Silver Music

 

Less is More

There’s never enough time to practice. Starting with this fundamental truth, how do you make the most of your limited practice time?

Quality beats quantity, and short but consistent quality practices will move you forward much more quickly than sporadic marathon sessions. The more creative and disciplined you are as a home teacher and practice partner, the more successful your practice sessions will be, even on your craziest, busiest day.

Here are 3 tips to help you get the most out of every session and keep practicing a positive, engaging experience for all:

  • Use a timer.

Come up with a reasonable expectation of the amount of minutes your child will spend productively practicing (not including negotiating, complaining, drinking water, etc.), and then explain to your child that you’re going to set a timer and practice for those many minutes. Each time that you take a break (consensual or not) the timer stops. Set another time to see how long the breaks and procrastination are compared to the practice time!

  • Make clear goals.

You’re not going to fix every problem in one practice, or one week, or the next year, but it’s still important to have a clear idea of what you’re working towards. You can also use the timer at this level: if your child needs help with their bow hold, decide that you’re going to spend 1 minute seeing how many fantastic bow holds they can make. If your child is more advanced, pick one section of their piece and set the timer for 2 minutes with a specific practice goal—separate hands for pianists, slow intonation work for strings, etc. (More ideas for advanced practicing will be coming on this blog soon! Keep your eyes out.)

  • Stop while you’re ahead!

Behavioral training shows us the importance of ending on a positive note. Just because your child hasn’t fallen on the floor in exhaustion yet, does not mean you should just slip in another 2 minutes! If you stop on a good note, it will be much easier to pick up again the next day.

Tips For Making Practicing More Fun!

Tips for Making Practicing More Fun (It’s not cheating to have fun!)
Ideas Submitted by Teachers AND Parents

–1 Star/2 Star/3 Star Practicing
Stickers can go a long way in terms of motivation. Have your child decide what kind of practice session he or she would like to have (depending on how much energy they have, how much time, etc…). One Star practice where they focus on one issue versus Three Stars where they tackle a lot! You can keep a sticker chart so they can watch their progress.
–Practicing Candle
Version 1: Light a birthday candle while your child practices. Keep practicing until the candle goes out!
Version 2: Buy a tall candle in a jar. Light it every time your child practices and blow it out when they complete a practice session. You child can watch his/her progress by seeing the candle descend to the base.
–Give choices
Often times, children just want to feel that they are being heard. Give them a choice in their practicing. Do you want to practice in the living room, or in your bedroom? Do you want to have your snack before you play, or after?
–The Workout
Have your child pick one aspect of technique on which to concentrate (or look in the notes from the most recent lesson. Set a timer for 3 minutes. Allow them to focus on that aspect for the 3 minutes while playing review pieces, then stop. Then move another part of your practice.
–Grab Bag
Take a stack of index cards and write activities on each card, both instrument related and otherwise–jump up and down 5 times, play Song of the Wind, blink your eyes twice, play 5 4th finger exercises, give your teddy bear a hug, etc. Then let your child pick a card at random and as you go through the stack the “hard” practice demands will be interspersed with silly and fun moments.
–Imaginary Friends
Sometimes you need to think outside the box when offering instruction. If your child is raising her shoulders, ask her to imagine a dragon sitting on her shoulder and not to disturb it! If your child is forget to lift his hands off the piano at the end of a piece, tell him to pretend his hands are butterflies taking off!
–Moving M&Ms
Put two plates in front of your practicing child, one with M&Ms (or Skittles, Cheerios—something desirable!), the other empty. Set a goal for your child’s practice session. Every time they complete a task towards that goal, they get to move an M&M to the empty plate. Let them have all the M&Ms they’ve earned at the end of the session!
–Pass the Quarter
Sit opposite your child while they practice with a quarter between you. If your child follows instruction or does something positive in his playing, pass him the quarter. Offer feedback on his playing. If he feels you are offering helpful advice, he may pass you the quarter. If he thinks you are being too critical, he can take the quarter back.
–Discuss vs. Play Block
Somewhat similar to “Pass the Quarter” in terms of giving the child control of the situation. Create a sign, or block, or some visual with two options. One option is “Discuss” the other is “Play”. If you child would like to play uninterrupted, he will choose to use the “Play” visual. If he would like to have a discussion, he will indicate using the opposite visual.
–Constructive Practicing
As your son or daughter completes tasks in their practicing, construct a visual. Try completing a drawing of a face by adding one feature for every repetition of a piece or section. This could also work with building Legos, stacking blocks, etc.

Know a successful game or technique not on this list? Please submit your idea in the comments section, or to silvermusic@silvermusic.org!

