“We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act it’s a habit.” - Will Durant (often attributed to Aristotle) As a music teacher, I think a lot about excellence. How do I teach with excellence? How do I develop it in my students? How do I help my own children develop it? I’ve always loved the quote about excellence being a habit because I have come to realize how accurate it is that what we do…
I've learned a lot about practice since my middle school days when I was just started to practice totally on my own. I don't remember anyone giving me any steps to do it successfully. Everyone assumed I'd been practicing with an adult since before I was three so I probably had some idea of what I was doing. I didn't have any clue. And as I have a large crew of students entering this age and about to start this…
Music is a creative art and a discipline. Sometimes we get ultra-focused on the discipline. Practice becomes a series of commands for the student to carry out. Flaws are pointed out and (hopefully) practice reduces them and they disappear. We are precise. We ask for controlled movements and use of muscles. We learn to repeat things more than we want to, in order to improve. This is the discipline involved. And it does take discipline to practice every day To…
It seems like there should be an exciting, flashy solution to solving the challenge of getting practice in and overcoming practice challenges. An app or a new book or some secret tip that will make everything work. The good, and not so exciting truth, is that there is a very basic answer. The #1 way to overcome practice challenges is: Having a Routine. Routines are not the most exciting topic but they are incredibly important. Here are some ways that…
. Is resisting practice bad behavior? Maybe . . . sometimes. What many parents may not realize is that many professionals struggle with the same thing. We may not insist we need to use the bathroom, are dying of thirst, or are suddenly starving as soon as it’s time to start, but we still sometimes feel that internal pull of knowing we should practice and feeling resistance to getting started. We learn to work through it and practice anyway but…
Last month I had the pleasure of presenting research about the real life ups and downs of parent-child practice at the International Research Symposium on Talent Education ( http://www.irste.org/) in Minneapolis.
This research will be part of a resource about about practice that I am just starting to work on. Because the project that will take awhile to be published, I want to share the results for those who could not attend the Symposium.
After I wrote Beyond the Music Lesson last year, I had many follow up questions from parents about specific challenges they were having with their children while practicing. It became clear that the topic of parent-child practice should be my next focus area.
To address issues that parents were struggling with, I wanted to find information beyond my own experience practicing with my children and the experiences of families I work with in my studio.
I knew how hard it was for me to practice with my daughters, and I saw that families I work with often had similar struggles. But, I didn’t want to assume that everyone’s struggles were the same so I set out to find out from a bigger group of parents what it was really like to practice with their children.
My research was gathered by a google form with 10 questions total. Over 100 parents participated.
The form was distributed to parents through their teachers, the SAA discussion boards, and Suzuki parenting groups online. The truth is: those that came across the form and took the time to answer were likely very committed parents or they wouldn’t have encountered, or taken time to fill out, the form in the first place.
I think it’s fair to say that this research shows what it’s really like for dedicated and committed parents to practice with their children.
The graph above shows the breakdown of student ages at the time parents participated in this research survey. You can see there are college age students, for which parents were reflecting back on their time practicing, a group in the 2-4 year old range, and everything in between.
The worst feeling for both students and teachers is coming back to lessons in the fall when there has been little to no practice over the summer months. Just like students need to make time to read over the summer, so they don't lose important skills before the next school year, practicing an instrument is a year round activity. Lessons maybe less regular, and there may be interruptions because of travel but regularly getting the instrument out, every day possible,…
Rushing: It's a common problem with music students. How do we get them to slow down enough to play well? How do we get them to stop rushing without nagging over and over again? Here are a few suggestions that work for my students: 1. Ed Sprunger suggests students walk to the beat of their piece while playing in his book Helping Parents Practice I have found this to be really effective when students are practicing review pieces. They can…
Daily practice with our children as they are learning to play an instrument can be an intense experience.
For many families, it is the most challenging part of learning an instrument.
No one wants to fight with their child over practice every day.
As both a teacher and parent I have learned this important lesson over the years: It is your child’s job to practice, but as parents we have a unique impact on the practice environment and on our child’s developing sense of what it means to practice.
You can’t control your child’s mood, or their willingness to be cooperative on any given day.
But, you can observe what helps your child get started practicing more easily and what factors influence them having a calm and productive practice session.
You can take note of what made a particularly great practice work for your child, and help re-create that on a daily basis.
Over my last nineteen years of teaching I have had countless conversations with parents about how to improve practice with their children. I’ve helped many parents turn around practice sessions that were filled with arguments and conflict and made them wonder if learning an instrument was worth it.
Lately I have been thinking about how to more clearly help parents through this process. I’ve narrowed it down to a checklist of five questions that parents should ask themselves after each practice as they are working to improve the process with their child.
You can find my complete guide to this process available HERE 
I am a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin’s work, especially her newest book all about the Four Tendencies. If you’re not familiar with this idea, this is the author’s framework to explain the four ways people respond to expectations placed on them, either by themselves or others.
Once I realized what my own tendency was, according to Gretchen Rubin’s definitions, it made a huge difference in how I was able to work with myself to meet my own goals and to understand my reaction to the expectations others placed on me.
For musicians, there are all sorts of expectations we encounter from teachers, parents, conductors, and from ourselves.
Understanding how we naturally respond, and how we can work with themselves to reach goals, and requirements we must meet, is a huge advantage. It helps us in music and every other area of our lives too.