When I was a music student I had time to practice and regular instruction and inspiration. I still didn't practice every day or as long as I should have, although there were periods when I practiced a lot. Now that I work full time and have various projects, trips and plans, not to mention the need to spend time with my husband and unwind after a long day, it's hard to find time and energy to practice my instrument. But I know deep down that I must continue to play music or I will not be satisfied in life or content in my heart.
I am working on creating the habit of practicing, and now that I'm in the swing of it I find that it is actually easier than I thought to practice every day. I am so grateful that I have found the tools to create habits. Now I look forward to creating the life I want with positive habits, instead of dwelling on what I still need and should do.
Here are some steps in creating the music practice habit (applies to creating any other habit too!).
1. Identify a routine that you already do and add one more step to it.
Do you always brush your teeth in the morning? If so, this can be the cue to then practice next. Do you always come home in the evening and have a snack and watch an episode? Now you can have a snack then go practice instead of watching TV. If there's already something you do every day around the same time, it is easy to add practicing to this existing routine. I usually eat breakfast and make coffee in the morning. Now after I make coffee I head downstairs to my practice area and take out my horn.
2. Start small.
If you haven't been playing much lately, don't suddenly try to practice for an hour each morning. The goal for now is to just practice every day, not to practice an hour every day. We'll get there, but you must start small first. Starting with a big inspired push will end in failure as it takes too much mental energy and too big of a change to your routine to be sustainable. I can't tell you how many times I've decided to start exercising by doing a huge session at the gym, or joining a difficult class, or hiking for 4 hours. After a few times doing this I invariably quit and end up right where I started within a week or two. We are going for a life change, a habit that is sustainable and long term. Here's how:
Go into your practice space, put together your instrument and blow into it, or press the piano keys, or strum the strings. Then lovingly put your instrument away where it belongs. That's all that is required. Practice for 5 minutes, then stop and go about your business as usual. Do this for the whole first week. On week two you can add another 2 - 5 minutes, not more. Build up slowly and steadily over time until you are at your desired length. If you do this, you will be forming the habit of practicing without it being difficult and without the chance to say it's too hard. Your inner excuse voice will not win if all you have to do is play for 5 minutes. Make is so easy that it's impossible to say no.
3. Don't skip 2 days.
If you skip a day, that's OK. Just don't skip 2 days, or three days. If you do skip more than a day, get back into the habit by starting small and adding it to your routine. Identify what threw you off. Did you oversleep because you stayed up too late the night before? Go to bed earlier. Did you plan to practice in the evening but something else came up? Prioritize your habit. Creating a habit takes conscious and specific dedication. A general wish to "practice more" is useless. A specific, conscious plan, such as "practice for 5 minutes every morning after I brush my teeth" is easy to achieve.
4. Identify barriers to your regular practice session and address them.
Here are a couple barriers that come up a lot for me, with ways to address them;
a. I'm not sure what to practice, so I get distracted and decide it's not worth practicing. After each practice session, I now write a few lines in a practice journal with what I did and what I need to work on next time. Boom!
b. There's an inner voice trying to block my success. It always wants me to take the lazy path, and tells me there are other things I should be doing now instead (doing the dishes, emailing someone, paying that bill, etc). This is the trickiest one because I try to sabotage myself. This is where the 5 minutes comes in handy. Usually, once I have my saxophone in my hands the saboteur goes silent, so I just need to get downstairs and get my horn out of the case and into my hands. I can do all those pressing things in 5 minutes. Nobody, not even myself, can argue with that.
5. Tell other people you are challenging yourself to practice every day, and promise to give regular updates.
Accountability does a lot to keep me motivated. Tell your partner, your friends, post it on Facebook, etc. Give them regular updates. They will support you and give you encouragement along the way.
6. Keep a practice journal.
Take 1 or 2 minutes after you practice to write in a practice journal. This can be electronic or paper, it doesn't matter. Track what you practiced and what you want to work on next time. Track any thoughts you're having, whether they are positive about your progress, excitement about how great you will sound in a month, or barriers that are coming up for you, which you can then address. Once you have a barrier down on paper it suddenly seems smaller and easier to tackle. If someone else was having that issue, what would you advise them to do about it? When I did Weight Watchers, the thing that kept me losing weight was the fact that I had to write down everything I ate and how many points it was. Just the act of doing this made me much more aware of what I was eating. The same concept holds true for practicing.
