5 Tips for More Effective Practicing

Practice Makes Perfect

So let's start practicing how we practice!

We all know that to be successful and make progress, we have to practice what we're working at.  However, many people struggle with how to make their practice effective.  Sitting down to play and simply repeating your piece over and over and over will help you get a little better here and there, but if we hone our "practicing" skills, we can make MUCH more progress MUCH more quickly.  Here are a few tips that I prioritize with my students.

1. Practice Every Day

Ok this one might seem obvious, and everyone SAYS they do it, but they really brush it off as something that isn't really necessary.  Heres how it usually goes down - ok I'll practice every day...but Tuesday I'm going to dinner, and Thursday my friends are coming over, and Friday I'm going swimming, and nobody practices on Saturday anyway....So I guess I'll practice a few days and I'll do extra time to make up...but not really cuz I'll get bored and rationalize that I've done enough.  Then when the next week rolls around and lesson time pops up - frustration abounds because they aren't as far along as they feel they should be. 

Here's the deal.  When you have a lesson - all sorts of information has been thrown at you, and all sorts of beneficial, guided practice has taken place.  When you practice that same day, you enforce that information.  If you then skip one or two or three days - you start losing that valuable info, and your practices become less effective.  Practicing for a little while every day is truly the key to moving forward at a steady and successful rate.  I'm not saying miss Grandma's birthday or anything....but even if you're super busy - playing through your piece even once before bed is better than skipping and getting out of your routine.  Set your alarm...and just do it.

2. Practice at the Same Time Every Day

So this is the natural step two from the above tip.  And I'll be honest, sometimes it doesn't work out because we've got SO many things planned for our very busy, very fun lives.  But JUST like doing homework before playtime and working out as soon as you wake up - if you set a GOAL time and STICK TO IT - practicing will become routine, and it will feel totally natural.  Push through it...do it for 21 days (or however long they say you need to repeat something to become a habit), and it will become an easy part of your every day life.

3. Make Goals and Write Them Down

Your piano teacher doesn't just write down what your "assignment" is for their own benefit.  We write down what you're supposed to work on because we want YOU to look at it.  Every week you should decide what you want to accomplish by the end of the 7 days. Decide what it will take to reach that goal - and WRITE IT DOWN.  Every time you sit down to practice - take out that notebook - look at your goals and your steps to reach those goals - and practice accordingly.  If you sit down with nothing but moving forward in mind, you'll go into auto pilot, make a little bit of progress, and get up without actually accomplishing much of anything. If you know when you sit down, that you aren't getting back up until you've mastered that crazy hard measure on page 3 - then you'll overcome an obstacle, and truly move forward with your piece.  BUST OUT THAT PAPER AND PEN KIDS!

4. Practice in Small Sections

This one is serious boys and girls. Everyone sits down trying to get through their practice, opens their music, starts on page 1 - ends on page 5, does it maybe once more, and hops up hoping they got a little better.  And everyone KNOWS that this is a total waste of time.  I tell my students every day - if you start at the top and fight ALLLLL the way to the end - by the time you reach that last note - you've forgotten anything you may have learned about page 1! What was the point?! Go back to tip number 3 - make your goals - sit down and plan to work on one page, one line, one measure at a time, and DON'T move forward until you've reached your goal and you feel CONFIDENT in the section you've dedicated your practice time to. Repetition is the key people.  Getting it right one time doesn't mean you've got it.  Repeat those small sections until you KNOW you've got it, and if you play fifteen other pieces and come back - you'll still have it.  Then you can move forward happily!

5.  Reward yourself!

Don't make your practice time feel like hard work that you HAVE to do! Do whatever you need to do to make it enjoyable! If that means you get to eat an m&m every time you finish a line - then bust out those m&ms! If it means you need to practice right before you go to bed so it's not interfering with time you want to be with your friends - then schedule accordingly (and stick to it).  You are working towards something and that is wonderful! Make it feel wonderful and be PROUD of yourself EVERY time you reach a goal! 

