Who's got time to practice?

Christine Bougie, one of my favourite Toronto musicians, wrote a blog entry last fall about practicing.  Her insightful comments came to mind yesterday when I was emailing with an old friend and one-time guitar student about the difficulty sometimes of finding time and motivation to practice the guitar.  My friend has a day job, a side job, and a wife and two young children.  His guitar is, in his words, "gathering dust."  I really felt for him because I've been in his situation, and have sometimes gone weeks without picking up a guitar.  It's still hard sometime for me to find time, and I'm a professional musician.  What Christine outlines is a plan for being intentional about what and how you practice.

I often tell people who say that they have no time to practice that 15 minutes a day makes a difference.  If you don't have 15 minutes in a day to yourself, you're too busy.  It helps a lot to try to practice at the same time, or at least at the same point in the day, every day.  I suggested 'after breakfast' to my friend.

At first it's like daily exercise.  Every excuse to avoid practicing will spring to mind in the first few days.  But as you get in the groove, practicing gets more fun as your hands and fingers get more limber.  Ms. Bougie suggests using a countdown timer when practicing.  This can regulate the entire session or specific sections within it.  Even using a metronome can help to structure time during the practice session.  But it's equally important to know what you're practicing, and why.

Christine emphasizes the importance of having goals.  I also sometimes use a practice notebook.  I use it to keep track of what exercises I'm doing, metronome settings (for tempo), new practice ideas and so on.  I often find little repeating patterns when I'm practicing that I will immediately forget if they're not written down.  But a practice notebook also shows you your progress, your past goals and your successes or failures.  This self-awareness is a big part of developing as a musician.

It's really important, I think, to be brutally honest with yourself about your trouble areas, and work on these more, and first, in the practice routine.  We tend to want to practice the things that we do well.  I'm currently targeting my left-hand pinky, which has had an easy ride for far too long.  But I think there should be some time in every practice session for running well-worn routines one more time.  Everyone needs an A-game toolkit in reserve, and that's what the things you do well are.