Do you spend a lot of time practicing, but don’t get the results you want? Or maybe just not as quickly as you’d like? If you measure your practice in terms of minutes, not goals, you might be cheating yourself, and probably aren’t making as much progress as you could.

This is the first of several posts on how to make your practice time as productive as possible. Because making clear progress depends on more than simply spending a given amount of time alone in a room with your violin.

As with any technique, the technique of good practicing takes ... well, practice. With time and experience, you can get better and better at knowing which practice technique to use when, and just how to use it, and even how long it’s likely to take you to reach your goal.

You are your most important teacher

In this first post, let’s start with the most basic principle of practicing, which applies at all times and under all circumstances:

Be your own teacher.

You are your own teacher when you’re alone in the practice room. With nobody else present, only you can be responsible for the progress you make during that time. Are you a distracted teacher to yourself? Are you overly forgiving? Or too critical?

Since the vast majority of your time with the violin will be by yourself, becoming a better teacher to yourself will vastly improve your rate of progress. So when you’re practicing, try to think like a good teacher does:

1. Where is the spot that needs to be improved?

Be as specific as possible. Identifying that there’s a problem “in the second phrase,” for example, isn’t as helpful as, “from the B to the C in the second phrase.”

2. What is not good about it now?

Again, be as specific as possible. A good answer would be something like, “from the B to the C in the second phrase, the shift is too big.”

3. How will you try to improve it?

Here’s where you’d call up any relevant practice techniques, and try them one at a time until you find the one that works. But more often than not, if you’ve done steps 1 and 2 well, the answer to step 3 becomes really obvious.

What path will you follow to improve it?

If you’re working with a violin teacher, they may have identified specific goals for you (#1 and #2, “Where” and “What”), and prescribed specific practice techniques for you (#3, “How”). But if you’re not also keeping in mind these three parts during your practice time, you’re not going to get the best results that you could.

Some things to keep in mind:

Always try to be as specific as you can be.
The more clearly you can define the problem or the solution, the easier it will be to improve.
Take one spot or issue at a time.
Doubling up is rarely the shortcut that it seems.
Try writing down the Where, What, and How for each spot.
This could be in a practice journal, scratch paper, or the margin of the music. It’s not necessary, but can help keep your work focused.
Avoid blame and judgement.
When you identify something to fix, it’s not a reflection of your character. It’s just something that happened, and now you’re going to address it.

More practice techniques coming in the next several weeks!

What are some of your favorite or most helpful practice strategies? Let me know with a comment below.