Get Out There and Practice your Practicing! It Truly Makes A Difference!

Perks of learning to Play!

I can't say it enough….adding music to your child's education is ENDLESSLY beneficial! Check out this article by Laura Lewis Brown - published on the PBS Parents website! It sums up a few of the really amazing ways that learning to read and play music adds to your child's development.  Enjoy! 

The Benefits of Music Education

By Laura Lewis Brown

Whether your child is the next Beyonce or more likely to sing her solos in the shower, she is bound to benefit from some form of music education. Research shows that learning the do-re-mis can help children excel in ways beyond the basic ABCs. 

More Than Just Music

Research has found that learning music facilitates learning other subjects and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas. “A music-rich experience for children of singing, listening and moving is really bringing a very serious benefit to children as they progress into more formal learning,” says Mary Luehrisen, executive director of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation, a not-for-profit association that promotes the benefits of making music. 

Making music involves more than the voice or fingers playing an instrument; a child learning about music has to tap into multiple skill sets, often simultaneously. For instance, people use their ears and eyes, as well as large and small muscles, says Kenneth Guilmartin, cofounder of Music Together, an early childhood music development program for infants through kindergarteners that involves parents or caregivers in the classes. 

“Music learning supports all learning. Not that Mozart makes you smarter, but it’s a very integrating, stimulating pastime or activity,” Guilmartin says. 

Language Development

“When you look at children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is music’s benefit for language development, which is so important at that stage,” says Luehrisen. While children come into the world ready to decode sounds and words, music education helps enhance those natural abilities. “Growing up in a musically rich environment is often advantageous for children’s language development,” she says. But Luehrisen adds that those inborn capacities need to be “reinforced, practiced, celebrated,” which can be done at home or in a more formal music education setting. 

According to the Children’s Music Workshop, the effect of music education on language development can be seen in the brain. “Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain’s circuits in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds,” the group claims. 

This relationship between music and language development is also socially advantageous to young children. “The development of language over time tends to enhance parts of the brain that help process music,” says Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a practicing musician. “Language competence is at the root of social competence. Musical experience strengthens the capacity to be verbally competent.”

Increased IQ

A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, as published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the IQs of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons. Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons to a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to a second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group. The children’s IQs were tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade. 

Surprisingly, the children who were given music lessons over the school year tested on average three IQ points higher than the other groups. The drama group didn’t have the same increase in IQ, but did experience increased social behavior benefits not seen in the music-only group.

The Brain Works Harder

Research indicates the brain of a musician, even a young one, works differently than that of a nonmusician. “There’s some good neuroscience research that children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity than people not in music training. When you’re a musician and you’re playing an instrument, you have to be using more of your brain,” says Dr. Eric Rasmussen, chair of the Early Childhood Music Department at the Peabody Preparatory of The Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches a specialized music curriculum for children aged two months to nine years. 

In fact, a study led by Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, found changes in the brain images of children who underwent 15 months of weekly music instruction and practice. The students in the study who received music instruction had improved sound discrimination and fine motor tasks, and brain imaging showed changes to the networks in the brain associated with those abilities, according to the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research. 

Spatial-Temporal Skills

Research has also found a causal link between music and spatial intelligence, which means that understanding music can help children visualize various elements that should go together, like they would do when solving a math problem. 

“We have some pretty good data that music instruction does reliably improve spatial-temporal skills in children over time,” explains Pruett, who helped found the Performing Arts Medicine Association. These skills come into play in solving multistep problems one would encounter in architecture, engineering, math, art, gaming, and especially working with computers. 

Improved Test Scores

A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test. 

Aside from test score results, Johnson’s study highlights the positive effects that a quality music education can have on a young child’s success. Luehrisen explains this psychological phenomenon in two sentences: “Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music and arts teachers probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, joyful things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.”

