Music Practicing 101: The Looping Drill

The Looping Drill has become my favourite practice drill as of late. It is great to use at any stage of music mastery, the learning stage, troubleshooting, polishing, memorizing or reviewing. It is an effective way to practice only what needs more work.

Start by playing through your piece or technical exercise. When you hit a snag, play that bar five to seven times before moving onto the next one.

I find that usually by the third repetition, my fingers start to "get" it. However, it isn't until the fifth to seventh repetition that I start to consistently get it.

You can combine the looping practice drill with the Smarties Drill or any other drill to improve your accuracy and consistency. Here is a video demonstration of me using the looping drill:

I am in the process of revamping my Music Bag of Tricks, which are cards that show many of the practice drills my students and I use to achieve efficient and organized music practice. My gaming hobby is heavily influencing the design and set-up.

My Music Bag of Tricks will be tested by a handful of teachers and students before making them available to the general public. They will be available for music students, music teachers and any musician seeking for new ideas on how to practice music efficiently. Stay tuned!

Time Saving Technique Practice Idea

Are you stuck between studying for tests and logging in much needed time on practicing technique? Try this idea that came up during one of my lessons last week:

This student is working on his Grade 8 piano technique. Four octave scales - woohoo?

He played d harmonic minor for the first octave and d melodic minor for the second by accident. Then, I had him play D major for the first octave, d natural minor for the second octave...you get the idea.

Basically in one pass, you practice all the scales you need to know for a traditional music exam. However, to actually hear any improvement, you'll have to play it this way more than once. More than twice.

You can change things up of course. Try this on all the minors (natural, harmonic, melodic, jazz). Or be bold and try these on some of the jazz scales.

The bottom of the white board refers to an idea I think has already been mentioned. Play the ascending scale one way (e.g., major), and the descending scale another way (e.g. harmonic minor).

You have to be awake to do this kind of practice. Well really, we should be all striving for mindful practice anyway...right?

Music Practicing 101 - Alternating Hand/Bar Drill

My students and I started playing around with this practice drill last week. It's an accuracy drill to clean up notes, fingering and wonky timing. Try playing the left hand alone in bar 1 and then right hand alone in bar 2, etc. Check out this video for a demonstration.

Music Practicing 101: Every Other Bar Drill

This week, I've been working with my students to either increase the tempo of their repertoire or improve on the flow in their music. This is a drill that I did learn about at a piano teaching workshop or conference - the Every Other Bar Drill.

It also works well if you do every other beat.