I probably can't count the number of times my teachers have told me that my practice needs to be more effective or efficient.  I agree with them, at least in principle, but even today I'm not particularly clear on the steps I need to take to make my practice more effective or efficient.  At least, I haven't been very clear on it until today.  You see, I've probably developed some really bad practice habits over the years and they have a habit of preempting my practice sessions with their own agendas.  You may be asking, "what happened today to change that?"  I decided to video my practice session this morning.  After all, this web site is called "Let's Practice Music" so obviously it would be good for me to have some videos of how I practice to use in demonstrating what and how to practice but also how not to practice. 

A lot of my practice seems to be endless repetition of the same passage over and over and over again.  While there are practical benefits to this type of practice there are also likely some limitations.  In particular, for me I have a bad habit of stopping the execution of the piece I happen to be working on to immediately drill on the measure or pattern that presents difficulty rather than going back to that place after I finish the section I am focusing on.  There are probably multiple reasons for this including that I might not remember where that problem area was if I keep playing or that I just don't get back to it because there are several other places that have problems as bad or worse.  I admit that I really don't know the best ways to be more effective in my practice but I think I may not be alone.

One of my reasons for wanting to create this series about practice was to share some of the drilling techniques that I have found helpful in improving my playing but I am finding that in doing it I am becoming painfully aware of my own limitations.  Still, one must recognize that a problem exists in order to come up with a way to correct it.  Fortunately, I may be onto something here with making videos of my practice sessions so long as I review them.  For me this means it will just take twice as much time but it will be doing something I want to do - finding ways to improve my playing.

Because I am in the process of developing this site I have been looking at a lot of things to make the content creation process more efficient overall so that those of you who have an interest in this topic will have the resources available to you to also improve your playing.  Part of that process is the production of videos and for me at this time it's a little difficult for me to separate the specific content (in this case 'Practice Habits') from the process of generating the content itself (making the videos, editing the videos, posting them on the web site, designing and maintaining the web sites and YouTube channels, and learning to use the software efficiently) so please bear with me as I work through these details and occasionally dive down unrelated rabbit holes.  One of those holes that I hope to fill soon is to provide a way for you as readers to share your experiences and tips about how you practice.  I haven't yet decided if this will be by means of a bulletin board or comments plugin on this website or if I will utilize the comments facilities on the YouTube channel but I expect to have something in place by the end of this month when I hope to begin my live streaming show.

Still, until that happens I will continue to work on content to post here and on the other site and the YouTube channel.  This mornings efforts with my piano practice will hopefully will be posted by tomorrow sometime and I also hope to do a couple of postings on the basic drum groove and the Alesis Nitro.  In the meantime, please think about what you have done to make your practice sessions more effective and be ready to share them as soon as I can get comments working.