Now that students are settling into school and sports routines, it is a good idea to establish practice times each day. Choose a time that can be kept consistently and stick to it in order to get your assignments complete each week. There are two ways to set times:
1. You can choose to do a 30/45/60 minute block of time and do all practicing at one time each day
2. You can break up practice time into smaller time segments and work on different skills/pieces at each practice. This works great if you need to grab 15 minutes before or after school, 15 minutes while waiting for supper, 15 minutes right before bed…….. For younger students this works especially well as it can be difficult to focus for a long period of time. Even with this system of practicing it is a good idea to determine these smaller practice times and not leave it up to chance.
One more practicing tip for today - if you are working on a longer piece, do not feel as if you have to play the entire piece every day. Choose which section(s) need the most work and focus on those one at a time. Sometimes you can learn a piece faster by practicing it in sections, rather than just playing the entire piece (and not fixing the mistakes).