Creating Practice Goals
Photography by It’sGreg.
One very important aspect of your musical endeavors should be your goals.
Ask yourself these questions:
Where do you want to be as a musician in 5 years?
In 3 years?
In 1 year?
Who are your idols?
What piece do you want to be able to play?
Personally, I had an array of things I wanted to be in a few years, and a lot of pieces I wanted to learn to play.
While having ambitious goals is fine, keeping them basic will help you focus, stay realistic and actually experience success in a more intense way.
Set aside around fifteen minutes and do some brainstorming:
- Outline Goals: As aforementioned, outline your 5-, 3- and 1-year goals. Even go as far as three months.
- Select pieces smartly: If you’re a classical musician, select just one large piece to work on at a time, accompanied by some good technical exercises and some short preludes. This will help you maintain variety while still being focused on one larger work.
If you’re more into modern music, it really depends on your genre. In Jazz, it’s important to practice a lot of scales while checking out a lot of literature. Set aside 4-5 songs you want to master and find out what the technical difficulties are. Then focus on exercises aimed at helping you at those technicalities.
- Routinize your practicing: Practice daily at the same time, if possible. Keeping a routine works together with your biological clock, so the next time you sit down to practice your mind will already be at peace and ready to start working music.
- Get a friend: It’s like working out: If you have some friends pursuing similar goals, join them for practice or schedule your sessions to coincide. I had a friend with whom I’d practice a Villa-Lobos study once a month, and we’d meet up every month just to see how we’d progressed. This kept us challenged and hard-working.
Those are just a few starting points. The main idea behind this exercise is to begin getting focused as a musician. Most of my friends who are great talents usually don’t make much progress because they either don’t know where they want to be headed or just pin their ambitions to high.
Tags: ambitious_goals, biological_clock, classical_musician, experience_success, genre, modern_music, musical_endeavours, preludes, scales, technical_difficulties, technical_exercisesRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Your Instrument & You
1 opinion for Creating Practice Goals
VintageP
Dec 21, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I really like your comment regarding working out with a friend and gauging progress monthly. If you do not come up with some concrete way of measuring your progress you end up wandering.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: