The moment it arrived, I was captivated by this full-color mammoth guide to practicing - Practiceopedia:The Music Student’s Illustrated Guide to Practicing. The 376 pages are chock-full of creative ideas to help students learn to practice effectively and conquer those tough spots in their pieces. I found myself reading through page after page, unable to resist the urge to read “just one more” idea.

Although it has the potential to be overwhelming, the book is very well organized and the layout is clean and attractive with a variety of clever illustrations that enhance the text without cluttering the pages. The “Exploring the Book” overview at the beginning of the book shows you how to find the practice help you need by starting with a problem, using cross-references or previewing each chapter. A handy “Chapter Guide” summarizes and directs you to each of the 61 chapters. The “Usher” pages direct you to specific practice suggestions based on the problem you are trying to solve. These are broken down into eight categories:

1. Not wanting to practice
2. Learning new pieces
3. Preparing for performance
4. Getting your piece up to tempo
5. Staying focused
6. Saving time
7. Managing deadlines
8. Dealing with problem passages

I’ve found it useful already in my studio - from giving it to a student after a lesson and telling her to come up with several ways to practice her piece that week to exploring it with a student to find ideas to deal with a problem we were trying to solve when none of our initial ideas were working.

There are so many great ideas and I haven’t even begun to implement them all, but here are a few of my favorites:

Blinkers - a page the size of the sheet music is placed over top of the page the student is supposed to practice with “windows” cut in the cover page to reveal only the measures the student is supposed to spot practice.

Defining Your Prototype - walks the student through identifying and listing specific qualities they want to be true of their performance and then how to work on developing those through their practicing.

Horizontal vs. Vertical - a discussion of the difference between practicing a piece in sections vs. practicing it as a whole and which approach is better.

Philip Johnston, author of Practiceopedia and also founder of the popular website Practicespot.com, has put a lot of thought into producing this creative guide that should be in the hands of every dedicated musician. Mr. Johnston writes, “If you want to progress twice as rapidly, you don’t have to figure out how to do twice as much practice. Instead, practice twice as effectively.”

That reminds me of a parallel principle I learned from a physical fitness trainer - if you learn how to work out properly and intensely you can achieve much better results than if you work out for long periods of time with no clear plan or with a poorly designed plan.

We all get in the habit of doing things a certain way and have a tendency to keep doing them that way regardless of whether they are effective or not. Practiceopedia will help students “Get rid of practice habits that don’t work - so they stop wasting their time - and replace them with a brand new set of carefully chosen practice techniques that do work.“

Now that my regular teaching year is over I can say without a doubt that this year’s theme was by far the favorite among my students! In determining a theme for each year I always contemplate whether there is any area in particular in which I think all my students need to improve. As I was planning last August I realized that all my students could use improvement in their performance skills. They needed to prepare pieces to a performance level and then build the confidence to perform well. Thus was borne the theme for the year: Let’s Have A Ball!

Here’s a brief overview of how it works (this is what I included in the summer newsletter for parents and students announcing the theme for the year):

“Because I have seen how motivating it is (for myself and my students!) to have a specific opportunity to prepare for and work toward, I am centering my theme this year around Musical Balls scheduled throughout the year. We will have three in the fall semester and three in the spring semester: Fall Ball, Thanksgiving Ball, Christmas Ball, Mid-Winter Ball, Spring Ball and Grand Finale Ball (specific dates are listed on the studio calendar and on the website). The Christmas Ball and Grand Finale Ball will be open to family and friends who want to observe the performances and join in on the fun!

Balls may also be added to the jar depending on the number of days practiced each week. Five practice days will earn one ball. Six practice days will earn three balls. Seven practice days will earn five balls. Throughout the year, there may be extra ways presented for students to earn additional balls, so keep your eyes and ears open!”

The packet below includes 11 files, including an instructions file to walk you through how to set the program up step-by-step. (Once you complete payment, you will receive an e-mail with instructions on how to download the packet.) My Climbing the Ladder to Success practice incentive has been very well received and I hope that this one is equally successful in studios all across the world. I know my students and I sure had a ball with it! Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.

Let’s Have A Ball! Practice Incentive | $12.00

Each year I design a new Assignment Book/Practice Journal for my students that goes along with our theme and practice incentive program for the year.

If you know how to use tables in MS Word, designing your own Assignment Book pages is pretty easy. Here are a couple basic ones I’ve designed and used in the past. (Feel free to download these and use them!) I require all my students to track their practice each week. I write the assignments on the left side of the page. Each day when they practice that specific assignment, they place a checkmark or x to the side in the column for that day. This helps me see at a glance what they’ve practiced and how often they practiced. I’m not as rigid about recording the amount of time it takes, but I do like it if students keep track of how long it’s taking them to practice their assignments so that I know if I’m assigning them an appropriate amount of material. With the exception of maybe a couple of students, all my students are very good about tracking their practicing.

Assignments and Practice Journal

Assignments and Practice Journal with Staff

I give a lot of on-staff theory assignments for my students instead of having them work out of theory books, so I decided to include a staff at the bottom of this assignment page.

Climbing the Ladder to Success!

