Practicing - a State of Mind
You have these images of practice time being without distractions. Like folding clothes, you just sit down and proceed to do the task. Practicing an instrument though, takes not just your physical presence, but your MENTAL presence as well. As children, we don’t have nearly the number of distractions that adults do, but they still have other things that invade the thoughts and distract from “complete participation” in practice. I’ve mentioned ideas previously of making to-do lists before sitting down to practice and setting timers to take some of the workload off the brain, but sometimes the gear shift from day to day chores, scheduling to intense practice is hard to say the least. Where I’m driving is this idea…
Start your practice time with a good warm up. If you’ve studied your instrument for more than a year you likely have more than a few scales, or progressions of chords that you’ve used as a technique exercise and you may have never quite understood the benefit but you go through the motions. Use these to help clear your mind for the REAL practice to come. Certainly there are many benefits to chords and scales, but don’t do them with your mind detached.
Take the scales and a slow and steady pace, use them to practice your counting. Try playing them as whole notes…. concentrate on the sound of them, making each note sound full-voiced and even. “1-&-2-&-3-&-4-&” milk the notes for each full count. Use this time to focus on your technique too. Is your technique helping get the sound you want? If you’re practicing piano, are your fingers curved and hands/arms relaxed? Are your knuckles parallel to the keys?
Experiment wiht phrasing your scales, growing the dynamic of the phrase and then tapering.
You can do the same with the chord progressions. For lack of a better phrase “wallow in the sound” of each chord.
Another good warm up is to find older, easier pieces that you’re comfortable with and have played for quite a while. Give a quick play through or two and then move on to some easy sight reading. By this time you should be at a good mental preparedness to move on to your main practice pieces.
Enjoy warming up and you’ll get that much more out of your practice time.
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