Practice makes perfect. … Just kidding, it makes something, but it doesn’t necessarily make anything perfect. Regardless, I do it, almost every day. I enjoy practicing 99% of the time, but I also enjoy practicing a lot more when I’m doing things efficiently and in a manner that’s going to make the best use of my time and brain power. So what enhances my practice sessions?
LET ME TELL YOU, WORLD.
1. A timer
In school, it wasn’t uncommon for me to lock myself in a practice room for two to five hours. I relished it. Me. A piano. Spotty cellular reception, which made ignoring phone calls/texts/Snapchats so much easier…
Now that I’m working a full-time job and have other concerns besides being just an awesome singer, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for me to practice like I did in school.
Not to mention, y’all, that practicing that way is entirely unproductive. I’ll go more into my thoughts on how to practice efficiently/productively in future posts, but let’s start by saying that I can’t practice without timers.
I use my iPhone’s native clock application to time how long I work on specific bits of my repertoire, exercises–whatever. Using a timer to break things down into manageable “chunks” keeps my brain active and my focus steady. I know I’ve set aside 15 minutes for a certain task or piece–and if I’m not pleased with my results after those 15 minutes, I have an automatic STOP SIGN that forces me to pause & take stock of what I’m doing and if I want to continue or move on.
2. Practice journal
I’m terrible at math, but I’m a sucker for statistics. I’m also a sentimental bleeding heart, so ever since I can remember, I’ve been writing down the dates of when I began working on pieces in my sheet music. (It’ll be in my memoirs later, just watch, y’all will be SO GRATEFUL for my record keeping). A few years ago, I realized I could take this one step further.
I keep a little notebook of my practice sessions, complete with the times I work on things, what I worked on, what I felt, what was working, what wasn’t… doodles, visuals, strokes of brilliance.. you get the picture.
3. A voice recorder
How do I know what I’m doing sounds good? I can’t rely on the information proceeding from my ears, so I need an objective third party to tell me what’s up. Since I’m not yet rich and/or famous enough to be able to afford a 24-hour coach, my Sony voice recorder and the native Voice Recorder iPhone app make this happen.
4. iPhone apps
If you haven’t noticed, I am #teamiPhone until death. Apple did not pay me to say this (although, if y’all are reading–feel free!), but Apple products pretty much power my practice life. Third-party applications for the iPhone enhance my practice sessions and I use too many to mention, but here are the big ones that really shape my day-to-day practice life.
1. 30/30 – My dear friend and fellow soprano Jane Hoffman introduced me to 30/30 when I was lamenting how I wished I could set multiple timers at once within the iPhone clock application. Enter 30/30, which allows me to set a workflow with multiple timed tasks. I can program in my tasks, my breaks.. so much. It’s definitely worth the chump change I paid for it.
2. Wunderlist – There are lots of to-do apps out there, and I’ve tried a lot of them. I find Wunderlist to be the most aesthetically pleasing and the most user-friendly. In Wunderlist, I can create–you guessed it–lists of tasks I want to accomplish and check them off as I go along. If there’s a passage that’s been giving me trouble in my lessons, I’ll add it to a list in my Wunderlist so I can come back to it later. That way, I’m not staring at a 9 page aria thinking “Wow, what to practice? What did I suck the most at on Friday?”. This happens a lot more than I’d like to admit.
I use my Wunderlist for non-music things, too, and it has some cool functions for list-sharing that prove really useful at my day-job, too!
3. Chains.cc – Remember when I said I loved statistics? I also love habits. Chains.cc is a “motivational tool” that encourages me to practice by not breaking the chain of times I’ve practiced. It keeps track of how many days in a row I do things. Now, you’ve got to be honest with it, but who lies to themselves via iPhone app?
5. A hashtag: #practicetweets
TWEET TWEET, Y’ALL, BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THIS ONE COMING. #practicetweets are exactly what they sound like: tweets about practicing. There’s a booming music community on Twitter, and some of us have taken to using the hashtag #practicetweets to mark our practice sessions. We use it for everything from live-tweeting our practice sessions in all their glory (or disaster) to merely using the hashtag as an accountability tool. See what’s up by clicking this link: #practicetweets. And if you aren’t using the hashtag? Come join the conversation!
What tools do you use to make your practice sessions as effective and useful as possible? I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Or.. if you’re not a singer, how do you organize your work life?