Practicing! Options

[claireh]

First time on the message board - here goes! My daughter, just turned 11, never seems to have enough time in the day to fit in her music practice. We get home at 5.30 most evenings, by the time we have had tea, done an hour and a half min homework it's nearly 8.30 and the idea of practice for her is ######! Usual excuse of no free time for herself etc (i do agree) tends to end up in arguements! She is talented (Grade 4 Oboe, 4 flute, 3 piano and 3 singing) but the teachers expect all 4 to be practised every day. She also has Saturday school, finishing at 3pm so doesn't even have 2 days off at the weekend. Anyone got any good ideas? I hate having to fight with her over it !

[notmusimum]

Hi Claire

I know where you are at exactly. Is your daughter in High school or in her Sats year?

My girl persues similar instruments to yours and is 13 in a couple of weeks so I totaly understand your situation.

I won't go inot alot of detail but the only way to cope is to rotate. My daughter tends to concentrate on two instruments and these will get practised as much as possible, usually everyday, the others might get once in the week and twice at the weekend. Piano always happens before school. She will do two for a term or until the exam and then switch to the other two. this works for her and as all her Teachers know where she is up to and what's happening in that term it generaly works out. She always trys to make the session quality Practice and generally has an idea of what she wants to achieve in the time.

Could she play her instruments or do the homework whilst you're preparing tea?

I can see that Saturday is difficult with already having committments. Our situation is a bit more tricky as the Arts Centre operates evenings on weekdays.

Pm if you want to chat further. Welcome to the Forum good to have the Parent of another young Oboist.

[Roseau]

Is it possible to have a music "break" in the middle of the homework? (ie do some homework, practise one instrument and then finish the homework and then practise a second instrument). My daughter only plays two instruments but she doesn't like practising them immediately one after the other.

I think the most important thing is to instill a routine and then stick to it. (This is what works with my daughters). This does not necessarily have to be the same routine every day but should be the same from week to week. Find a calm time to sit down with your daughter and to discuss what she can practise when. (Like notmusimum I don't think she is realistically going to be able to practise all four every day).

My elder daughter (who will be eleven in April) likes me to get her instruments (cello and trombone) out for her and put them away when she has finished - she doesn't mind practising but she finds getting them out and putting them away a chore. Perhaps you could offer to do this for her as a "goodwill" gesture - give her ten minutes to go off and do her own thing while you get the flute or the oboe out (I know it doesn't take that long but she will have the impression that she has had some time to herself) and let her go back to whatever she is doing as soon as she has finished.

[jellywobble]

I know exactly what you mean.
My daughter does not have a "free" evening during the week, and often Saturdays are taken up with a further extension of the usual activities ( 4 x Swimming, 2 x Orchestra, after school science, after school drama, and girl guides!). Homework is relagated to Sunday afternoon.
She is Yr 6, so I feel that she can cope (just about) but I think things will have to give when she goes to big-school.

The violin practice is squeezed in where it can - maybe 2 or 3 times a week. It is made more difficult because we only have a single living room downstairs, so it has to fit around the family TV viewing and other activities in the room.

We are very proud of her playing (Gr 5 last year) but often say "Just think how good you might be, if you actually ever practiced!"

Although I have to "nudge" her to get the violin out, she enjoys it when she does - so hopefully it will still be on the wanted-list, when it comes to deciding how to fit in secondary school levels of homework.

[skylark]

First time on the message board - here goes! My daughter, just turned 11, never seems to have enough time in the day to fit in her music practice. We get home at 5.30 most evenings, by the time we have had tea, done an hour and a half min homework it's nearly 8.30 and the idea of practice for her is ######! Usual excuse of no free time for herself etc (i do agree) tends to end up in arguements! She is talented (Grade 4 Oboe, 4 flute, 3 piano and 3 singing) but the teachers expect all 4 to be practised every day. She also has Saturday school, finishing at 3pm so doesn't even have 2 days off at the weekend. Anyone got any good ideas? I hate having to fight with her over it !

Hi claireh and welcome to the forums!

I'm not in your situation but I wonder if you could find out what it is specifically that she doesn't enjoy about practising, and maybe try and find ways of overcoming that. Often people don't enjoy practising if they feel that they're not achieving something, and then it becomes a vicious circle - you expect not to achieve/enjoy it, so you want to do it even less. This may or may not be the case with your daughter, it may be some other reason, but it would be worthwhile trying to pinpoint why. Part of me can't help wondering why she's learning instruments that she doesn't enjoy playing/practising - I can't relate to this because as an adult I love practising my instrument, but I gather it's often different for children.