Practicing Workshop Followup

What amazing parents we have at Silver Music! Our Practicing Workshop on 2/27 was a huge success thanks to the thoughtful questions and advice shared by attending parents and faculty. If you weren’t able to attend the workshop, take a look at our notes! Be sure to also check out our Tips for Making Practicing More Fun which lists ideas by parents and teachers for more enjoyable practicing.

Questions
1) How often should I expect my child to practice?
We recommend setting up a routine where your child practices every day—even if the length of practice time is very short. If you make practicing part of your child’s daily routine, it removes the option to not-practice, and establishes structure. Do not feel that your child must be practicing for a set amount of time every day. If they have a focused practice session that lasts 5 minutes, do not push them to do more. Always encourage ending practice on a high note! See our Tips for Making Practicing More Fun.
2) How do I motivate my child?
Every child is different and some motivational strategies will work really well for some kids, but not for others. Here are some options we’ve found to be successful with a wide range of children:
-Make it a game: Adding an element of play can work really well for many children, especially younger ones. Having something set up so that the student can visually assess their progress is also helpful, such as a star chart, practice candle, or adding pennies to a jar for a completed practice session.
-Video-Tape: We recommend video-taping your child, too. This is beneficial for children to become their own teachers– hearing and seeing what they are doing well and what can be improved. Some students also enjoy being video-taped because it adds an element of performance to an ordinary practice session!
-Attend Live Performances: Watching other musicians or older students perform can be incredibly motivating! Take your child to a faculty recital or an orchestra concert so they can see where private study can lead.
-Listen to Advanced Suzuki Pieces: You can play ahead on the Suzuki cds to motivate your child. Your child might be inspired after hearing what’s to come!
3) How do I balance the practicing habits of both my children?
It is an extraordinary amount of work being a parent of two or more Suzuki children. Older, more advanced siblings can inspire a younger sibling to progress. The opposite could occur as well. Sometimes the less experienced sibling feels intimidated. If this is the case, find a way to make the less advanced child’s playing experience unique. The beginner sibling could work with a separate teacher, or have an older student practicing alongside. We recommend choosing a different instrument for siblings.
4) How do I maintain my child’s progress/motivation during the summer months when he is not studying privately?
Here video-taping can again be beneficial. Some students who take the summer off will have their last few lessons video-taped, with additional material presented for future practice. There are youtube videos that are helpful to watch too (see Resources), and lots of listening that can be done! Using your Reading Book, or extra etudes is great practice and will not interfere with learning the standard repertoire. There are also Suzuki Institutes which offer programs during the summer. Silver Music also offers violin, cello, and piano camps during the summer.

Ways to Curb Frustration
+One point at a time: Edmund Sprunger, author of Helping Parents Practice, gives an analogy of offering too many critiques: “Many children have simply been given too much too soon. It’s like shoving an entire apple into their mouths. An apple is a great piece of nutrition but when it’s shoved into a
child’s mouth, the child can’t make use of it.”
+Repeat Things that Went Well: We often focus on mistakes and problems when practicing. But sometimes it can be incredibly beneficial to acknowledge positives points, and enforce them through repetition. The point of practicing is not necessarily “to get better”, it is to make playing easier!
+Ask Leading Questions: Instead of telling the student what was good or bad, ask them, “How did that go?” “What was something you did really well?”
+Transfer Responsibility: See if you can remove pressure from the whole child and instead isolate a body part or a part of the instrument. Instead of asking the child, “Did you remember to curve your pinky?” Say, “Did your pinky remember to stay curved?” “Did you bow remember to stay by the bridge?”
+Just Watch: Sometimes it’s helpful to just watch and not comment. If you are a Suzuki alumni, you know what it was like to practice with your own parents. Think about how you felt as the student.
+Address New Material Immediately: If your kid has something difficult or new he learned in a lesson, make sure he or she practices that material right away. It is more frustrating to try to remember how to do something new after a few days have passed between the lesson.
+Record Issues: We have one parent who has an entire album of videos she has recorded during new or difficult points of learning during a lesson. When her child is practicing, she can refer to them to assist.

Resources Discussed
Abby McHugh-Grifa—find her cello practice videos on youtube!

The Practice Shoppe-Ideas and free downloads!

Stay tuned for additional workshops in the future!

Practicing…let’s make it easier!

We had a wonderful time chatting about practicing with our amazing parents who came out to Max Cafe last night! If you weren’t able to make it, notes from the evening will be posted here soon. We hope to have many more similar discussions in the future, and in the meantime we’d like to offer this blog space as a great way to stay inspired, not only by reading our thoughts but by sharing your own. Please jump into our discussions in the comment space, let us know what you think–what works, what doesn’t, and if you have any questions. We’d also like to invite you to be a guest contributor to our blog! Send along a short post about a great practice discovery you’ve made with your child and we’ll throw it up on the site, complete with pictures if you like, or totally anonymously if you prefer.

