Kat’s Tips on Practice - Motivation, Routines, Frustration, Inspiration
How to stay motivated to practice
Create a place for practice in your home that you want to spend time in.
Make it cozy! Add yummy-scented candles if that’s your thing, or create a spot for your tea/coffee to enjoy while you practice. The more delightful sensory elements we add to practice, the more enjoyable it is!
Make sure you have a great chair so you’re not sitting on a bed.
Get a music stand that works for your needs.
Buy an instrument hook for your wall so that you don’t have to get your instrument out of the case every time. You’ll find your hands on it more often if there’s nothing in your way!
Remove all that you can that isn’t music-related. If it’s not beautiful and not useful, it’s clutter. Our brains can easily get overloaded with too much stuff!
Create practice routines
At Kat Starr Music, we give our students a binder with 5 sections. Each section is aimed at improving one aspect of musicianship.
Technique - something that’s not a song or piece that allows our students to focus on their technique. This warms them up and sets the tone for an awesome practice session!
Music Theory - it’s great to work a little with music theory frequently. The concepts sink in over time, so the more you put your brain around it the easier it gets!
Short Term Piece - something that will take you a week or 2 to learn.
Long Term Piece - something that will keep your eyes to the horizon and give you a target that’s about 4-6 weeks off.
Review - always end with a ‘win!’ Review your previous repertoire frequently. You’ll keep it in your memory and also notice how it gets easier and easier over time. That’s a fun way to see your progress.
I recommend setting up something similar for yourself. Maybe you want to add learning by ear as well, or jamming. But decide which areas of your musicianship you want to improve and create a 3 ring binder containing your materials. This way when you sit down to practice, you’re spending precious mental energy wondering, “now what was I going to do again?”Choose some days/times per week that would be what you consider “good enough” for the amount of time you want to practice. I recommend setting lower expectations of yourself so that when you meet that threshold, you feel successful! The amount of time you spend isn’t as important as what you get out of it, so don’t pressure yourself to complete hours upon hours. Four 30-minute practice sessions that happen consistently each week will add up!
Put your practice on your calendar. Set aside time for practice and write it down on your planner or put it on your digital calendar. Setting that intention makes it more likely you’ll do it.
Add in something that you already enjoy to your practice. You’ll be more likely to sit and do the work if you give yourself a reward AS you practice. I loooooove coffee. I often make myself a hot cup to sip on while I practice. Therefore, my brain associates the joy of coffee with the act of practice.
Extra brownie points if you use Habit Stacking. If you already have a solid habit in your life, stack on the habit of practice for a better chance at success. Say, every evening you watch the News. Right after the News, start your practice. Stacking habits together means you’re not creating a new habit out of thin air - the neural network for that habit is already there and you’re just tweaking it.
Break through walls of frustration
Really pay attention. Don’t multitask as you practice - do only one thing at a time. Increase your focus on the small details so that you understand where your frustration is coming from. Usually we try to do things too quickly and don’t pay attention to where we’re going wrong. And since we can’t fix what we’re not paying attention to, often frustration comes from wanting to be at the “finish line” already, even though we haven’t given enough attention to our physical skills.
Zero in on the measures that are the trickiest for you and play them each 5 times perfect BEFORE you even play the piece. When you sit down to practice a piece that has previously frustrated you, don’t play it all the way through at first. That way when you get to the rough spots, you’ll have increased confidence of having already played them correctly!
Seek help! If you’re not sure what’s going wrong in your piece, enlist the help of a teacher. Good teachers can find the heart of the issue quickly because they have seen student after student stumble in the same ways as you. What feels like a really unique issue, I guarantee you we’ve seen hundreds of times and have multiple ideas for you to try!
Stay inspired to practice routinely so we can progress in our musical abilities/skill level
Make sure you have given yourself things to practice that you actually enjoy. Are you playing classical music because that’s “what you should do?” Don’t! Figure out what brings you joy to play! Love animated movies? Buy an easy Aristocats book for your instrument. Only want to play bluegrass? Ask your teacher or fellow musicians for their recommendations.
Go to concerts of musicians you admire. Often seeing what others have done on your instrument can remind you of what’s possible!
Get into lessons! A teacher can help you find music you love and help you over hurdles. They can even connect you to music you didn’t know existed and now MUST have!