Episode 2: Planning a 1-hour Practice Session
In this week’s episode I take a deeper look at how to plan a practice session. Specifically a 1-hour session for intermediate level music students. However, much of this can be applied to any discipline as time management is a universal topic.
Please keep in mind that this only one example of how to divide up the time. There are many ways to plan and execute a great practice session.
Starting and Ending
When we begin to break down how we should divide up our 1-hour practice session, it is probably best to start with how we begin and end our session.
My suggestion is to start with a 10-minute warmup and end with a 10-minute “noodling” segment.
The warmup is necessary because we are about to endeavor on a physical exercise of playing our instrument. You wouldn’t go out for a run without stretching first. The same applies here.
At the end, we can reward ourselves with a segment for “noodling”. This is important because taking up a music instrument is a creative endeavor. Spending time with your instrument and playing freely without limitations is a great way to explore and discover things about your own playing that you might not otherwise think of.
With these in mind, we have 40-minutes left of our 60-minute session.
Dividing Up the Rest of the Session
In my video, I discuss one possible strategy on how to segment the remaining time. In this scenario a student has three exercises to work on plus a prepared piece. It can take several days or even weeks to pull a prepared piece together. This is why I haven’t given the prepared piece more time in this plan.
Here’s wishing you great practice sessions and planning success.