To start us off, I’d like to share with you a fun practice game one of my parents recently showed me:

Take a stack of index cards and write activities on each card, both instrument related and otherwise–jump up and down 5 times, play Song of the Wind, blink your eyes twice, play 5 4th finger exercises, give your teddy bear a hug, etc. Then let your child pick a card at random and as you go through the stack the “hard” practice demands will be interspersed with silly and fun moments of relaxed enjoyment with your child. Tailor it to your child’s age and interests and give it a try this weekend! Let us know how it goes.

Parenting Chat with Ellen, December 10th

What do we really want for our kids? And how do we help them achieve it? In the book, “The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness”, Dr. Edward Hallowell discusses how deliberate practice leads to empowering mastery and rewarding recognition and that that cycle, along with strong social connections and creative play lay the foundation for life-long self-sustaining happiness. Along with Dr. Hallowell, we think that music lessons are one of the very best ways to imprint this pattern on a child and help them discover their own ability to create and sustain joy. Check the book out and then come chat with Ellen about this parenting philosophy and how it intersects with our mission at Silver Music and your work practicing with your child.

December 10th, 9 am-10:15 am, Silver Music Tiemann Studio.

(You’ll love the book, but even if you don’t get a chance to read it, still come chat about parenting, music, and happiness– there won’t be any pop quizzes!)

Summer Practice Brainstorm

Summer is always a bit of a paradox when it comes to instrument study. On the one hand, your child may have considerably more free time than during the year—what a great time to fit in extra practice! On the other hand, your child may be going for weeks without a private lesson due to inconsistent summer schedules of your family and your teacher—so now what do you DO

with all that extra practice time? As teachers, we have a lot of strategies to keep practicing fresh, fun and fulfilling, and I know that as parents, you also have a huge amount of collective knowledge about how to engage your kids. Below is a bullet point list of some ideas to try this summer as you practice with your kids. We’d also really love to hear from all of you in the comment section what you’ve tried, what works, what doesn’t, and what new ideas your family came up to make the most of summer practice.

  • Practice in the park–just make sure to keep your instrument out of direct sunlight so your varnish doesn’t melt…
  • Make practice charts that your child can check off each time they play a piece with a beautiful bow hold, or without any memory slips, or anything else that particularly challenges your child.
  • Hide stuffed animals around the apartment along with notes that ask the child to practice something in particular–this way the instructions are coming from the stuffed animal, not you!
  • Have a practice play date so you can trade practice partner duties with another parent. Children always behave better with a non-related adult…
  • Organize an informal recital in your home to provide motivation to keep on those review pieces. Have your child play all of their review pieces in descending order (so they get to the easiest piece last).
  • Use edible counters for repetitions–grapes, blueberries, m&ms…
  • Create games of chance to see what you will practice: make a spinner, use dice, make a deck of cards, etc.
  • Record your child–maybe even make a CD! Send the

    recording to friends and family, and your teacher!

More practicing ideas….and how to get kids not to RUSH!

One weekend afternoon, when I was admittedly much less rushed than usual in my practicing with Gabriel, I remembered a practicing game to help make repetition fun. He was frustrated with learning a challenging bow distribution in Go Tell Aunt Rhody and was resistant to playing it more than a few times. He needed a LOT more practice of this spot to get over the hurdle and beyond the frustration. I got out paper and drew a big circle. I invited him to draw part of a face after each time he played the tricky bowing correctly. He jumped right in, playing away, excited to add silly details to his face to show me. We each did a face, actually, and he loved seeing what I would draw as well. This game went so well that we continued playing, this time putting lego pieces together for each repetition. We did this both days of the weekend. A practice success!!

Gabriel’s Practice Pictures and Lego

A few weeks later, Gabriel was rushing through O Come Little Children and forgetting to stop his bow at the end of each phrase. After repeatedly reminding him to stop his bow,

and BEGGING him to please slow down (didn’t his teacher say to play slow and steady?), all to no avail, I finally reached for a pad of post-it notes and made three signs: GO, STOP, and SLOW DOWN. These worked LIKE A CHARM! He remembered the bowings, and loved responding to the SLOW DOWN sign. We used them for

three days in a row and even brought them to his lesson. Who knew post-its could help so much?

Often our kids just don’t want us to tell them what they should do with their instrument (even though we are right!). But they will respond to a SIGN, a NOTE, or some other type of direction. Try to think outside the box—you will be happy you

did!

Post-It Signs for Practicing!

Fun Practice Charts!

www.thepracticeshoppe.com

I have found a wonderful website with free practice charts that are simple to download and print. There are charts to mark for practicing each day in a month, or each day toward a specific goal .

My favorite charts are for keeping track of how many times you play something: it could be a difficult part of a new piece that the student needs focused work on, it could be how many review pieces played, how many Twinkles, how

many bow circles, etc. It seems to be a lot more fun to play things over and over when you can see your progress in colored stars or checked off boxes in a maze of 260 squares!

