How to Practice: Creating a Routine that Works for You

Have you ever found times when you struggled to find time to practice? It’s almost as if there aren’t enough hours in a day to allow for productive practice with your instrument as we experience problems of overcommitment, fatigue, and lack of motivation. While in an ideal world, we want to have endless hours a day to practice achieving a high level of musicianship, we must make the most of the hours that are given us. ​

    A lot of the time, we are under the impression that we must just keep repeating the same passage repeatedly until we get it right. While repetition is very useful, unless you understand what the problem is, this continuous repetition is unproductive and can lead to injuries like tendinitis. Here are a couple of things to be tips to be mindful of when you practice: 

1. Understand the problem. If you don’t understand the problem, you won’t be able to fix it. If you’re able to isolate the problem and be able to address it directly, it is a lot more efficient and will save you a lot of time. 
2. Be realistic. If you have a full day of classes, in addition to sports and other enrichment activities, do you really think you’ll be able to have enough concentration to work efficiently? What’s useful is being able to schedule a block of time during your day when you can be concentrated. You can start with a 15-minute block of time and build from there. When we practice music, it involves a high level of concentration when you are alert.  
3. Set goals. This is probably something that we’ve heard many times, which also ties in with being realistic. While we want to be ambitious and set high goals for ourselves, we also must be able to balance that with the time that we do have. I always found it useful to make a list of long-term goals of what I want to accomplish with the instrument, but also being able to set immediate goals of what I want to achieve in my individual practice that are realistic within the timeframe I must work. 

​In this next part, I will discuss different things to consider when developing your own practice plan. What are your goals with the instrument? What do you want to do with music? These are all questions that I ask my students when I first start working with them. Typically, this is the type of plan that I provide for them and adjust it according to their needs and time available to practice.  

1. Long tones. For wind instruments, this is a really great way of developing your sound in a way that is not stressful. Usually, it is great to be able to do long tones that are the full range of the instrument, however, it can also be very exhausting if you hold each note for four beats with the metronome at 60. For younger students, I would have them focus on a particular register per practice session. 
2. Mechanism Exercises. This is a really great way of being able to build technical dexterity with your fingers. For the clarinet, I’ve organized a system that allows my students to be able to actively incorporate mechanism exercises in their daily practice that are typically followed by scales that can be found here. Each instrument has a specific set of literature that it is usually good to ask your teacher or local professional about the best method books to use. 
3. Scales. This is an important part of practice. When we look and learn different pieces of music, most of them are based on scales and the better you are at them, the easier it is to be able to learn them. When practicing scales, it is important to make sure you practice with a metronome to provide stability and a reference in helping you simultaneously develop your inner rhythm.  
4. Etudes. Well-written études usually combine musicality and a technical problem that we usually encounter with the instrument. For the clarinet, I love using David Hite’s Melodious and Progressive Studies because it combines these elements that also teaches students how to play musically early on in their learning. As students progress, I enjoy using Cyrille Roses’s 32 Etudes for Clarinet as it also combines approaching a particular technique with musicality. 
5. Musical work. This allows you to be able to apply all the things we had discussed in longtones, mechanism exercises, scales, and etudes in musical works written for your instrument. It is always useful to make sure you have in mind what you want to focus on in your practice session. 
6. Miscellaneous. Whether you are preparing for auditions or recitals, it is always useful to carve out a block of time to be able to practice for those types of things. 

Now, considering these different elements in a practice routine, you may not be able to incorporate all these aspects. That’s completely okay. For example, if you’re having issues with a technical aspect of your instrument, choose mechanism exercises or etudes that help address that problem. If you can’t do all the scale patterns assigned to you, spread them out throughout the course of the week. Not enough time for the etude? Break it into sections that allow you to feel confident about your playing. Are you preparing for an audition, and you need to practice your piece? You might need to spend less time in one of the other categories to incorporate it into your daily practice. Be flexible with yourself and know that you can always adapt your schedule to your needs at that moment. 

Kristine Dizon

CEO & Founder
Music & Language Learning Center
www.kristinedizon.com