#practicing tips

Force yourself to practice efficiently. Take 3 (or more!) Pennies and put them near where you're practicing. ( i.e. on top of the piano, on the floor next to you, on a music stand, on the rail of the marimba etc...) take a hard passage you're trying to prefect. Set the metronome to a tempo you're confident you'll play it ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY. For every rep you play it prefect, move a penny from one side to the other. Repeat this until all your pennies are on the other side. Then try bumping the tempo. Every time you mess up, you have to move ALL the pennies back and start over. NO CHEATING. It sounds so simple, but I just tried it, and I had probably the best practice session ever. Be hard on yourself. This isn't easy, but your virtuosity will thank you later.

- Practice in front of a mirror. See yourself and your playing from an outside perspective in order to objectively analyze your work and engage in problem solving to improve your playing, both technically and musically. In essence, be your own teacher. Rote repetition will only get you so far. - Along those same lines, audio and/or video recording yourself is good too. Play it back and analyze it without focusing completely on being disappointed at how much it sucks (my words, not his). Mr. Drucker advises students to record themselves, and analyze the recording together with their teacher, who will be able to point out things the student doesn't notice. - When trying to work on bow-hand technique and left hand technique separately, isolate one by giving the other an easier task to do. For example, when practicing a technical passage, bow it in slurred groups so you can focus on the placement of your fingers. When practicing bow technique, one thing that can be done is to just bow the open strings of the corresponding notes. Mr. Drucker does note that this can sort of be difficult to do without writing out the open strings on staff paper. - When on stage performing a difficult passage you know you've had trouble with, Mr. Drucker advises identifying one main spot around which to structure your playing (in the technical sense, not the musical/phrasing sense), such as a high note that you know you'll be returning to. Use it as an anchor point for all the technical things that happen around it. - When learning a fugue (e.g. Bach fugue) be sure to focus on the movement of the new voices that pop in, and direct the listener's attention to them, such as when the voice is the lower part of a chord (don't let the high notes of the chord overshadow the note that belongs to the fugue's line).