Practicing! Options

[Digby]

If she is doing Saturday school, I assume you are in the independent sector, have a word with the head of music and I am sure they will let her use a practice room during lunch.

My girls don't have the same number of evening commitments as you, but evening practice never seems to be an option so they do an hour each (2 instruments 1/2 hour per instrument) before school.

[claireh]

Thanks to everyone for their great ideas. Wish I had thought of contacting you guys a while ago! Day 3 and all seems to be better. I find that splitting the two instruments and having a break between them is working, going through scales and seeing who gets them right first. (am a saddo who is going back to flute lessons after 24 years rest as I never took grade 8 flute!) Oboe is always frustrating but we are sticking to the one piece which she is playing in a recital on Thursday (sounds like a strangled duck at the moment!) and trying to perfect 4 scales and arps. Piano is added at the end if she is still in the mood - if not we manage 10 mins with a piece of toast in her mouth in the mornings before rushing off to school! Now to encourage my sons, 9 and 6, guitar and drums! She was very excited to hear about this website and I have said she is welcome to contact you all with any questions, so watch this space!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/flute.gif)

[maggiemay]

Yay ! pleased to hear things are looking up already. A small change of regime or approach can sometimes work unexpected wonders - I've seen it with pupils now and then.

Of course your daughter is welcome to contact us here on the board - we'll look forward to hearing !

[notmusimum]

Oboe is always frustrating but we are sticking to the one piece which she is playing in a recital on Thursday (sounds like a strangled duck at the moment!) and trying to perfect 4 scales and arps.

Strangled duck!! What else would you expect from oboe (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[Rachael.S]

This has been really great to read.

I struggle too with practise and after school clubs, oh and the fact that i have 4 age 8 and younger!
I just feel like such a cruella devil sometimes getting practise done before rushing off to swimming or something such like. I hadn't even considered doing some in the morning but then i'm usually last one up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif)

The other problem i find is that with flute for instance, the tutor wants 30 mins every day (just not possible though) but when she does practise she spends so long looking at me and talking about it that it drags on for sooo long without much improvement. How do you get them to focus?

Rach x

[Teigr]

The other problem i find is that with flute for instance, the tutor wants 30 mins every day (just not possible though) but when she does practise she spends so long looking at me and talking about it that it drags on for sooo long without much improvement. How do you get them to focus?

By removing any incentive to mark time.

If a kid who's unenthusiatic about practising is told they have to do half an hour, they will spend that half hour doing anything and everything they can get away with that isn't actually practice.

If it's target-based, rather than time-based, then the sooner they knuckle down and do the work, the sooner they can stop and do other things they'd rather be doing.

If it's all completed in 15 minutes, fair enough. 15 minutes of productive practice is better than 30 minutes of delaying tactics.

The targets need to be about quality rather than quantity too. If you ask for D major scale played 10 times, you'll get D major played 10 times, but quite possibly incorrectly every time. If the set task is D major scale played correctly 3 times, there's incentive to concentrate and get it right the first three times if at all possible. Every time it's played wrong just means more time practising and less time reading/cycling/whatever.
Same idea with pieces - don't ask for every piece to be played through. Find the problem areas and set targets to improve them.

T.

[Roseau]

If a kid who's unenthusiatic about practising is told they have to do half an hour, they will spend that half hour doing anything and everything they can get away with that isn't actually practice.

If it's target-based, rather than time-based, then the sooner they knuckle down and do the work, the sooner they can stop and do other things they'd rather be doing.

If it's all completed in 15 minutes, fair enough. 15 minutes of productive practice is better than 30 minutes of delaying tactics.

My elder daughter's cello teacher said, when she first started, that she needed to practise 20 minutes a day. I never timed it as I knew that it would end up being as you described and instead did what Teigr suggests and just got her to play what was required (which usually took about ten minutes). During the holidays, when she was about nine, she asked me to put the timer on for 20 minutes and was surprised at just how long 20 minutes was and also found that she didn't have enough things to do to fill up the 20 minutes. When lessons started again after the holidays she told her teacher that she needed more things to practise if she was really expected to practise for 20 minutes. Her teacher was a bit surprised but obliged (fortuntately without overloading her too much). After a while she found that 20 minutes wasn't long enough and so would ask me to add on an extra five or ten minutes. Then she decided that it was all too complicated trying to get the time right and decided she would do it without the timer. These days practice varies between 15 minutes and 45 minutes depending largely on how her concentration is. I sit with both of them while they are practising, and make suggestions but like Teigr, I think you need to let your children take some responsibility for their practice.

