by Christopher Goldston
Quick Warm-Up (~3 minutes)
D minor primary chord progression, left hand only
D natural minor scale, 3 octaves in triplets, hands together
Mini Task #1: Back-to-Back Practice (~5 minutes)
The student was working on memorization, so we practiced the three slow sections scattered throughout the piece (the introduction, transition in m. 40, and mm. 56-end ) back-to-back, highlighting how they are similar and different. When playing from memory, a potential pitfall could be simply repeating the material from the beginning in all the subsequent slow sections. It only took a few minutes to isolate those sections and create a solid framework for memorization.
Mini Task #2: Backwards Practice (~5 minutes)
To mentally break this whirlwind piece into bitesize sections, we practiced from m. 21 back to m. 6 one phrase at a time. Each phrase ends with a relatively long note, which we treated as a place to catch our breath. The sequence looked something like this:
mm. 20-21
mm. 18-21
mm. 16-21
etc.
Working in this order keeps the rapid eighth notes from getting too weighty toward the ends of phrases. Each phrase also has a different dynamic level—backwards practice encourages us to think about the dynamics in new ways.
Review (~3 minutes)
Finally, we returned to our first Mini Task for a quick review, then played mm. 6-21 consecutively to finish our practice.
Scenario: 10 Minutes to practice
Minuet K. 5 by W. A. Mozart
Mini Task #1 Over-the-Barline Practice in mm. 1-4 (~3 minutes)
We looked at the left hand alone to review where it shifts position (the first beat of m. 3 and m. 4), then worked toward playing mm. 1-4 hands together by starting one measure before the position change and playing only to the downbeat of the next measure.
Mini Task #2 Blocked Practice in mm. 5-8 and mm. 15-18 (~4 minutes)
We played the left hand as written, but played each set of sixteenth notes in the right hand as one harmonic block of notes to feel how the intervals get larger and smaller. This also helped ingrain when the right hand repeats the same group of notes (for example, 3 times in m. and m. 6).
Review (~3 minutes)
We pivoted back to our first Mini Task for review, then felt ready to try playing the measures from Mini Task #2 as written, slowly.
Scenario: 10 Minutes to practice
Écossaise in G Major, WoO 23
Quick Warm-Up (~1 minute)
D Major Triad Inversions, blocked and broken, left hand only.
Mini Task #1: Back-to-Back Practice (~4 minutes)
Measures 7-8 and mm. 15-16 are similar, but not identical. Places like these can be tricky to memorize, so we practiced these sets of measures back-to-back, highlighting differences in the left hand accompaniment pattern and right hand finger numbers (first we use finger 1, then start the same material using finger 2 later).
Mini Task #2: Two-note Slur Practice (~4 minutes)
To hear the voicing and feel the gesture of the two-note slurs in mm. 13-14, we broke apart each hand into its individual voices, emphasizing which voice moves down and which one stays the same. This was a great activity to do in a time crunch because it created a clear aural target (what the melody is/isn’t) for the next practice session.
Review (~1 minute)
We jumped back to memory work in Mini Task #1 and made a goal to start a few measures before the tricky spots in the next practice session.
Scenario: Five Minutes to Practice
March (from 100 Progressive Recreations) by Czerny
Five minutes was just enough time to use a few eighth note practice strategies (staccato, long-short, and short-long rhythmic variations) in various parts of the piece.
At the end of the day, my hope is that students will approach challenging situations—be it limited practice time or any of the myriad challenges musicians face—with curiosity and a willingness to experiment. Happy practicing!