Had a full day at school or work and now you’ve come home with an exhausted body and tired mind, but still want to practise a little on the violin so that you keep progressing? Renouncing on practicing altogether seems at first to be the first choice, but it quickly turns out that NOT practising for more than 3 days can easily give way into a whole myriad of troubles with catching up, personal frustration, and very simply, just more fatigue in general. Indeed, not having a regular practice schedule quickly reveals itself as a short-term non-solution with real, very annoying, long-term consequences, as those of us who have gone more than 3 days away from the violin can testify.
What to do?
Follow these steps outlined here can help you quickly get back on track, and soon be playing your favourite pieces to your heart’s content!
1) If starting exhausted, the very first thing to do is to acknowledge that you are, in fact, exhausted. Denial will not be a friend here. But practising tired has a very therapeutic effect, if done right! Before starting, take a good stretch on your back, arm and neck muscles, and breathe a heavy and happy sigh of relief that this is your time now, for you! And then, perhaps, make yourself a strong cup of tea (with honey?), and know that this is the time to go into relaxed focus. (We learn much better and efficiently in this state, whereas anxiety will trigger the brain’s inclination towards CANCELLING the whole experience, and that’s definitely NOT what we want to happen with our hard-earned practice progress!!!)
2) Now that you’re ready, pick 1 or 2 purely mechanical things to work on / learn (technique and scales are our best tools here), and set the bar at a manageable level. Next, without compromising on the highest quality of concentration and of sound production, do 3 repetitions of this small technique and pause to re-evaluate. Figure out what needs to change in order to get those repetitions perfect each time, with no hurry but with a quiet certainty. When the technique is stable, there are a couple of things we can do to master it: Adding the number of repetitions when 3 is easy; raising the speed up a notch for precision and strength; switching up bowing combinations…. every item on this list makes the technical work seem so much more challenging, and the moment you master one and feel the exhilaration rushing through you, congratulate yourself, because you have just entered the positive cycle of self-motivation!!!
3) Picking 1 or 2 small sections of a musical piece (we don’t call them songs anymore) you are working on, perhaps a 4-bar phrase or 2-bar transitional passage, work in the same way! Choosing a speed, or tempo, that is comfortable but not TOO comfortable, work on small sections first by dealing with the mechanical aspects, and then the musical aspects (like vibrato, for example). Work for real stability: after having ‘nailed it’, and celebrated a little maybe because it was the first time you managed to play through the passage without hesitating, repeat as necessary in order to make it ‘your own’: so that you would be able to pick up the violin and play it anywhere, without needing to squint at the fingerings on the page. In a sense, it’s learning the music by heart, but it’s much more than just memorising the movements - it truly is LEARNING the music! When we KNOW the music, we can switch our brains off (from fear, doubt and anxiety) a little a finally enjoy ourselves in the process of playing it for others!!
So that’s how it goes!
When you’ve practiced effectively, you feel stronger at the end of each session, and much happier inside, because our instinct for productivity has been satisfied, and there’s no better feeling in the world!
Next practice session, it’s wash, rinse, repeat, but only after checking very quickly that the items from the last practice session are holding their shape! Remember, it should be a quick check, not a repetition of the last session, since, we want to move on! This makes the quality of each practice session so much more valuable, and practising becomes a little more demanding, but so much more satisfying!!!
and, after having all this information, know also that …
you’re not alone!
If you’re a member of our current class, let the Practice Logs help you along!
Or, let the community help you (cue Facebook), reach out to the other learners around you, and don’t be afraid to learn through your mistakes! That’s how we all grow.
GOOD LUCK, AND HAPPY PRACTISING!!!
X.O.
