What Should I Practice To Align With My Goals

Previously, I discussed my getting rid of most of my sheet music collection in order to make room for working on the music I value most. It was by no means easy, but a necessary step for me. Now that I had limited my choices, what should I put my efforts towards? And just to be clear, getting rid of the physical stuff was only a mirror of my internal change. Even with the absence of physical things, there are endless distractions online of music to learn. This is where the discipline of continually asking the value of my choices is important. I have to answer carefully, “What should I practice to align with my goals?”

General Areas Of Practice

There are five general areas of practice as I see it: new repertoire, old repertoire, technique, sight-reading, and performance. With my full schedule of teaching, performing is last on my list followed by old repertoire. If I am not performing recitals, then the need to keep an hour and a half of music ready is not of top value to me. However, I do want to keep a smaller group of pieces around and mature them. Sight-reading is built into my daily preparations for student lessons. Therefore, I feel it is already worked on most days. That leaves new repertoire and technique.

Throughout all my years of my university schooling, there was never a focus on technique as the foundation of playing. It wasn’t that I didn’t work on technique. But the technique was driven more by the pieces than in building a solid foundation. There was always a timeframe. You had to perform once a semester. You needed more minutes of music to reach the final goal of an hour-long recital. This puts all focus on learning new pieces rather than developing a foundational technical ability. If you want to dive deeper, then check out Christopher Berg’s book, Practicing Music By Design.

Building A Foundational Technique

Over the past couple of years, I have re-evaluated my technique. There are many shortcomings. As I have worked to focus on what I value most, a technical foundation is my highest priority. And, it has no timeframe for completion. I spend an hour a day on my technique. This includes exercises and études. My days alternate between scales and harmony on one day and arpeggios, slurs, and repeated notes on the following. Practice happens six days a week with Sundays off.

As mentioned above, new repertoire pieces have always been driven by performance. Many pieces in my past were learned while simultaneously trying to bring my technique up to the level required by the piece. This only created insecurity in my ability to perform a given piece. I still want to be working on concert repertoire. Therefore, I only work on a single new piece at a time. And when choosing the piece, I take into consideration the technical demands deciding whether it is above my current technical abilities in a specific area. If it is, then I postpone learning it until I have adequately worked on the technical side.

After deciding on a new repertoire piece, I spend no more than thirty minutes a day working on it. Usually, within the same time, I play through the old repertoire that I am maintaining/maturing. Sometimes I get that feeling that a timeframe is looming and want to do more. But I remind myself that time is the main ingredient in growing my playing.

Eliminating Music Helped Me Focus

My priorities began to be really focused after giving away most of my sheet music. It reduced the number of choices before me. It allowed me to take a step back and evaluate where I spend my time and whether they were of the highest value considering my goals for playing and learning.

I am not suggesting that everyone needs to donate their music libraries. But I do think that re-evaluating our relationship with the music we have collected can lead to a more focused practice. Eliminating the music that distracts us from our highest valued goals keeps us moving down the road to our destination without the many detours.

Chadwick Becks

I have two degrees in guitar performance and was privileged to study under Aaron Shearer, Tom Kikta, David Skantar, Ken Karsh, Tim Bedner, and currently Christopher Berg. Outside my editorial work on this blog, I teach full-time across many genres including classical, jazz, blues, rock, funk, and metal.