Practice Tips

Practice is essential to learning music; the more you practice, the more quickly you will grow as a musician. We strongly recommend a minimum of twenty minutes of practice a day, five days a week.

Please set aside a regularly scheduled practice time each day. Do not leave practicing to chance, or wait until you have some "free time." Especially for beginners, several short practice periods per day may be more effective than one longer one. At times, the going may get rough, and you may get discouraged, but this is normal. If you will persevere through the tough times, you will experience the tremendous satisfaction that comes with achieving your goals.

1. Practice slowly and carefully, thinking constantly of what you are trying to accomplish. Concentrate on the work at hand, and avoid automatic practice.
   
   
2. Practice short sections of a song at a time. Keyboard players should practice hands separately first, then hands together. Wind players should practice fingering a difficult passage before actually playing it.
   
   
3. Repeat each difficult part in the music until it can be played three times in a row correctly (once is accidental, twice is coincidental, three times is mastery). Merely playing one's music through once does not constitute practicing.
   
   
4. Incorporate the proper rhythm, fingering, phrasing, articulation and dynamics in your practice from the very first time you play a piece. Playing the correct notes is only a very small part of learning music.
   
   
5. A few minutes of thorough practice are worth hours of haphazard, careless work. You've heard it said that "practice makes perfect;" the truth is that only perfect practice makes perfect.
   
   
6. Remember, no question you might have is unimportant. That's why you take lessons! Communication between student and instructor is essential to learning.