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 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.

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.

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.

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 ) 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

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

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

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

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 ). 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!

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.




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.

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.

Could she possibly do a little practise at school?

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.

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!!

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 !

Strangled duck!! What else would you expect from oboe

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

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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

<--- sounding worse than when he started

Been there!
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... ) 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.