PracTIce Tips

"Take your instruments home and practice!"

It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to practice your instrument at home so that you don’t lose the playing ability and muscles that you have worked so hard to achieve this year.

At the very least, you should strive to practice around 60 minutes per week (about 15-20 min every other day or your age, in minutes. 9yrs old? 9 mins a day). If you practiced that much, you’d be in GREAT shape!

The best thing you can do for yourself is just PLAY; however, if you feel you need more of a “guide” to help keep your focus, here are some things you can practice:

Continue working through our Standard of Excellence book.

You can mark your progress by marking your book or, even better, using stickers to show yourself what has been completed and what hasn’t.

The play-along tracks for the entire book are RIGHT HERE!

Buy new music from Music and Arts or online. You DON’T HAVE TO ALWAYS PRACTICE FROM THE BOOK! Music and Arts has a vast selection of more fun music (pop tunes, movies, etc.) that you could use. Just tell them you’re looking for music and just completed 4th/5th Grade Band.
Please visit our Home Page to access Metronome Bot, The Dancing Nuts and Bots, etc...

Have a basic plan for your practice sessions:

What to do…

Warm-up (5 minutes)

a. Pick from the following:

-Old music from the concert that you like.

-Our Pink warm-up sheet

-An easy song that you already know how to play without mistakes, from our book..

Something NEW (2-3 minutes)

Songs you’ve been working on (7-8 minutes), the harder stuff in the book.

How to do it…

How to practice WARM-UPS:

Focus on: technique (fingers, body/hand position, embouchure) and airflow/tone quality.
Practice SLOWLY (until comfortable) so you can focus on the above while playing.

How to practice something NEW:

Scan the music first – look at the signatures (key and time), look for leaps, and look for tricky rhythms. Spend 15-20 seconds reviewing those spots in your head before playing.
Sight-read the song without stopping.
Mark problem spots in music for later practice – move on to the “practicing songs you’ve been working on.”

How to practice something YOU’VE BEEN WORKING ON:

Practice SLOWLY
Work on the measures you marked as difficult after first sight-reading
Practice in 2-3 measure chunks around the problem area
Start to put the whole song together SLOWLY.
Go back to difficult spots – start to speed them up to the proper tempo.
Practice in 2-3 measure chunks with the new tempo
Play the whole song, FASTER.
Go back and work on dynamics and articulations (accents, staccatos, tenutos, slurs, etc.)
Play the whole song with ALL components.
If having difficulty, REPEAT ANY OF THE ABOVE UNTIL YOU CAN PLAY THE SONG WITHOUT MISTAKES! This is the most crucial step!

*Rule of 3: play something challenging 3 TIMES IN A ROW – if you play something incorrectly, start over. DON’T STOP UNTIL YOU CAN PLAY IT 3 TIMES IN A ROW!

Tips for a successful summer:

Practice. Practice. Practice. Just make sure to PLAY your instrument! (Percussion – practice BOTH MALLETS AND SNARE DRUM EQUALLY! You should strive to complete your goals on both, not just one!)

Have a plan – use this to guide your practice or make your own system. Remember – you need to PLAY!

Show your plan to your parents, and ask them to help you remember to practice.

Practice SLOWLY and CORRECTLY, because practice only makes permanent, not perfect!

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