Often times when I speak with students in their lessons, I’ll hear stories about how they’ve been very busy and weren't able to spend a lot of time to practice.  Part of how I teach is working with students to understand how to practice.  How to efficiently and effectively use their time so they can actually accomplish something.  With all of that said, until the student feel comfortable with that way of practicing, often times they feel the need to cram for a lesson.

Cramming For A Lesson Doesn’t Work

Unlike studying for a test about information that you may never use ever again, learning how to play an instrument for the short term (IE from lesson to lesson) doesn’t work.  Learning how to play an instrument is a skill.  What you learn is used as you advance and become more experienced.  If you learn things only with short term memory, never ingraining the skills into how you play the instrument, progress will never happen.  This means that you cannot do a weeks worth of practicing in a 2 hour cram session the night before your lesson.  Typically this leads to a crash and burn situation.  More importantly, students become frustrated due to the lack of improvement they make, and they don’t understand why.

All of my students have heard this one:  ”Ok, great!  Now see if you can do it three times in a row.”  I am a firm believer in the power of three.  However, it is more then just playing a passage three times in a row.

Problem solving and identifying the solution are also important steps.  Without those, you won’t know what to reinforce and the repetitions will be meaningless.

Like most people, sometimes you just do not have much time to practice.  Below is a list of things that you can do to your practicing to maximize the time you have available for your practicing.   Most of these things can be done easily and quickly to your practice sessions.

1. Dedicate time to working on your technique.
2. Isolate the difficult sections of pieces and practice them by themselves.
3. Play through the piece only twice when you practice it.
4. Don’t practice all of your repertoire in one day.
5. Know when playing won’t accomplish any more.