7. Have fun!
Remind yourself regularly why you want to play music and enjoy the process of practicing your instrument. It feels good to play and to be doing something that is positive for yourself. You are giving yourself the tools to express yourself and the music more fully. You are making beautiful and emotive sounds! Yes, every musician must practice things that don't sound good at first, and exercises that can seem dry. So, spice them up and serve them on toast. I studied with saxophonist and educator, Paul Contos, and he would always urge us to practice musically. He would tell us, "make it sing!"
Monday, October 14, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
4 tricks to staying on track and doing what you want most
Being creative and allowing yourself to spend time working on art, music and creative ventures takes constant effort. It's so easy to make excuses not to practice, not to create. There's work to be done, money to be made, housework to be done, dinner to be cooked, etc. There are also a gazillion distraction techniques that we use to sabotage ourselves. For me, these include checking Facebook, playing Solitaire on the computer (I'm embarrassed to even admit that), checking email for the 10th time, and the list goes on.
Here are some tricks I've used recently to help me stay on track, I hope these help you too.
1. Write Morning Pages.
So many people swear by this that there must be something to it. The concept is to write three pages by hand (no typing) each morning, no matter what. Write whatever comes to your mind, anything at all that you're thinking whether it is deep or silly or nonsense. Important ideas, feelings and thoughts will come to the surface and you'll identify trends in what you're thinking about, what keeps coming back to the top of your mind, what you have known all along to be true but that hasn't been articulated properly until now. I like it because all the things I'm thinking about in the back of my mind including tasks I haven't done spill out onto the page instead of bottling up in my brain, causing a traffic jam for my creativity to navigate through.
Julia Cameron talks about the benefits of Morning Pages in her book, the Artist's Way, and on her website. It's worth a try!
2. Identify your greatest distraction techniques and what pushes you off track.
What are the things that you do to distract yourself from what you really want to be doing? Take notice of exactly what these things are, and what triggers them. For me, I found myself playing Solitaire on the computer, triggered by when I wasn't sure exactly what to do next. It was a mere habit, sometimes even without me realizeing it, to go over to the menu, click on games, and start a new game. I do it after I have completed one task and I'm not sure where I'm going next, or mid-way through something if I hit a challenge that I don't feel up to tackling. Observe your habits today and identify what you do to distract yourself, waste time, and why.
3. Come up with your own solution to those specific distraction problems.
To slow down my Solitaire adiction, I have given myself a healty choice. If I play a game of Solitaire, I have to do a rep of 10 arm exersizes such as curls. I have already stopped myself from playing three times today. And, if I really want to play that's fine and I'll get some exersize too. Your solution could be anything, as long as it works to hold you accountable.
4. Value your music-making process and it will become a priority.
Why is doing that load of laundry more important than playing a scale? It's not. If you deem music practice to be among your most important things to do then do that first. Make a list of your three most important things to do today. Now do them first. The rest you will either get to today or sometime soon, but nobody will die if it has to wait. Your three most important things are valuable and necessary. Place value on them, make time for them, refuse invitations and requests from other people and yourself until you have given yourself time to do your vital work.
Here's a little video to inspire you. Good luck, and have fun!
Here are some tricks I've used recently to help me stay on track, I hope these help you too.
1. Write Morning Pages.
So many people swear by this that there must be something to it. The concept is to write three pages by hand (no typing) each morning, no matter what. Write whatever comes to your mind, anything at all that you're thinking whether it is deep or silly or nonsense. Important ideas, feelings and thoughts will come to the surface and you'll identify trends in what you're thinking about, what keeps coming back to the top of your mind, what you have known all along to be true but that hasn't been articulated properly until now. I like it because all the things I'm thinking about in the back of my mind including tasks I haven't done spill out onto the page instead of bottling up in my brain, causing a traffic jam for my creativity to navigate through.
Julia Cameron talks about the benefits of Morning Pages in her book, the Artist's Way, and on her website. It's worth a try!
2. Identify your greatest distraction techniques and what pushes you off track.
What are the things that you do to distract yourself from what you really want to be doing? Take notice of exactly what these things are, and what triggers them. For me, I found myself playing Solitaire on the computer, triggered by when I wasn't sure exactly what to do next. It was a mere habit, sometimes even without me realizeing it, to go over to the menu, click on games, and start a new game. I do it after I have completed one task and I'm not sure where I'm going next, or mid-way through something if I hit a challenge that I don't feel up to tackling. Observe your habits today and identify what you do to distract yourself, waste time, and why.
