| PRACTICE TIPS
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| Thursday, 10 June 2010 09:25 |
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For Learners and Parents of Young Learners
Young Learners
We've heard it before: ‘Practice makes perfect.’ Yet even the most eager learner might cringe when told to practice daily. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of learning a musical instrument is developing a healthy, productive approach to practice. Your teacher will give you guidelines on how often and how long to practice, as well as what to practice, but he/she can only tell you how to improve. The real work is up to you, and mostly on your own time. Here are a few tips:
Aim to practice every day. Make practice a part of your daily routine. Determine when is the best time for you to practice. If you like practicing in the morning, get up 30 minutes early so that you won't be late for work. If you're an evening person, do your practice before going to bed or before you become sleepy. If you skip a practice day, don't worry, but do try to make up for the missed practice session by extending your practice time for at least 5 minutes for your next session..
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| How to Practice Guitar
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| Tuesday, 16 June 2009 12:30 |
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 When you practice a difficult piece of music, do you repeat the whole thing again and again, stumbling the whole way through, until the music eventually surfaces from under the mess of wrong notes, halting rhythm, and curses? That’s how I used to practice. I started playing guitar when I was in the seventh grade. While it was a varied education, one thing I didn’t learn was how to practice. I would attempt long passages of music—like Jimi Hendrix’s Castles Made of Sand—at top speed, again and again. I thought that was how everyone did it. The approach went something like this: make 50 mistakes on my first try, 48 on my second, 47 on my third, and in another decade, I’ll be able to play the whole thing with no mistakes! Now how the heck do I sing along? The process was so slow and frustrating, I’m surprised I stuck with it at all. And I never did get Castles down. Over the years, I got rid of a lot of those bad habits, but things really came together for me a few years ago. Here are the principles I distilled from many lessons... |
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