All of us know how important practice is; yet not many teachers teach how to practice effectively to their students. Students know what to practice but often not knowing how. In my opinion, knowing how to practice will help to motivate and to achieve more result
Here are some ideas i’d like to recommend:
- Encourage to do short daily practice section instead of longer ones
- Set specific goals for student’s note book. For ex: 3 times in row play my RH correctly.
- Start slowly and gradually increase the tempo
- Slowing down tempo.
- Use metronome, make sure that they keep in time.
- Mark their music with fingering, dynamics, moods, etc
- Play hand separately
- Practice in small section
- Listen to recording of their pieces. Often i made for them too, record from the smartphones during the lesson
- Record your playing
- Analyse the piece
- Identify technical difficulties in the music
- Focus on practicing difficult section
- Making up (warming up) exercises
- Varying articulation.
- Listen intensively to your sound
- Aware of the breathing when playing
- Mental practice. For ex: play LH, and sing aloud (in your head) the melody.
- Set short term and long term goals for practice
- Find out about the background of the music. (meaning of the titles, history, composer background, other similar piece from the composer, etc)
- Trying to memorise short section
- Playing the music as a whole. Give feedback to yourself about how did it go.
- Encourage to take regular breaks
Beside all these ideas, the students often come up with great suggestion as well. Listen to their practice strategies, discuss more ideas and help the student to practice more effectively and achieve more.
Do you have more ideas on practicing? What are your practice strategies?
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