Learning And Practicing Tips
Here you will find some useful tips for your Learning and Practicing routine. If you have a tip that could help other musicians, don’t hesitate to share it with us – just use the form below! Thanks!
Last updated: 21. January 2021
(The newest entry on top!)
When you try to learn or practice you need to concentrate on what you are doing but if somebody or something is constantly interrupting you you’re just not able to do so. You should find a time and a place when and where you can distance yourself from any kind of interruptions and distractions. Turn off your phones, tablets, maybe even a computer if you don’t need it to work with. Tell your family members or roommates that you don’t want to be disturbed. Your practice time can be a lot shorter but you’ll still learn much more, you’ll see…
This is one of the most common questions asked. The answer? Practicing every day goes a long way! If you practice 30 minutes every day from Monday to Friday you cannot replace that with 2,5 hours of practice only on Saturday! First of all it’s very hard to stay concentrated for such a long time if you’re not used to it and besides that if you don’t practice regularly you probably won’t have the strength, stamina and/or endurance to pull that through. Besides that if you are a gigging/performing musician on weekends you should be preparing for your gigs and not catching up on your missed practice lessons…
Finding yourself a GOOD teacher is the best and often the hardest thing to do. You should know that the best musicians are not necessarily the best teachers and vice versa. Why? If somebody is able to play something difficult that doesn’t automatically mean that he/she can explain it to you and teach you how to play it. They have to be able to show and explain the stuff so you can understand and implement it in your playing. That’s why you shouldn’t be afraid to change the teacher if you didn’t “click” with him. But if you do find yourself a great teacher then you can become better way much faster than when you try to learn your instrument all by yourself.
As I already said before you should ALWAYS warm up first. Then cut your practicing time in different segments. Let’s say you have 30 minutes a day for practicing (which is not much, but still…) Your warm-up should take you about 10 minutes. Then set up a timer to 5 minutes. Start the timer and, let’s say, learn a new chord and a scale that goes with it. When the timer is done start it again, fire up a metronome and work on your rhythm and timing. In the next 5-10 minutes maybe you can learn a new melody, riff or chords to a new song. If there are too many segments for one day you can always spread them throughout the week. But in every practice session you should also have fun so at the end of every practice find a song or a piece of music where you can implement the material that you’ve learned that day. Notice: practice days should be only during the week – leave the weekend only for playing (gigs!?) and creating music. But still: don’t forget to warm up first!
Set yourself short term, middle term and long term goals. The short and middle term ones should be pretty realistic because if they’re not you could lose interest in practicing and playing. On the other side you should set your long term goal to be pretty high, maybe to learn to play something that’s practically impossible for you to play at the present moment. Let’s say there is a crazy solo you want to learn. That’s the big goal. “Chop” the solo in chunks that you should be able to learn, let’s say, one per week. Chop every chunk again in 4 pieces. Those are your practice lessons from Monday to Thursday. Friday lesson is to put them all together and learn to play them as one piece. Repeat until you’re done with the whole solo. Make at least one practice session where you practice the transitions from one part to another.
Notice: if you have any problems with any of the chunks – practice ONLY those and NOT the whole solo! The chain is only as strong as its weakest link so you first have to get the weak part to be as strong as the others before you continue practicing the whole solo…
If you want to learn a cover song I strongly suggest that you try to learn it from the original recording. Why? The guitar tabs or notation don’t give you the sound of the played instrument, all the embellishments, you don’t hear how the part is working with the rest of the music and so on. And when you try to figure it out by yourself you could even come up with a new riff or technique, who knows!? At the end if you couldn’t figure the part out completely (or just to double check it) go and look at the tabs or notes if everything is correct – no problem! But still don’t trust them (especially the stuff online!) blindly – they could be wrong! Unfortunately more often than not they are…
P.S.: There is one important thing that you should know why it’s beneficial to learn the songs this way: when you learn them from the originals you’re subconsciously listening to the whole band all the time. Your ear learns how to pick the desired instrument out of the whole mix, you hear how the instruments are working together, you also hear the different sounds of other instruments, etc. This will help you later on in your life as a (working?!) musician to write and arrange music, pick the right instruments and/or musicians for your projects and so much more – trust me…
Go over your material first to mark how difficult the different parts of the material are. Then begin with the hardest part first because you’re still fresh and your concentration is still intact. The longer you learn and practice the more you’re getting saturated and tired. Make a 3-step practice plan and do 10 minutes practicing the hard parts, then 10 minutes the medium and at the end 10 minutes the easy ones. The practice time depends on your concentration capability so you can shorten or lengthen it to your needs. Always spend more time on the parts that are not as well played as the others. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link so you first have to get the weak part to be as strong as the others before you continue practicing. This way the whole material stays at the same level.
Find or make yourself a dedicated place where you can make your music. On one side it’s practical if you can have your instrument ready to go all the time and on the other (psychological) side your brain “switches” automatically to the musical mode when you go there and work. This also makes it easier for you to get used to regular learning and practicing.
Before you can actually start practicing you have to learn the material first.
LEARNING: Whether it’s a written piece of music, tabs, chords, charts or just trying to learn something by ear you first have to learn the material right. Don’t concentrate on the sounds, rhythm and interpretation yet – just learn the right notes and/or chords. Only when you’ve learned the material then you can begin to practice.
PRACTICING: Before you start practicing your learned material find the right sound for it – it makes practicing so much easier if the sound is right! It doesn’t have to be perfect yet but try to get there as close as it gets without losing too much time. Then listen to the original (if there is one), check out the rhythm of your part and apply it to your learned material. At the end listen to the fine stuff like interpretation and dynamics and try to apply that, too. When you have incorporated all the components divide the material into digestible chunks and start practicing.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a piano, guitar or violin player, if you’re a drummer, singer or if you play a saxophone or a trumpet: you always have to warm up first! Eventhough some of the muscles are very small and we usually can’t see them we often forget that we could still hurt them if we don’t warm up and then you have to take a break from making music – sometimes unfortunately even for a longer period of time – and that really hurts…