3. Come up with your own solution to those specific distraction problems.
To slow down my Solitaire adiction, I have given myself a healty choice. If I play a game of Solitaire, I have to do a rep of 10 arm exersizes such as curls. I have already stopped myself from playing three times today. And, if I really want to play that's fine and I'll get some exersize too. Your solution could be anything, as long as it works to hold you accountable.
4. Value your music-making process and it will become a priority.
Why is doing that load of laundry more important than playing a scale? It's not. If you deem music practice to be among your most important things to do then do that first. Make a list of your three most important things to do today. Now do them first. The rest you will either get to today or sometime soon, but nobody will die if it has to wait. Your three most important things are valuable and necessary. Place value on them, make time for them, refuse invitations and requests from other people and yourself until you have given yourself time to do your vital work.
Here's a little video to inspire you. Good luck, and have fun!
Long tones as morning meditation
Saxophone players, and probably brass players too, seem to always have a strong reaction to practicing long tones. Some people, especially younger pupils, find practicing long tones tedious and boring. Others find the simplicity of playing one note for a long time calming and enjoyable. I’ve always enjoyed playing long tones and it has really helped me develop my sound, to the extent that I even got complimented by Dave Liebman. It is so important for a horn player but often over-looked. It's not hard to make progress, here's how:
How you frame your thinking about playing long tones can change how you feel and think when playing them. If you allow yourself to enjoy the process it slowly becomes enjoyable and even stress-relieving and therapeutic. I like to think of playing long tones as meditation. I am not an expert on meditation by any means, but playing long tones is the closest I get to meditating and it feels good. Here’s how to do it, and it’s simple:
1. Choose a method of playing long tones.
I have recently been playing them in 4ths or octaves, for example holding a low D, then jumping to the G above without tonguing and in the same breath, holding for as long as the note still sounds good. Try to match the same sound for both notes. Other options are by half step, diatonically up or down a scale, etc. All are good to do.
2. Focus on your breath.
Get a big breath, filling your lungs and expanding your diaphragm. Start the sound with a soft tongue to get a clear attack, and support the note with your core muscles and diaphragm as you play. The breath you push into the horn should be steady, slow, controlled. Keep your shoulders relaxed and down away from your ears.
3. Focus on the sound of the note.
Strive to make the sound consistent and pure. No wobbles. In tune. Steady level of loudness. Make the sound enjoyable to yourself, musical, beautiful.
4. As your mind starts to wander to other things, bring it back to the breath control and the sound of the note.
Repeat. Repeat.
My mind wanders a lot while I do long tones and so will yours. It’s OK and normal. Let the thoughts pass and return to center to focus on breath and the sound you are making.
You will feel more calm, relaxed and ready for the next thing after you have done this for even a few minutes. At first your notes will wobble, they will be slightly out of tune, and you may not enjoy the sound. If you do this every day even briefly, you will soon see huge improvements in your tone.
How you frame your thinking about playing long tones can change how you feel and think when playing them. If you allow yourself to enjoy the process it slowly becomes enjoyable and even stress-relieving and therapeutic. I like to think of playing long tones as meditation. I am not an expert on meditation by any means, but playing long tones is the closest I get to meditating and it feels good. Here’s how to do it, and it’s simple:
1. Choose a method of playing long tones.
I have recently been playing them in 4ths or octaves, for example holding a low D, then jumping to the G above without tonguing and in the same breath, holding for as long as the note still sounds good. Try to match the same sound for both notes. Other options are by half step, diatonically up or down a scale, etc. All are good to do.
2. Focus on your breath.
Get a big breath, filling your lungs and expanding your diaphragm. Start the sound with a soft tongue to get a clear attack, and support the note with your core muscles and diaphragm as you play. The breath you push into the horn should be steady, slow, controlled. Keep your shoulders relaxed and down away from your ears.
3. Focus on the sound of the note.
Strive to make the sound consistent and pure. No wobbles. In tune. Steady level of loudness. Make the sound enjoyable to yourself, musical, beautiful.
4. As your mind starts to wander to other things, bring it back to the breath control and the sound of the note.
Repeat. Repeat.
My mind wanders a lot while I do long tones and so will yours. It’s OK and normal. Let the thoughts pass and return to center to focus on breath and the sound you are making.
You will feel more calm, relaxed and ready for the next thing after you have done this for even a few minutes. At first your notes will wobble, they will be slightly out of tune, and you may not enjoy the sound. If you do this every day even briefly, you will soon see huge improvements in your tone.
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