Expert Advice: How to Practice – a Guide by Musicians, for Musicians

There’s a picture of me, when I was about six years old, sitting down to play the piano for the first time… I’m sitting on the bench with my dad, and I’m pointing eagerly at one of the keys. My dad has that expression of light impatience that he got whenever he was trying to teach me something and I wasn’t listening. There’s no music on the piano––just my dad, teaching me music, while I can’t wait to bang out some notes loudly and obnoxiously on this new object in front of me. I had no idea, 14 years ago, what would result out of that moment. I had no idea that I would gravitate toward other instruments, learning five in total. I had no idea that I would end up playing shows in high school. I had no idea that, at 18 years old, I would last minute wind up wanting so badly to be a music major in college, instead of political science or education, like my parents wanted. It became so clear that music was what I was meant to do. There was just one problem: I had to audition. I thought I was good to go. I thought I was as prepared as I could have been. Music is what I’m passionate about, so there’s no way they won’t let me in, my brain told me. Guess what? I didn’t get in. I was devastated. I wanted so badly to get in. I knew it was what I was meant to do, and I had flubbed it. I realized my problem wasn’t with my passion, it was in my practice. I had fallen off my habit of practice. I didn’t have any concrete strategies that I could fall back on and use to improve my […]

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