Each year I develop a unique practice incentive for my studio. I spend the month of August, among other things, working out the details of the incentive so that we’re ready to roll when I start teaching again in September. While a structured incentive program isn’t the sure-fire cure for lack of practicing, I have found it to be incredibly motivational to many of my students. It gives them a goal to shoot for and keeps them enthusiastic about progressing in their musical abilities. Plus, I love having something new to do each year! It helps keep me enthusiastic!

Over the years, I’ve had a number of people request that I make these practice incentive programs available for purchase, so I’ve decided to give it a try. Last year’s practice incentive - Climbing the Ladder to Success - was one of my students’ favorites, so I’ve compiled all of my materials into one packet that will be easy to implement in any music studio.

Here’s a brief overview of the Climbing the Ladder to Success Practice Incentive Packet (this is what I included in my summer newsletter last year to announce the new practice incentive for the year):

HOW IT WORKS

* A ladder with ten rungs is displayed on the studio wall.
* For every ten pieces a student learns, they will advance to the next rung of the ladder.
* In order to qualify, each piece must be played excellently: note and rhythm accuracy, continuity, dynamics, articulation, phrasing, balance, voicing, etc. as appropriate for the student’s level of ability.
* Out of the ten pieces, at least two must be memorized.
* Out of the ten pieces, up to one is allowed to be an original composition.
* Out of the ten pieces, up to one is allowed to be a lead line/fake book arrangement.
* Out of the ten pieces, up to two are allowed to be an improvised hymn accompaniment.
* Out of the ten pieces, the student may select two to three to be recorded and burned onto a CD.

INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY!

All of this practicing, perfecting and recording experience will pay off next May when students have the opportunity to take a trip with me to a professional recording studio! In order to be part of the group that is invited to participate in this special event, each student will have to demonstrate a commitment to work diligently throughout the year. To measure this in a tangible way, students will have the opportunity to earn DILIGENCE DOLLARS (DD) at each lesson. (see below for specific ways to earn DD.) It will cost each student $250 DD to participate in the recording studio trip. DD will be tracked each week on the assignment page in a checkbook register format (this way no one has to worry about losing anything!).
Once at the recording studio, each student may play and record one piece of their choosing. These will then be compiled and burned onto a CD. Each student will receive their own copy of the CD.

DILIGENCE DOLLARS

Students may earn DILIGENCE DOLLARS each week at their lesson as indicated below:
1. All books present at the lesson=$1
2. Practice record filled out and signed=$1
3. Each assignment from the previous week that is completed=$1
4. Practicing at least 5 days in one week=$1
5. Practicing all 7 days in one week=$4
6. Learning a new piece on your own and playing it excellently=$3
7. Participating in a group class, recital, festival or other qualifying music event=$5

The details of the practice incentive are easy to adapt to each studio. I’ve included in my packet the wall display materials and all the custom designed pages that were compiled into each student’s Assignment Book so that they could track their progress from week to week. The packet includes 13 files and 2 pictures and is available for immediate download following payment. Purchase of the packet includes the right to make as many copies of each document as you need for your studio. The total cost of the packet is $10. This is the first time I’ve tried this and I’ve attempted to include everything necessary so that individual teachers have a ready-made, practice-inspiring program that can be implemented in their studios. I am more than happy to offer additional support or help in any way I can to make this program a success in your studio. If you have questions, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment below.

Climbing the Ladder to Success Incentive Packet | $12

Here’s a fun-looking Practice Record that you can download for free from the Piano At Pepper website and print out to use with your students.

For about the past six years or so, I’ve made my own student assignment books and practice records, but I always like to get ideas from the designs of others that I can incorporate into my future designs. This one has a clear, easy-to-follow layout that I think would be great for younger students. Plus, I keep realizing that the less time I have to spend writing things out during lessons the better! It’s so much more effective to use lesson time to work directly with the student, rather than taking time to write out extensive instructions that tend to be more for my own sake than of any real benefit for the student, who is most apt to focus on practicing what he has already experienced in his lesson, not whatever I happened to scribble down that week.

Here are a few excerpts from this site where students communicate their thoughts about teachers and lessons:

What this student wants from a teacher:
“…be organized, consistent, give specific feedback that a student can work on, be prepared in the sense that if you are about to assign a new piece you are familiar with the technical challenges and have a plan of action ahead of time that the student can work on.”

A complaint this student has about some teachers:
“Teachers who never actually mention a lot of the students’ mistakes. For example, intonation…gone to the wind. In scales, my old teacher would really grill me on my notes, but my current one? Heh. I might as well have been playing open strings for all that he notices. Which I suppose leads to another point, teachers who don’t care. I could not practice at all, and he won’t speak a word-not that I don’t practice. I can bomb an audition, screw up a piece, and all I get is silence. Teachers who seem to think that everything is A-Okay not only annoy me, but I’m beginning to believe that he hates me.”

Another complaint about some teachers:
“…teachers that push students way too fast. It’s useless to move on at such blinding speeds that essential skills become only half-developed and barely mastered.”

These are all things that I recognize, at least sub-consciously, but it’s hard to not fall into such traps in teaching. I’m still looking for that perfect balance of being encouraging and fun while maintaining high standards and expecting each student to strive to reach their full potential.