Thoughts on Organizing a Practice Session

How to balance our practicing "to-do" list to avoid feeling overwhelmed

Since my post “The Basics of Practicing” seemed to resonate with some of you, I thought I’d write more about practicing today! One of my students, having read that post, wanted to know how to handle managing these different areas of practicing: 1) tone development 2) technical development 3) articulation 4) etudes 5) repertoire 6) and orchestral excerpts (I also discussed creative practicing in another post) while dealing with her own chronic issues such as middle register fingerings, breathing, and intonation.

I LOVE this type of question, because it really allows us to examine our practice routines more deeply.

On days when we only have 1 hour to practice (and sometimes this is a luxury), it’s hard to imagine doing more than blowing through some scales and grinding away at trouble spots in our music.

I’d like to offer a really quick and simple method to get you through next week’s practice session. Take out your note pad and divide a page into two columns. On the left side, organize the material that you will practice: specific exercises, etudes, pieces, etc. Draw checkboxes next to these. On the right side, make a list of skills that you would like to focus on. For my student, this would include using a lighter touch on her keys, remembering the role of the first finger for notes like middle D and Eb, intonation, breath, and intervals.

You will notice that all of these issues can be worked into a warm up or technical exercise of some sort. Just pick a few of them and insert the exercises you will use to address the problems into your left-hand column, even if that means bumping out other exercises you were hoping to work on. Then you could pick one or two of the left-over items to keep in your global awareness for the practice session. Perhaps today you really want to work on your breathing or your intonation.

One could in theory focus on all-the-things-all-the-time, but when you are at a point in your studies where you are still building your basic flute playing skills and musical awareness, you might not actually be able to do that just yet (and I say this with kindness). The higher your skills and awareness get, the more you can manage a wider range of problems (as well as focus on little tiny problems).

Now, if you are worried that you will never get better because you are not able to focus on all of your deficiencies at once, here’s a reminder that this is just anxiety getting in the way. Getting better at playing music is truly the longest and slowest process EVER. Hopefully this is not the first time you are hearing this news…if it is, I am truly sorry. I have been doing this for 31 years, and I still have a lifetime of work I would like to accomplish on the flute.

Sometimes I can’t believe that I am lucky enough to have the blessing and privilege to be able to spend my life learning about music and playing an instrument. Can you imagine life without it? Honestly I feel like life without music would be just as dull as life without good food! Well in order to play our instruments really well, we must learn how to practice well. Similarly, in order to really appreciate food, not just enjoy it, it helps to actually know how to cook! As music-lovers, we can “feast” when we go to the symphony, but to really “do the thing” we have to do our time in the kitchen. To have a passion means that you are willing to live and breathe it, and frankly, to get a little obsessed. There’s nothing wrong with dabbling (you could say I dabble in knitting once every few years), even in music, but to get the most out of learning an instrument, it takes a lot of perseverance, humility, and gratitude. If you are reading this an think I am preaching to you, I can assure you that I am only trying to remind myself! We are sharing in this experience of practicing together.

Now I shall return to my session!