Also, as far as having precise aims my elder daughter's trombone practice has always been far more efficent than her cello practice simply because her trombone teacher has always been very precise about what she should do and how to do it. Unlike the cello teacher he has never given a length of time to practise, he has just said that she should practise six days out of seven (or all seven if she feels like it). Perhaps you could ask the flute teacher exactly how she should be spending the 30 minutes.

[notmusimum]

I agree with both of the above. My daughter usually does more when she had a goal. It is also important to have enough to practice.

The thing I've found too is that she is more likely to od it if she enjoys what she is working on so there have always been some stuff that she's choosen for herself. It ranges from Jazz pieces, somehting she's come across in a bokk that she likes even technical exercises. It is a good idea to do what the Teacher asks of you and that should come first but there's no harl in doing other things as well.

[Claudia's Mum]

"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. "

This made me chuckle as my daughter is soooo lazy when it comes to getting her violin out that we leave it permanently on the sideboard in the sitting room and music on the music stand in the middle of the room. Fortunately she enjoys playing so much that she can't resist picking up the violin and bow and playing it when she happens to see it. But if she actually had to remove the instrument from its case she wouldn't go near it!

Hoping that this would also do the trick with piano we have moved that (it is a portable one) to her bedroom and it does get played a lot more.

[Roseau]

This made me chuckle as my daughter is soooo lazy when it comes to getting her violin out that we leave it permanently on the sideboard in the sitting room and music on the music stand in the middle of the room. Fortunately she enjoys playing so much that she can't resist picking up the violin and bow and playing it when she happens to see it. But if she actually had to remove the instrument from its case she wouldn't go near it!

If I wasn't worried about them getting damaged I probably would leave them out. She keeps complaining that it's not fair because her younger sister plays the piano and she has a quick play every time she walks past.

[Rachael.S]

I agree, i've been out and bought sands for flute/violin now, it seems the cases are just far to much of an effort!

Thankyou for the tips, as it is because i'm not musical i tell her she has to practise until she's made progress (meaning it sounds better than when she started)
I think the fact that the pieces she's getting isn't to her taste hinders things alot but then she isn't graded on flute yet so there's a limited amount that she can play. Her tutor uses the "tune a day" book and i have to admit we've looked on you tube for a few of the pieces to hear how it's meant to sound.

Rach.

[Mad Tom]

i tell her she has to practise until she's made progress (meaning it sounds better than when she started)

Sometimes, no matter how much effort you make in practice this isn't possible. It is the next day, or even several days later, that you hear the difference. The changes in the brain that make the improvement (whatever they may be) happen between practice sessions ... just as the muscles of an athlete get stressed during training, and grow stronger between sessions. The important thing is to practice.

This is good to know for the student. Otherwise they could be discouraged by working hard and seeming no better at the end of it.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/piano.gif) <--- sounding worse than when he started

[Dulciana]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/piano.gif) <--- sounding worse than when he started

Been there! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)
It's very often not until the next practice session when I'm back feeling fresh that I can see the benefits of what I did last time.

It's easy when you're the one doing the practising (or not doing it, as the case may be...) to only look at progress as it appears on a daily basis, but if we look at it along the lines of a young child learning to read, he/she will not become wonderful at it overnight. A little every day will soon add up, though, and the difference will be noticeable over time. When pupils of mine are stressed over too much to do, and say they 'haven't had time to practise' this week, I try to tell them that even 10 minutes is better than no minutes. It may not feel like that at the time, but as the one who sees them once a week, there IS a difference between 10 minutes and no minutes! (In some cases, at least it means that we don't go into reverse... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) ) I wouldn't be happy with 10 minutes a day on a regular basis, but when things are really tough it can be better than nothing, and at least it keeps things ticking over until more time becomes available, when 10 minutes can very easily turn into 20 or 30 again.