“Maybe you should become a lawyer or something.”

Those words, spoken to me by my applied clarinet teacher during my sophomore year as an undergraduate music ed student at Penn State, were a slap in the face – and I totally deserved them. He made this statement during one of our many sessions that semester when it was obvious to both of us that I had not made much progress on the assigned material from the week before. I didn’t respond to him then, but I’m sure it was obvious to him by my reaction that his words had stung. “I’ll show him!” I thought, and then started practicing.

Like many music majors, I sat first chair in my high school’s concert band. I attended all the honors band festivals and successfully did seating auditions. I successfully auditioned into the Penn State Marching Blue Band and the School of Music. I did it all with a minimal amount of practicing – riding primarily on my natural abilities. My music teachers never taught me how to practice effectively. Even the private teacher I had in high school, a sweet old man who was a reed doubler and a friend of my band director’s dad, didn’t teach me anything about practicing.

About a month later, after spending an hour in the practice room a couple of times a week, I played the assigned material again for the professor. He gave me a wry smile and asked, “Why did you think you didn’t have to practice?” I told him that, as a music education major, I didn’t really see a connection between being a performer on clarinet and teaching music to students on other instruments besides clarinet. He shook his head in a manner suggesting the phrase “you’ll find out.” He was right – I did.

Disproving an Old Adage

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” The old adage is meant to demean teachers, who do not have enough skill to make a living doing what they teach to others. One of the great truths of being a teacher is that you can only teach to a student that which you yourself have directly learned, experienced, and mastered. You can’t teach a student advanced concepts in instrumental performance if you have not reached that level of performance on at least one instrument yourself. To reach that level of performance as a vocalist, consider taking singing lessons.

Once you have developed to an advanced level of proficiency on one instrument, you can apply that experience to instruction on any other instrument, making it possible for you to instruct students from a beginning to intermediate level of skill. The basic concepts of performance (tone production, tonal literacy, rhythmic literacy, technical development) are similar no matter what the instrument is. Learning the idiosyncrasies of each instrument is just a matter of time and experience once you have a firm foundation in one instrument.

Have a “Raison d’Etre” (Reason to Be) in the Practice Room

The human ego has an important job – it exists to protect the organism from harm and seek out pleasurable experiences. It tends to do its job entirely too well, which keeps us mired in patterns of behavior that prevents us from taking risks and avoiding unpleasant situations that push us outside our comfort zone. People in general are not willing to extend an effort to an end if the perceived result is not “worth it.”

For me as an undergrad, there was little motivation to practice because I could get by without it, and I didn’t understand the value of having a more advanced level of proficiency on the instrument. Once I understood the benefits of being more advanced on my instrument, I had a reason to practice. The first step as an undergrad is to find your own personal reason to invest the time and effort in practicing. It needs to be something that will motivate you when the drudgery of practicing is upon you.

Develop an Efficient and Consistent Routine

Once you have your raison d’etre, the next step is to develop a practice routine and stick to it. Developing a successful practice routine begins with scheduling. How often will you get in the practice room? How long will you spend there when you do? A few things to keep in mind when scheduling practice time:

• Shorter sessions on a more regular basis have a stronger long-term effect than longer sessions with less frequency. Two short sessions per day tends to yield excellent results.
• Scheduled times should be as consistent as possible, as in the same time every day or every other day. Develop a routine that flows with your class schedule, meals, ensemble rehearsals, and meetings.
• Have the same regimen in every practice session. In a basic half-hour practice regimen, I recommend 10 minutes of scales/arpeggios, 15 minutes of repertoire work, and 5 minutes of sight-reading or improvising. Touching on every aspect of your performance (technique work, literature, and musicianship) will keep you improving steadily on everything.
• Cycle through different items in each phase of the practice. For example, you may cycle through major scales in sharp keys one session, flat keys the next, then save day 5 of a weekday cycle for a review of all 12. In repertoire, you will have to break down etudes and sonatas into smaller sections. It is quite easy to spend an entire practice session drilling a technical passage. Alternate between sight reading and improvisation. You don’t have to be a jazz player to improvise a melody. Just pick a scale and try creating a melodic line.
• Depending on the timing during the semester, shift the balance of your practice session to focus on repertoire as needed. When approaching concerts or juries, more time will obviously need to be spent on the material for those performances. Sacrificing time on scales or sight reading during these “crunch time” periods is acceptable.

A Few Other Suggestions

• Know when to quit. The Law of Diminishing Returns states that as fatigue and frustration increase, the amount of productive progress you will make for the effort you put in decreases. Sometimes quitting early and adding the lost time to the next session is a good move. Practicing for hours on end does little to help you improve if it is unfocused and disorganized. It also contributes to overuse injuries.
• Make staying focused and on task a part of your practice. See if you can go 10 to 15 minutes or longer of straight repetitions before taking a break. Focus is the key to success in just about any endeavor.
• Sometimes taking a five minute break yields great results when you return.
• Consider keeping a written practice journal to keep track of what you worked on and how it is progressing. You can detect trends in your routine that are effective or less than effective.
• Occasionally record a performance of an excerpt. Recordings are very unforgiving and point out the smallest of flaws. Listen to them with a grain of salt – human perception is focused, not general like the recorder, so your audience does not hear all of that, either.

Effective practicing is about being consistent and developing a routine that you will stick with. As Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” Developing a successful practice routine can be akin to developing a healthier diet – it is a long-term change in habits. But then, what would undergraduates know about healthy eating habits? I certainly didn’t have them.