A very helpful book on the subject (sorry to be evangelical about this, to those who know what's coming (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)) is The Practice Revolution by Philip Johnson. There's a whole chapter dedicated to "Why students don't practise" and lots of ideas on how to make practice time more enjoyable and effective. This website link gives loads of information about the book, including what's in each chapter and quite a number of excerpts from the book as well (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I know notmusimum has lots of experience of instrument-juggling children and I would very much recommend that you get in touch with her as she suggests. Look forward to seeing you around (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[boogiecat]

Hi there...haven't posted on here for ages

If she doesn't have time to practise 4 instruments - why play 4?

[all ears]

Seems that at 11, it's very hard for kids to actually make the decision to give up one or more instrument - especially if it's time and not dislike of the instrument that is the problem. If it's really impossible, it might be a case for parental decisionmaking.

From around that age, my son started doing some practice early in the morning (the quietest instrument, of course (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ). We tried a to-the-minute schedule in the evening, but it really worked better to get up a bit earlier than to be rushing from the moment he got home.

We also use kerioboe's "sandwich" technique of alternating study and music.

At weekends, teachers expect several hours of practice, but with a long lesson etc on Saturday, doing practice in a block is suffocating too. This past year we've been trying "1 hour after each meal" for weekend practice!

[maggiemay]

I'd also recommend trying to find different times of day .

If your daughter is always trying to do practice after homework, she may just be too tired to do it justice.

It could be that 15 minutes when she is fresher would achieve more than 30 minutes when she is tired at the end of the day.

[claireh]

Is it possible to have a music "break" in the middle of the homework? (ie do some homework, practise one instrument and then finish the homework and then practise a second instrument). My daughter only plays two instruments but she doesn't like practising them immediately one after the other.

I think the most important thing is to instill a routine and then stick to it. (This is what works with my daughters). This does not necessarily have to be the same routine every day but should be the same from week to week. Find a calm time to sit down with your daughter and to discuss what she can practise when. (Like notmusimum I don't think she is realistically going to be able to practise all four every day).

My elder daughter (who will be eleven in April) likes me to get her instruments (cello and trombone) out for her and put them away when she has finished - she doesn't mind practising but she finds getting them out and putting them away a chore. Perhaps you could offer to do this for her as a "goodwill" gesture - give her ten minutes to go off and do her own thing while you get the flute or the oboe out (I know it doesn't take that long but she will have the impression that she has had some time to herself) and let her go back to whatever she is doing as soon as she has finished.

Thanks - great idea to spit the two instruments. Will try and do 10 mins piano before school as an option too! Hopefully life will be less stressful!

[Halka]

We too are in the same boat. My 11 year old (Year 7) plays cello, clarinet, recorder, and sings. We have a timetable of what (all being well!) will get practised on which evenings, and aim for 4 good practices of each instrument/voice each week. This doesn't mean she's only playing 4 times a week outside of lessons, because she also plays in orchestras/ensembles and sings in choirs in and out of school. This term she has Grade 5 clarinet (taken two days ago) and Grade 4 singing exams, so we have tried to increase the practice on those, no doubt to the detriment (temporary, we hope) of cello and recorder. This is a little like what notmusimum describes, I think. I try to make sure her teachers know when practice may slip a bit because of commitments to an instrument other than theirs and they are generally understanding. It remains to be seen how long we/she can keep this up and continue to make progress.

My son (not musical at all!) used to attend a school with Saturday school. The timetable involved ludicrously large amounts of sport. I wonder if your daughter's school is similar. My son's school did sometimes permit the more serious musicians to miss at least one session of games to practise in the music department instead. Is that a possibility you could investigate?

[Teigr]

She is talented (Grade 4 Oboe, 4 flute, 3 piano and 3 singing) but the teachers expect all 4 to be practised every day.

What teachers expect and what actually happens are often two very different things and most teachers are well aware of that. ;-)

In general it's better to do a little bit of practice every day than the same amount (or more) crammed into just one or two days each week.
You can actually get some useful work done in 10 minutes, as long as you're focussed and knuckle down to working on the things that need attention and don't spend the time just playing through things you know well already.
It's not always the case, but if you listen to someone during their practice time and you just hear one piece after another, played straight through, chances are that not much real practice is happenning. It's fun just to play through things sometimes, but a lot of practice time is spent picking out the difficult sections and getting them sorted out. If I rattle through a whole load of scales on my flute, with them almost all perfect, it means I'm cheating and doing all the easy ones instead of trying to master the ones I don't like.
10 minutes is long enough to do some serious work on an awkward couple of bars of a piece, or to improve a difficult scale, or to do some boring but useful exercises on tone quality.
Also, if you set out to do 10 minutes, you often find yourself doing a lot more once you get into it.

