ESSENTIAL PRACTICE ROUTINE TIPS FOR FAST LEARNING

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Sequel to the previous tips I shared in my article titled “How to learn a musical instrument in 2020”, I will be sharing some amazing practice routine tips to enable you to pick up your instrument, learn, and progress with speed.

“more often than not, there is a disconnect between what we have in our head and what comes out of our musical instrument when we play and we can only bridge this gap through constant practice and taking one step at a time”- Arkistar.

What you stand to learn by the end of this article includes:

1. Practice routine tips 
2. How to hear and learn basic shapes and chords without playing your instrument

Players who spend time addressing their weak points, learning new ideas, and playing with others should

progress much faster than those who are only picking their instrument and messing around for hours.

Practice routine tips

There are lots of routines musicians engage in before and after practice, some of which are complex and some basic depending on the goal. Today, I will be highlighting some best routines for effective and faster progress. Below are some beneficial tips on routines to make your practice effective and efficient.

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• Warm-up: professionals in music as well as other professions around art, and sports take time to warm up, stretch, and work out before mounting their instrument and/or relay tracks. Before grabbing your instrument, remember to get yourself worked up. For musicians, flapping your wrist, fisting your palms, breathing exercise, sitting postures, and stretching your fingers to mention a few, help set you in the right direction before practice.

These warm-up routines will help you work out your muscles on a small scale. Your finger muscles, wrist, and hand, stretching them out and getting them ready before practice, you risk performance injury which can limit your ability to play efficiently.

A guitar student of mine finds warmups before playing the guitar to be unnecessary whenever I bring up the reason why we need to get our fingers and minds ready before practice. He continued to miss warm-up sessions until I started basic strum pattern classes with him. That was when he saw the need for what he should have learned at an earlier stage. Don’t be like that student and make use of this good tip to prepare yourself.

Together with the warmup, you should include finger movement exercises. This can be done either by scales, chords, or strum patterns. The key here is “starting slow”

You may want to ask, what if I can play scales at many paces as soon as I grab my instrument, do I still need to warm up or start slow?

Yes, you do! It should be taken into cognizance that practicing with the wrong habit no matter how good you are will tell when you start playing. This might be noticed as soon as you start playing for hours into your playing.

Increasing the speed gradually from a very slow point will allow you to ease into the feel and motion necessary to get your body and required muscles ready.  

READ ALSO: How to learn a musical instrument in 2020

• Give your body time to recover: exercise and warmups are an essential part of your practice routine but the importance of having breaks in between cannot be over-emphasized. The break could take up to 10 minutes or more to help your body relax and get ready for some different routine depending on your practice schedule.

As a music producer and musician, I can say for a fact that breaks are a recreational exercise in music. Producers can get ear-fatigued while producing and taking a break could help them hear differently, detect a wrong pitch or note, and timing as well as letting in fresh ideas. This is also applicable to your instrument. Your ears, fingers, and vocal cords get fatigued and hence, they need to rest.

In other words, these breaks help you recover from the stress that has been built up as a result of long hours of practice.

• Listen to playbacks of yourself: this is an underutilized concept that brings about amazing results during and after practice. While you practice, make sure, to record yourself, this enables you to be able to pinpoint your flaws or mistakes as well as your success and progress and thus, leading to corrections and improvements.

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Having a personal recording of yourself simply allows you to be your own private tutor and with handy gadgets like your phone, there is no excuse.

I gave Sam one of my rookies a fingerpicking exercise on the guitar and told him to record himself each time he plays and listen to them for mistakes. Guess what? Sammy now fingerpicks with ease. That’s the power of listening to your recordings.

That is one secret to improving your playing as a studio musician. I remember when I had my first studio recording session with 3logy studios, it was an awesome experience for me. I was able to learn and see the effect of listening to your recordings.

READ ALSO: Music Guide for Beginners

• Applications: no matter how much of music theory you know or the number of scales and cool chord progressions you can play, if you cannot apply that knowledge to real-life scenarios, then it's not worth wasting time rehearsing. If you are learning a handful of new chord voicings and changes, try getting a song you love and apply the chord changes you’ve learned. The same is applicable to scales and backing tracks. If you can practice new concepts by simulating your practice to real band scenarios, it gives you more edge when the spotlight is on you for you to wow your listeners.

• Discipline yourself: take time to work on your hearing. Your ability to listen to any music or look at a musical piece and be able to tell what it sounds like in your mind without grabbing your instrument is a gift. Cherish it!

But if you are unable to tell or identify color, progression, or note by hearing, don’t get discouraged. Below are some steps to enable you to learn to hear the basic shape of the melodic line, along with the exact rhythm.

• Learn to sing it with your mouth but if you don’t have the voice as a musician, you can hum the melody.

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  Photo by Lovefreund
  

• Learn to say the notes and count out loud as this helps you keep track of tempo. As you say it loud, your ears hear them so when you grab your instrument to play, your ears will be able to tell if you are playing the right note or progression. This helps you develop your routine sense of beat as a musician.

• Stay inspired: this is an important tool for your practice routine. Keep yourself motivated by listening to other musicians and revisit the reason why you picked interest in learning the instrument.

In conclusion, practicing the the right way goes a long way in building your confidence and knowledge thereby making your learning fast and enjoyable.

What practice routine tips have you tried out? 

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