My son happily crossed off pictures of Popsicles for each repetition of O Come Little Children played with the right bowings, and did another sheet for plucking the piece. He learned the notes and bowings more quickly and accurately than I thought he would, because of all of his daily repetitions

along with hearing the piece ON REPEAT each day while eating, playing, and even sleeping. I was dreading our work on this piece, as it is notoriously difficult to master the bowings without a lot of frustration, but our new practice charts really helped both of us!

Visit www.thepracticeshoppe.com, go to FREE DOWNLOADS, click on the TITLE of a chart your child likes, and start printing. Make your practicing fly by with purpose!!

More thoughts on listening….

Today a young student played with noticeably different ease at her lesson. Everything was working well–bow arm, left hand, cello position–and she was finally playing her Twinkles really, really well. She was looking tired and had a cold but even so was not at all distracted or antsy for the entire lesson.

I know that she and her mom had recently discovered using You Tube to listen and watch other kids playing cello pieces, which had helped to motivate and inspire this student, who was not always full of energy in her lesson or willing to practice easily at home. But something else must have changed. I asked her mom if she had been listening or watching other children on You Tube more often this week, as she looked like she was playing at a whole new level of ease and enjoyment.

Her mom said. “Well, we have been listening a lot more to the CD this week.” That was it–it was so clear. She really KNEW the pieces inside out now and could focus on her bow hold, cello hand and position, as the music was continually playing in her head. She had real phrasing in her playing and had kept up beautifully with the cello group for the first time a few days earlier. We had also easily learned a new section of the next piece, which had been too difficult for her to remember during our last few lessons.

Listening is so often overlooked in our busy schedules when in fact it is the easiest and least stressful part of the process….and something parents should really take charge of. As I write this I have three pieces playing on a loop from the website www.grooveshark.com, which has the Suzuki violin and cello books 1-3. You can easily select what you want to listen to and put it on repeat from any computer with sound. Right now we are listening to Go Tell Aunt Rhody, O Come Little Children, and

May Song (Gabriel’s current piece and next two pieces) on a repeat loop during dinner, right after our cello practice, and for falling asleep.

One word of warning: I NEVER call attention to the fact that we are going to listen or that I am putting music on…..if I do I ALWAYS get an argument, and if

I don’t say a word we all happily listen for 1-3 hours

each day.

I hope all of you Suzuki parents can give yourself and your child the gift of repeated listening!! You can even make a playlist of review pieces for a certain concert, or put on your child’s current piece

and upcoming piece or two…. it is too easy NOT to try it….and we all deserve the results: less resistance and more progress (and fun!) with our kids!!

Making it Easier

It’s been exciting to see everyone taking part in the 50 Days of Practice and we’re already hearing wonderful results! As the parent, clearly the largest part of the

commitment to daily practice falls on you, and so to help you stay inspired through these next weeks, we will be posting a short weekly entry with words of wisdom –and commiseration—on practicing.

Hands down the best book on practicing with

your child is “Helping Parents Practice: Ideas for Making it Easier” by Edmund Sprunger. I will be shamelessly lifting most of my ideas

from his book but I can’t encourage you enough to buy the whole book so you can have it in its entirety.

Sprunger’s title refers to making practice an easier process for both children and parents, but it is also an oblique reference to the very core of practicing itself—why do we practice? To make things easier. It’s such a simple concept, but to be honest, I didn’t latch on to that until I was in my early 20s as a conservatory student. Practicing is not just to get “better” or “fix” what’s wrong, it’s to make playing easier, and hence more enjoyable.

As Sprunger says:

“When the goal of practice is to “fix things,” then a child’s performance tends to be limited to a hope that all the things you fixed stay fixed—not a set-up likely to give a child’s musical soul the freedom it needs to emerge. Practicing to “correct” things tends to have the effect of making children feel like they themselves are in need of correction for their very being, and they are more likely to be resistant during practice.

You don’t practice something only because the teacher said so. You practice it because some aspect of it is not easy and automatic yet.

One of the biggest struggles is dealing with the frustration that children usually have when they bump into the reality that things are seldom immediately easy, and that merely wishing to make them easier just doesn’t work. It takes practice. Children are not the only ones who face this frustration: parents and teachers do too! For the child, much of the toil comes in the form

of repeating things. For the adults, the struggle is often with figuring out ways to help the child work through the disappointment that accompanies the discovery that the world isn’t magic…The adult who practices with the child needs daily practice, so that over time, he or she gradually learns how to accomplish these enormous tasks.”

50 Days of Practice isn’t just going to make things easier for your child, it will gradually make practicing with your child easier as you consistently, habitually, take part in the process of teaching and learning with your child.