How to get more done in your practice time - 3 Tips for efficient practice

We've all been there: you want to learn something new and are super motivated, but life is just so busy! Learning an instrument (including the voice) takes time, there might not be shortcuts to practicing regularly, but there sure are ways to make the most of the time you've got.

Even with just 20 minutes a day, there can be significant progress, if you do it right. If you've got 30 minutes or maybe even an hour some days, this will be even faster!

Here are some tips to make the most out of however much time you've got:

Set specific goals

And I'm not talking about yearly goals. I mean goals for each practice session. The aim here is to be realistic and specific, to guide you and keep you focused.

For example if you are working on "Piano man", don't try to do it all in one session. Sure, a runthrough is a good idea to warm up and remind you of what you did last time, but then pick a specific part that you want to focus on today, and what you want to improve in that part, and focus on that.

The weird thing is, you will actually get to your final goal of mastering the song way quicker this way!

So, even if your goal is just to get really comfortable in the first half of the first verse, you will be much more likely to get that to a standard you are happy with in one session than if you try to improve the whole song a tiny bit.

And you might even notice that having one part down really well is quite motivating to do the next part just as nicely!

Break it down

The mean thing when learning something new is that you probably don't know how to do it yet when you first start. So, one of the most valuable things you can do to get there is to break down the difficulty, to turn it into something you can do now.

There are many ways to do this, one of them is similar to our first tip: Pick a small section. There is no hard and fast rule how much to do at once, but a good rule of thumb is, make it small enough a chunk for your brain to remember in one go.

This might be a single bar when you learn a new pattern, or a single phrase if it's something less complex or new.

Some other ways to break down the difficulty are:

• Slow it down, and only once you're comfortable with the slow version, speed it up a tiny bit. Repeat this process until you are at the speed you were aiming for.

• Practice different elements separately. This can mean, to play them hands separate on the piano, or to sing just the notes on la la la, without the words so far.

• Treat rhythm and timing as a separate thing. Practice it by itself, and don't worry if it's not part of your practice yet for figuring out what happens in what order. Once you have both sides of it at a level you are comfortable with, put them together.

• If a movement or jump is particularly difficult, isolate it. Practice just the difficult jump and only when it becomes easy by itself, bring in the part just before and/or after.

Get some details right early on

Chances are, if a piece is hard enough to need practice, it will be very hard to get every detail right from the start. But what details should we focus on now, and what can wait until after those first few things are easy?

The trick is to pick the few details that will help you save time later if you get them right early on. Now, you don't have to play these right the very first time. But focusing on these in the first phase of practicing will make the whole process easier later on and save you the effort of having to correct anything that you may have practiced wrong the first time around.

Our first priorities here are:

• The right notes in the right order. Especially if you are repeating a section frequently to get more familiar with it, this will save you the pain of later having to relearn the section to correct the notes.

• The rhythm and timing. And remember what I said earlier: you can treat this as a separate element. Just make sure you don't get into the habit of practicing a phrase with a rhythm that is incorrect for too long, to the point of where you will remember it wrong. Listening to good recordings can be helpful here, as well as breaking down the rhythm into the smallest unit, if you are already a little bit more experienced with rhythms. Lessons are a great place to ask for help on learning how to do this.

• What moves where when. For example, figuring out good choices of fingers for a section early on will help you get your muscle memory involved extra quickly. When the movement is the same every time, it is much easier for the body to remember and to make it more efficient by relaxing and applying good technique.

• Lastly, be aware of the target speed, even if you can't perform it that fast yet. Even before you reach the point where you can reliably perform a section at the original speed, it's very helpful to remind yourself of what it's supposed to sound like in the end. For example, hum the main melody or listen to a recording to help you to imagine and internally hear what you are aiming for.

  The goal of this is to not get stuck at half speed and forget what the original speed sounds like. When you know what you're aiming for, it's much easier to reach.

  
  

And by applying these 3 tips, or even some of them, you should be able to get where you want to be quicker.

Maybe you were already doing all that? First of all, congratulations, you are on a great path to progress! But also, feel free to get in touch if you would like some more advanced practice tips and ideas. I'm always happy to hear what you're working on and help you get even closer to reaching your goals.