And it doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall. “Formal training in music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency,” Pruett says. “People who have had formal musical training tend to be pretty good at remembering verbal information stored in memory.”

Being Musical

Music can improve your child’ abilities in learning and other nonmusic tasks, but it’s important to understand that music does not make one smarter. As Pruett explains, the many intrinsic benefits to music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being part of the music world, managing performance, being part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher. 

“It’s important not to oversell how smart music can make you,” Pruett says. “Music makes your kid interesting and happy, and smart will come later. It enriches his or her appetite for things that bring you pleasure and for the friends you meet.”

While parents may hope that enrolling their child in a music program will make her a better student, the primary reasons to provide your child with a musical education should be to help them become more musical, to appreciate all aspects of music, and to respect the process of learning an instrument or learning to sing, which is valuable on its own merit.

“There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s individual. Music is for music’s sake,” Rasmussen says. “The benefit of music education for me is about being musical. It gives you have a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are higher when you are involved in music,” he adds. “Your understanding of art and the world, and how you can think and express yourself, are enhanced.”

Piano at the Beach is Moving to Music City!

By now you all now the sad and yet exciting news! 

I'm going from Miss Walker to Mrs. West!!! 

Adam and I will be getting married on Folly Beach next month and I am SO very excited!!! We know we want to live close to family for that amazing big family atmosphere, and since I'm from Murfreesboro and most of my family lives in Tennessee - we're packing up the homestead in July and heading to Music City to put down some roots!!  

I've been teaching my Charleston babies for 3+ years now, and it is just breaking my heart to think of leaving.  You have all grown so much and worked so hard over the past few years, and I am endlessly proud of you! You all know I'll be back to visit and check on you, so keep up the hard work!!! 

As for all of you music lovers in Tennessee - I'll be living in Murfreesboro when I move in July, and would LOVE to meet you, make new friends, and find some lovely new students to share my love for music with!  I know you don't know me yet, but feel free to give me a call, shoot me an email, or face time to ask me any questions about my lessons, my teaching methods, my experience, or anything else you can think of! I'll be accepting students in Murfreesboro, Smyrna, Brentwood, etc. I can't wait to meet you all! 

Talk about Rhythm

WOAH

If you want to see a dedicated, motivated, passionate music lover...look no further. Music runs through this kid's bones, and we should all remember...when we LOVE what we're doing...it shows!

Please everyone...LOOK AROUND YOU! LISTEN! Find the music that speaks to your soul...learn a variety of pieces to find what you truly enjoy. Play the music you love, and you won't look at the clock when you practice..you won't feel frustrated as you work on a measure for the 15th time...you'll get lost in the love of the music! Let yourself wander and get lost...its good for your soul <3

Motivation for January Practice!

Happy January All! 

I've been away from the blog for a bit - as I've been so busy with my students and family, but I am finally back to my weekly posts! They motivate you…they motivate me…whats not to love?!

This week…be ready for your jaw to drop…

I'm not sure if you watch America's Got Talent…but this kid makes me want to start! WHAT a motivation to the rest of us out there! Stop looking at the clock while you practice…remember to allow your emotion to flow through into your playing…be PASSIONATE about the songs you choose to learn and play and share…watch and enjoy!

Thanks Adrian Romoff for your passion and dedication to your music! You're a role model for all of us looking to be the best we can be!

New Music for the New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!

I want to start this year with one of my VERY favorite piano songs...Once Upon a December composed by Stephen Flaherty.  It is gorgeous, complex, and emotional.  If you want a challenge, give this one a shot!

New Year New Lessons

Give me a shout asap to get your piano lessons scheduled for the new year! Spots are filling up and I'd love to add you to my list! 

Me: Ashley Walker / Piano at the Beach

email: ashleyerinw@gmail.com

phone: 803.370.1275

Hard Work Pays Off!

Check this out guys...just another example of how hard work pays off!  It doesn't matter how old you are - the important thing is how much work you put into it!

Just wow.