How about setting aside 10-15 minutes before tea for woodwind (do flute on Mon/Wed/Fri and oboe on Tue/Thur/Sat) and 10-15 mins as a break in the middle of homework for the others (again, alternating days)?
Then another 10-15 mins on each of the four on Sundays.
That would get a certain minimum amount done on everything, with at least 4 sessions a week for each subject and none going more than 2 days between practices.

If she does half an hour a day and an hour on Sundays, it shouldn't seem like a huge amount of work, especially with it divided into smaller chunks. And when things don't seem like an insurmountable chore, they're more likely to be enjoyable, so there's less to fight about and hopefully she'll end up doing extra practice just for fun as well once practice doesn't seem like something to stress out about.

T.

[parent_l]

Wow, four instruments, all practiced, is a lot. She is doing well.

In our house we find that it is not only the number of instruments, but also the number of children that make a difference. We only have two children, but each has two instruments and singing, and each has a pretty busy day, so it is hard to fit in all the practice slots - out house is not big enough that you can ever have two children practicing at the same time.

When in primary school it has been much better for both our children to practice in the morning. We alternate two instruments, and so by the skin of our teeth enough gets done. My younger child is still in primary school (year 6), and so morning practice is still working for her.

Once our elder daughter went to secondary school it all became a lot more hairy. She has a long school journey, and so cannot practice in the morning, and is tired by the evening. Progress definitely slowed once in secondary school - but was compensated for by the amount of in-school ensemble playing (so things like sight reading improved naturally ...).

I am therefore rather dreading my younger child going off to secondary school, as I know that the just managed day with practice in the morning is going to get higgledy piggledy again. However, she will not have such a long journey so with luck it will be easier.

The other thing that helps us a lot is to spend a little bit of time defining goals. I don't always do this, but when I do it improves the week no-end.

I am impressed that your daughter practices singing. I must say that we only think in terms of juggling two instruments - singing just happens anyway. Singing is only really practiced before an exam, when words need to be learnt, or just before some sort of recital.

[notmusimum]

We too are in the same boat. My 11 year old (Year 7) plays cello, clarinet, recorder, and sings. We have a timetable of what (all being well!) will get practised on which evenings, and aim for 4 good practices of each instrument/voice each week. This doesn't mean she's only playing 4 times a week outside of lessons, because she also plays in orchestras/ensembles and sings in choirs in and out of school. This term she has Grade 5 clarinet (taken two days ago) and Grade 4 singing exams, so we have tried to increase the practice on those, no doubt to the detriment (temporary, we hope) of cello and recorder. This is a little like what notmusimum describes, I think. I try to make sure her teachers know when practice may slip a bit because of commitments to an instrument other than theirs and they are generally understanding. It remains to be seen how long we/she can keep this up and continue to make progress.

This is very much what happens in our house, playing in concert Band and various ensembles, Sometimes I just wish she would stick to her actual instrument on these occasions rather than opting to play their bigger relatives.

Wow, four instruments, all practiced, is a lot. She is doing well.

In our house we find that it is not only the number of instruments, but also the number of children that make a difference. We only have two children, but each has two instruments and singing, and each has a pretty busy day, so it is hard to fit in all the practice slots - out house is not big enough that you can ever have two children practicing at the same time.

The other thing that helps us a lot is to spend a little bit of time defining goals. I don't always do this, but when I do it improves the week no-end.

Luckily we have space for them each to practice in different rooms.

I think the goal thing is important and that's why I always seem to be talking about my daughter taking exams. It often gives the false impression that she doesn't do anything other which is not the case. None of her Teachers use festivals or have individual recitals so exams are usually the extra goal.

[Roseau]

Claireh has your daughter been shown how to practise by her teachers? My daughter's trombone practice is a lot more efficent than her cello practice because her trombone teacher has been very clear about what she should do (and in what order) and what to do if a note/bar goes wrong. You would think that some ideas (like isolating a difficult bar) would transfer from one instrument to the other but they don't.

[STRINGMUM]

Could she possibly do a little practise at school?