Seven (7) Tips To Maximize Your Practice Session


It is important not just to practice, but to practice well. You can practice daily and still make very slow progress if you are not practicing well. To make the most progress with the least effort, your individual practice time should include the following seven tips. 

1. Set Your Practice Environment
Creating the perfect environment to practice your art is important if you want your talent to truly flourish. This means in order to practice well it is very important to find the most suitable environment for it. While soundproofing your home plays a role in the acoustic quality of your practice space, environmental conditions can as well.

Find environment that works for you. When you are practicing music if you know someone else is listening then it affects your practice causing anxiety and distraction. You cannot practice well. This is termed as ‘Evaluation Apprehension’ by psychologists. It can cause great trouble.

The right environment for practicing music is the one that causes no distraction, does not cause disturbance to others and where you are not interrupted. 
2. Have a Focused Objective
Go into the practice session with an end goal in mind and focus on what you want to achieve at the end of the session. Stay focused on what you want to accomplish right now, today, and on how that will help you get where you want to be. Provided you were not convincing about what aspect you need to focus on, contact your trainer or teacher for a few concrete goals to work toward before the next lesson; and write them down so that you can use them as point of reference during your practice sessions.

By having a much focused objective or a goal for each practice session before you start playing, you will find you progress much more quickly and effectively and you will probably accomplish a whole lot more in a short amount of time. 

3. Have All Your Requires Materials Ready
Ensure you have everything you need for the practice at arm’s reach ahead of time in order to eliminate distractions or interruptions during your practice time.

4. Warm-Up Thoroughly

Playing musical instruments is physical activities as well as singing, and warming up is very crucial aspect of practice to any musician as it is to all the athlete. This is necessary for a more fluid practice so you will not have to practice longer because you will be warming up while you practicing. For example, if solo is what you hope to practice on or an improve work, it is very good routine to practice scales. In addition, if you want or need to improve your range, look for an exercise that will help you sing or play high or low notes.

Warm-ups as an aspect of practice may look to you like a waste of time, but you can turn them into some of the most productive minutes of your practice. A good and common scenario is starting with scales as a warm-up, this will aid in loosen up your muscles and get your brain thinking about the technique.
5. Practice Smarter and Not Longer
Your goal for any practice session should be to practice smarter and not to practice for longer period of time. Most people imagination about music practice was in terms of content like scales notes, tunes and so on. However, the most essential thing is to be in the right frame of mind while practice because the result of practice is more dependent on our state of mind. We can accomplish a lot in a short time if our mind is ready and our concentration is total. Quality is paramount when it comes to practicing music and not quantity because you need to be at your best after it.

There are so many ways you can employ to practice smarter, and this depends on what you want and what works best for you. In a nut shell, whatever skill you want to develop, always find a fruitful way to practice it. You may not have a teacher, director, or band mates who suggest something to you, search various material on the Internet or consult books like "teach yourself to play" for ideas. However, you need to focus on creating a practice goal that you can accomplish in one sitting. You don’t also need to pay attention to the clock as you begin to work on your practice goal.
6. Good Practice Attitude
Good practice attitude plays very important role in maximizing your practice session. Learning of music in an incorrectly manners is a step backwards. This is because it will actually not easy to do it correctly again provided you had not practiced the piece at all. For example, you do not need to simply trip over or stutter through the hard parts and go on when playing through the music. This approach also set a pace for the bad habits that can make it almost impossible for you to play the piece without stuttering or stopping at those spots.


It takes a lot of time and patience to become a great musician, and we believe that with a good attitude, you can do it! 

7. Record Yourself
Self-recording during practice session is a great technique and it can save you a lot of stress at the end. Record yourself so that you can get a chance to sit back and listen to yourself, rather than trying to listening and playing at the same time. This makes it easier for you to evaluate how well you are doing and what progress you have make on the difficult stuff during your practice session.

Recording yourself during your practice sessions will allow you to observe your error yourself before a performance! In addition, it can sometime point you to some other things you may consider to do differently which you have missed in the moment of practicing. However, with video recording, you may notice tension that you were unaware of and this will help you fine-tune your stage presence as well as capture how you sound.


If you have any other suggestions that can help to maximize  music practice, let us know in the comments section.

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