Practice ideas

WHY?

It's incredibly boring when we do the same thing over and over again, and we tend to check out. If that's not enough of a reason....we do not discover new things when we practice in a literal fashion. The point of practice is to discover things we didn't know we were doing...or to discover things we didn't know we were capable of. Varied practice means: don't play the way it actually goes. Here are some ideas for things you might do in practice that you'll never do in performance:

• sing with a metronome

• play while walking or dancing

• play a passage backwards

• double the speed or half the tempo

• make faces to tense up, then release and relax

• overkill dynamics (growly FF and whisper pp)

• save twice as much air or bow

• play in rhythms, but backwards

• try out new postures/set up

• play with 5 different recordings, all set to different speeds

• sound bad and grow challenge (go to your edge)

• adopt a soloist (imitate them exactly)

• exaggerate a flaw, then exaggerate away from it

• play every other note only, then every three, then every 4

credit to Susanna Klein. Visit https://www.practizma.com/practicetips for more ideas!