The Importance of Efficient Practice: An Interview with Violist Lisa Dyvig

In this week’s episode, we’re speaking with Lisa Dyvig. Lisa is a professional violist living in Olympia Washington. She is also a music teacher & parent of two young musicians.

Lisa is the owner and creator of Alto Clef gifts – which features fun gifts, mugs, t-shirts and more that she was inspired to create after realizing how many cool music items are out there for other instruments and wanting violists to be included too.

We talk about efficient practice, what can make practice challenging, and how Lisa has found ways to mentor teens learning to teach in her community.

Time to Practice Podcast Episode 27: The Importance of Efficient Practice with Violist Lisa Dyvig. White text on a two tone blue background. A picture of a woman holding a large viola

To Listen to the full episode you can find the Time to Practice Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. You can also listen directly from the link below:

Highlights of our Conversation with Lisa Dyvig include:

“Especially for my teaching, because I know what it’s like to not want to practice, but also to know that you need to in order to improve. And so I teach the efficiencies of practice, how you take the small section, you know, if you play through something with a metronome and you go to a place that you can’t play with a metronome, that spot you should stop and work on. Things like that, where I know it’s always fun to play through things, but that’s not effective. And so really figuring out the places that need attention and focusing on those rather than just being in there, spending the time on your instrument, but focusing on actual practice spots.”

“…finding ways to make practicing a little bit more fun when you are doing those small sections over and over again. My favorite thing to do is to make them harder. So if you’re playing something that’s hard, find a way to make it even harder, whether that be playing it really loudly or changing the rhythm if it’s 16th note passage doing all the rhythm to make it even harder so that when you go back and play it, normally it feels easy all of a sudden. It’s the quickest way for me to feel like I’ve accomplished something.”

“The best, most effective way that we found to get our kids to practice was to ask them to put their instruments away. If you leave the instrument out and then you ask them to put it away, they pick it up and then they’re like, “oh, maybe I’ll play.” And they do. So I think leaving the instrument out is the easiest way to get started if it’s in a safe place and there aren’t risks for animals or small children damaging them in any way.”