Practice Planning Without Overthinking
1. The Struggle with Structure
Many times in these “Monday Music Tips” I have mentioned how I managed to dramatically decrease the amount of time I was practicing during my time at the music conservatory. I created my own planning book that allowed me to time block the specific things I needed to get done within a practice session. The exact planner I used is in fact available to download for free on my website (Practice Planner).
However, the vast majority of players don’t plan their practice sessions because planning itself can feel like it’s taking away from the time that you could actually be practicing. So is there a way of structuring and planning practice that doesn’t take time?
Well, of course! This would be an incredibly short read if there wasn’t!
2. Over vs Under Planning
The aim of planning your practice isn’t really to trap you into fixed tasks. The aim is to change your practice habits so that you naturally become better at practicing. In some respects it’s a little bit like “calorie counting” to lose weight. You can of course lose weight without calorie counting, but counting calories helps you understand exactly what you are eating so that you can create new long-term habits.
However, sometimes new things come up and you need to adapt your practice. You might come across a new problem that’s more important to fix, or you might just be tired that day so you need to change your plan. Sometimes flexibility is required to really achieve optimal results. Very much like if you were calorie counting and went to a party, you might allow yourself the exception and inhale that piece of cake quicker than it takes to read this sentence! In fact, doing so may make it easier to stick to your goal for the long term.
So there is a balance between over-planning and not allowing yourself to deviate from the plan, and under-planning and not achieving the same amount that you could by implementing some structure.
3. Achieving the Most
So, what is the middle ground? What can you do to implement some structure without needing to spend loads of time planning and without randomly playing whatever feels right at the time?
Well, I would structure practice by first considering the macro topics that you need to cover. There are many of these!
Macro Topics – Scales, Chords, Technical Exercises, Sight Reading, Pieces, Playing by Ear, Music Theory, Improvisation
In a single practice session, depending on the time you have, you will likely be able to work on 3–4 of these topics. So here is how you might format some practice sessions depending on the type of player you are and what your goals are.
General Recommendation – Scales, Technical Exercises, Sight Reading, Pieces
Ear Training Focused – Scales, Music Theory, Chords, Playing by Ear
Theory Focused – Scales, Chords, Music Theory, Pieces
Improvisation Focused – Scales, Chords, Improvisation, Music Theory
Technique Focused – Scales, Technical Exercises, Pieces, Improvisation
Once you know what the general structure of your practice session is going to be (which can vary practice to practice depending on your focus that day), then you can be more specific.
Each of these macro topics can be broken down into what you actually need to practice within that topic. For example, for scales you might need to practice a D harmonic minor scale. For technical exercises, you may need to practice trills. For improvisation, you may need to work on playing in a particular key. For music theory, you may need to learn the cadences.
For each of the topics you plan on practicing, it’s useful to know what you hope to achieve within the practice session. This can change depending on how easy or hard you find it, and you may not nail it in one session.
For pieces specifically, these are made up of a lot of unknown issues and this is largely where most time is wasted. So, if you know beforehand what things are causing you the most problems then that’s great. If not, then playing the piece through once in order to find problems is maybe the best way. This should help you form a kind of mental to-do list in the piece of music.
That might look like this:
• Bar 4 - trill
• Bar 14 - left hand evenness
• Bar 22–24 - dynamics
• Bar 36 - rhythm
• Bar 41 - poco rit.
etc.
You probably won’t be able to get through all of the things in your list in a single session, otherwise you would have learned the entire piece in one practice! However, this will give you a general idea of what you need to do.
So, let’s say you are trying to be more “theory focused” at the moment. That might mean your practice session is going to be made up of scales, chords, music theory, and pieces. Your practice session might look like this:
Scales - G harmonic minor, F# major, Eb major
Chords - D major arpeggio, E minor arpeggio | play chord 1-4-2-5 in 4 different keys
Music Theory - Learn the musical ornaments, work out a perfect and imperfect cadence in 4 keys, and practice working out intervals.
Pieces - Bar 4 - trill, Bar 14 - left hand evenness, Bar 22-24 - dynamics, Bar 36 - rhythm, Bar 41 - poco rit.
Writing this down beforehand is very useful to keep you in check, but it isn’t entirely necessary. The idea is that you are trying to make sure you stay on task and keep moving forward in the direction that is aligned with your goals. So in your next practice session, give it a go!
Matthew Cawood
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