Am I willing to use the same techniques I’m teaching my students in my own study of an instrument that is new to me?

This came to me today as I practiced guitar. This is an instrument that I’ve taught myself how to play. I have not mastered it yet by any means. I was struggling with a passage and said to myself “Why don’t I practice this passage the same way I’ve been telling my students to approach material that is new to them?”. I did this. It helped tremendously.

We should be willing to practice that which we preach when it comes to teaching. It gives our words more weight if we are able to honestly say to a student: “I’ve used these same techniques to teach myself –insert new instrument here—.” It’s also very humbling to begin again with the struggle of playing something that is unfamiliar and helps us better understand the “beginner mind” that our students are dealing with.

• I practiced trombone 3 days in the first week, then it dropped off to one day in the second week.
• I sang pretty consistently in the first week, right up to my lesson on Wednesday of the second week. As of this post I’ve not sang since my lesson.
• I had more guitar practice in the first week than in the second, but still did a fair amount of guitar work in week 2.
• I practiced bass the least of all, averaging one session per week.

What to make of these stats? One thing about recording my practice is that it’s easier to see patterns and habits.

• Guitar is the easiest of the instruments to practice, because it’s really easy to just pull the guitar down and play. Easy access and instant gratification.
• I sing more when I have auditions, because I use my singing warm-up as a vocal warm-up. Having the lesson as a motivating factor helps, but not necessarily as a primary motivator. I can still “get through the lesson” without having sung as much as I would have liked.
• Perhaps the reason that I practice the trombone less these days is because I don’t get as much of that “instant gratification” of seeing myself get better right away. I’m already a damn good trombone player, so the bar is much higher.
• My goal is to see each day filled up with practice on each instrument, as opposed to these big gaps between playing. I’ve not reached this goal yet, but at least I’ve begun the “measurable” part of “SMART”. I’ll work on the “specific” part more this week.

Guitar
M:
T:
W:
Th:
Fr:
Sa:
Su:

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I’m trying something new here. I’ve created a new category for “Music”. I’ll create a weekly post to track my practice times on each instrument. Nothing fancy, just the amountof time I spend each day. It’ll be a sort of concrete way to send my practice out into the universe so that the benefits might flow back to me, whatever those benefits might be. I’m not going to get anal with this. I don’t plan to track the total number of time spent each week practicing, because it’s more about seeing that I’ve been playing music consistently. At this point, it’s not as important that I practice for hours and hours each day, but that I make music a consistent part of my life. I’ll keep it simple: One post each week for all the instruments, which I’ll update throughout the week. The goal is to be able to look back on this week and say “Yes, I played music consistently this week.”

One other observation from my practice tonight: Now that I have my apartment cleared, it feels much easier to make my studio my “practice place”. I don’t want my instruments scattered all over the apartment as I did before. This gives me a sacred space to play music and makes it much easier to associate practicing with that place.

–update: 6/12/06–
I’ve decided to track practice differently. All of these posts have been aggregated into my practice tracking page.