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Health & Fitness

Everybody wants to play music - but who wants to practice?

Everybody wants to play music - but who wants to practice?

It is a simple yet profound question. We hear a dynamic musician play music and we are moved to try it for ourselves. We might purchase the same instrument or try to sing like the person we just saw perform. Millions of young Americans saw The Beatles for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show fifty years ago and a very high percentage of them bought a guitar, a bass, or a drum kit soon thereafter. It could be that you or your child has just had this same type of experience. The first inspiration to want to play music can come in many different ways.

For me it was in the fifth grade. The high school music students came to the elementary school to perform and demonstrate all of the instruments we had to choose from for lessons. I wound up picking the saxophone because it had the fewest sign ups and I thought my lessons would be better in a smaller group. From that almost random decision I found my life’s eventual pursuit!

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Maybe you’ve been to a concert recently and thought to yourself that you’d like to play music. Maybe your child just watched a performance on TV, YouTube or possibly a live concert and they are now interested in playing music for the first time. Once you are motivated to pick up an instrument (or use your voice) you have to convert that desire and interest in playing music into practicing music.

Who wants to practice? An analogous question could be “Who wants to clean their room?” It seems that it is easy to want to play music but it is hard to actually get started practicing and keep practicing.

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Let’s define each concept before we discuss how to practice and how to motivate someone (or yourself) to practice. I define “play music” as being able to play a song on your instrument from start to finish in a musically recognizable way. If a beginner can get through the ABC song from start to finish with a steady beat and accurate notes and rhythms they know how to “play music”. A beginner will always start with only one song that they can play at first, but that’s how we all start! The far side of the spectrum of being able to play music would be a professional musician that is capable of playing music for hours on end and knows hundreds if not thousands of songs.

When we “practice music” we are not actually playing songs. We are working on developing the skills that it takes to eventually play songs. I tell my students that the best single word definition for practice is repetition. When musicians practice they play through musical material over and over until they get it to sound exactly the way they want, or possibly the way their teacher wants!

Practice is a direct parallel to preparing to be an athlete. Music has skills and ability rankings that are measured in a similar way to how we measure proficiency in sports. Athletes have stop watches and tape measures to gauge their skills - musicians use metronomes and chromatic tuners. Athletes practice the same motions over and over again. How many swings does a batter take in the batting cage over the course of just one season? Musicians do something very similar. We practice the same musical phrase over and over as we hone it to perfection and eventually use it in a song that we want to play.

Everyone wants to play music - here’s some suggestions on how to practice music:

• The most important thing to do is set a time and day to start your practice routine. You can’t practice if you don’t set aside time in your schedule to do it. It could be 15 minutes every afternoon before homework, 30 minutes on Saturday morning, etc. Practice time should be a routine because you will improve faster if you keep to a set schedule during the week. And not everyone is perfect when it comes to keeping their schedules. You may have to make adjustments here and there but try to keep a routine for as many weeks as possible. Every good practice routine can be measured by this simple statement: If I didn’t play my instrument yesterday I need to play it today!

• Every time you pick up your instrument try to find a balance between practice and play. If it is your first week or so learning your instrument chances are all you can do at the moment is practice because you don’t have any skills developed yet to play a song. Once you’ve learned your first song you can start blending them time you spend on your instrument between learning to use it and actually using it. A good balance for most musicians is fifty-fifty. Spend half of your time practicing and half of it playing. If I have sixty minutes to practice I might spend the first thirty on playing scales with a metronome and the last thirty on songs that use the scales I was practicing.

• Don’t be afraid to practice or play! Many students of music have “practice room paranoia”. They are certain that the world is listening to them and negatively judging every sound that comes out. Oftentimes the harshest judge is the person that supposed to be practicing - it’s you. Don’t be hard on yourself about mistakes in the practice room because that’s why you’re in there, to iron them out. Don’t worry about who might be listening - chances are no one is listening but you. And if they are maybe you’re inspiring them to get up and do something creative, too!

• Use tools to measure your skills as a musician in the practice room. Every musician will eventually need a metronome and a chromatic tuner in the practice room. I didn’t really learn how to play music until I could play a song without missing a beat with a metronome clicking in my ear. A vast majority of the music we hear and play is based on a steady tempo. Therefore all musicians should be able to play songs in time. And I didn’t get compliments on the way my saxophone sounded until  I could play all of my notes in tune at their proper frequency, which is measured  by a chromatic tuner. Our pitches have to make each other for musicians to sound  good playing music with each other. If you can play in tune chances are you will  have good tone as well.

(Pianists do get a bit of a pass on using a tuner - they either use digital keyboards that are already in tune or they hire a professional piano tuner to come and adjust their acoustic piano.)

 Once you get your routine rolling stay organized. Lessons and teachers can help in this regard because they give you assignments to complete. Being in a band can help because they will introduce new songs and you might have to practice your parts at home, which gives you something to focus your time on. Using lesson books and study guides help if you are not taking lessons because they give you something to check your own progress and help you develop particular skills.

Over the next few blog posts I’d like to discuss the subject of practicing and also the role and responsibility of being a motivator for an aspiring musician. If you are a parent you may have questions and/or something to share about motivating your young child to practice and play. Maybe you have a teenager that is dragging their feet on practicing for upcoming auditions. Or you just bought that new instrument for yourself and now it is sitting there alone without you and you can’t seem to get started practicing and playing. There are many ways to turn your practice time into a fun, creative and productive way to learn how to play music. I welcome your thoughts, comments and questions below.

Andrew Clark teaches woodwind lessons at Real School - Andover

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