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Writer's pictureRyan Reed

Guiding Your Practice Time

Is this you when you walk into a practice room?



Maybe you have a ton you want to work on, but can't organize it. Or maybe it just starts to feel overwhelming. Where do you start? How do you quiet the noise and self-doubt going on?


This is something I talked with my students about this year. I think we as educators are really good about telling students to practice, but not always as great at giving them tools to help organize what they need to practice. Admittedly, I haven't thought about how to help students organize their materials until this year. If your program has multiple ensembles students can perform in, and your students take lessons or you have solo and ensemble events coming up, that is a lot keep straight. For instance, I have students that had the following things to do this year - band music, percussion ensemble music, winter percussion music, lesson materials, chair test music, solo and ensemble music, honor band music, all-state audition music. The crazy part is minus the all-state stuff, ALL of those things were happening simultaneously in January.


If you have been teaching recently, you may have realized that students get "paralysis by analysis." This means they get overwhelmed by thoughts and don't know where to start their actions. This is then exacerbated by procrastination, which can be caused by that feeling of overwhelm. This is where we I created a "Practice Guide" to help them avoid this.


There are a lot of "Practice Logs" that we have all used with our band classes or lessons students. The point of these logs is that students can notate the amount of time they practice and what they practiced. These are good tools when the student is organized, and/or not overwhelmed. But how do we help the students that are less organized, or are overwhelmed by the number of things on their plate.


So I created a "Practice Guide" for my students to help the organize their practice sessions and reduce overwhelm. This guide includes a list of skills and/or music that the student might have to work on. Some of those skills are Rudiments, Scales, Concert Band Music, Percussion Ensemble Music, Marching Band Music, Buzz Rolls, 4 Mallet Grip, Sight Reading, Note Naming, Aural Skills/Timpani Tuning, just to name some of the skills that might be expected of students to work on. The "Practice Guide" serves as a checklist of skills, or music, the student can see what they could have to work on. Then they can organize it based on what they want to work on when, or when is a due date for something coming up.


In addition to being a checklist of skills, or music, there is space for the students to write their thoughts about their practice sessions. Since I want this to reduce overwhelm, the guide is meant to be filled out once a week. NOTE - It could be used every day if you wanted to. So the student can notate what tempo(s) they ended the week at. They can notate how much time they spent practice, and they can write about anything they experienced during their practice sessions.


The goal of this form is to be open ended so the students can put as much, or as little, thought into it as they want to. It is also just a guide in their own practice journey. I know I practiced more when I had the freedom to choose what I wanted to practice. It would be easy to create a regimented approach of do this, and then do this, and then do this...but is that what music is? Most students get that experience in band class, mainly out of necessity, so when they choose to practice on their own I want them to get something out of it. Even if it isn't exactly what I would like them to get from it. A bad practice session is still better than no practice.













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