Thomas J. West Music

Much of the time, music directors are demanding that students stay focused on practicing the stuff they can't do. Many students would rather play something that already sounds good than do the "hard work" of playing something they haven't mastered yet. Because of this, practice sessions are usually exercises in either total frustration (because they can't do it) or total boredom (because having to repeat something over and over is not much fun).

Mandatory Fun Time!

I always encourage my students to save the last five minutes of their practice session as a designated fun time! There are many ways of spending that five minutes, but whatever you play, make sure it is something enjoyable. Sight-reading something new, playing an old favorite, or even making something up can be quite enjoyable.

Another way to use fun time is to turn back in your method book to an old song that you played a long time ago. Make sure it is something that you haven't played in at least a month. In fact, the further back you can go, the better. Try playing that tune again today. Most students find that they can still play it fairly well. Some even find that they play it better now than they did when they learned it in the first place!

I often do this with my students in May as the school year is winding to a close. We will get out something we learned back in September. In many cases, the students end up with big smiles on their faces, because they realize how much they've matured as a musician in one school year. So much time in music practice is spent on what we can't do that sometimes it is a nice boost to the self-esteem to reflect on how far we have come and especially what we can do.

This article (c) 2010 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.