Today is my first day of Easter break and we're off of school until next Thursday. Which means I'm going to able to get a lot more practice time in. Since I'm going to be practicing so much I wanted to share my practice routine because it has been very effective for me throughout my time playing the horn. This routine isn't just for horn though, it can be applied to whatever you're doing.
I start by getting a full night's sleep, so the mind is alert and ready to learn. When I wake up the first thing I do is listen to one of my favorite recordings of French horn just to get me pumped for the rest of the day. While I'm listening to the recordings I'm also oiling my horn, emptying water, warming it up, all the stuff that the horn needs to perform at it's highest level all day. I then start my warm up and do it at a very relaxed pace taking all the time I need so my face feels ready for a full day of practicing. After the warm up I like to then take my shower because it gives the face the rest it needs and the water wakes me up and relaxes me.
Once I'm out of the shower and comfortably dressed I repeat the end of my warm up to get my face back together and then I start on etudes and other technical exercises. We usually tend to neglect these since they don't sound as cool as our solos or the orchestral excerpts we're working on, but they are one of the most important aspects of building a well rounded player. I only practice in chunks of about 30-40 minutes at a time and in between these chunks I relax for about the same amount of time and listen to more recordings of great musicians to get me inspired to keep practicing, watch TV just to rest the mind, or anything that will get you ready for your next practice chunk.
Now during the time when I'm practicing I make sure they are little to no distractions from what I'm working on. I turn off all the music, the TV, close my laptop, and silence my cell phone, this way I can be the most efficient with the time I have. I always have my pencil on my stand ready to mark all my notes and changes that I need. The mind should be in a state where it's highly alert so it can make and maintain new changes on the fly, but it also has to be extremely receptive since practicing is all about changing your bad habits into good habits, not just playing to play.
My philosophy is that whatever you practice is how you'll perform, so practice time shouldn't be full of mistakes or else that's what's going happen on stage. If there's a technical passage you see coming up that you know you can't play yet at that tempo, don't play it yet, you'll just be learning how to play it incorrectly. Take it separately at a slow enough tempo where you can confidently say, "I cannot possibly make a mistake at this tempo." Keep doing it at that tempo until you know exactly how everything sounds and feels, then every two times you get it perfect in a row you can move the tempo up about 2-5 clicks, you'll keep repeating this until it's up to tempo or you've gone about 30 minutes. If you haven't finished it within one chunk, once you pick up your instrument again it's back to the same passage, because you would want work on it while it's still fresh in your mind and you don't leave it only halfway there. This may turn two bars in one technical etude into two or three practice chunks worth of work, but it will be clean and you'll start thinking to yourself, "Have I ever played this wrong? How is possible to play this wrong?" This attitude is what professionals have when they walk on stage with whatever work they've prepared and also why you see so many amateurs and students choke at big auditions and performances.
I start by getting a full night's sleep, so the mind is alert and ready to learn. When I wake up the first thing I do is listen to one of my favorite recordings of French horn just to get me pumped for the rest of the day. While I'm listening to the recordings I'm also oiling my horn, emptying water, warming it up, all the stuff that the horn needs to perform at it's highest level all day. I then start my warm up and do it at a very relaxed pace taking all the time I need so my face feels ready for a full day of practicing. After the warm up I like to then take my shower because it gives the face the rest it needs and the water wakes me up and relaxes me.
Once I'm out of the shower and comfortably dressed I repeat the end of my warm up to get my face back together and then I start on etudes and other technical exercises. We usually tend to neglect these since they don't sound as cool as our solos or the orchestral excerpts we're working on, but they are one of the most important aspects of building a well rounded player. I only practice in chunks of about 30-40 minutes at a time and in between these chunks I relax for about the same amount of time and listen to more recordings of great musicians to get me inspired to keep practicing, watch TV just to rest the mind, or anything that will get you ready for your next practice chunk.
Now during the time when I'm practicing I make sure they are little to no distractions from what I'm working on. I turn off all the music, the TV, close my laptop, and silence my cell phone, this way I can be the most efficient with the time I have. I always have my pencil on my stand ready to mark all my notes and changes that I need. The mind should be in a state where it's highly alert so it can make and maintain new changes on the fly, but it also has to be extremely receptive since practicing is all about changing your bad habits into good habits, not just playing to play.
My philosophy is that whatever you practice is how you'll perform, so practice time shouldn't be full of mistakes or else that's what's going happen on stage. If there's a technical passage you see coming up that you know you can't play yet at that tempo, don't play it yet, you'll just be learning how to play it incorrectly. Take it separately at a slow enough tempo where you can confidently say, "I cannot possibly make a mistake at this tempo." Keep doing it at that tempo until you know exactly how everything sounds and feels, then every two times you get it perfect in a row you can move the tempo up about 2-5 clicks, you'll keep repeating this until it's up to tempo or you've gone about 30 minutes. If you haven't finished it within one chunk, once you pick up your instrument again it's back to the same passage, because you would want work on it while it's still fresh in your mind and you don't leave it only halfway there. This may turn two bars in one technical etude into two or three practice chunks worth of work, but it will be clean and you'll start thinking to yourself, "Have I ever played this wrong? How is possible to play this wrong?" This attitude is what professionals have when they walk on stage with whatever work they've prepared and also why you see so many amateurs and students choke at big auditions and performances.
"Practice breeds consistency, which breeds confidence, which breeds success"
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