When friends learn that my nearly six-year-old has been playing violin for three years, their voices shift a bit, especially if they also have a child learning an instrument. Two questions come in quick succession: “Does she like it?” and “How do you get her to practice?” There’s a nervous energy to their queries, and usually a little laugh, too. Either they’ve been struggling with kids who have a hard time practicing, or they recall their own childhood boredom. And they seem to be relieved when I say that yes, she genuinely enjoys playing — but yes, practicing can also be quite a struggle.
Sometimes it’s really a delight and a total breeze. My daughter glows with pride when she’s figured out how to play something new, and she loves showing off what she’s learned. But I have to admit that when we’re having a bad day with it, I feel like I could get scarily close to channeling some inner tiger mother. Raised voice? Check. Threats of taking away treats? Been there. Slammed doors and crying? Um, yes. (Though that last is usually my child, not me.)
So today’s entry in this week’s The Young Person’s Guide to Making Music series is about stuff I’m still mastering as a parent, as well as things I really wish I had known about effective practicing when I was a music student.
Regular practicing is a path towards self-discipline that goes way beyond music — it’s a skill that has hugely positive ramifications for personal fulfillment and lifetime success. (How “tiger mom” is that?) But the trick is that self-motivated discipline isn’t exactly first nature for most kids, so it’s up to families to help create positive, engaging and fun ways to practice as a path towards self-motivation.
Having a goal for each practice session is essential, whether your child is practicing for five minutes or a couple of hours each day. From the Top alumna Ren Martin-Doike, a 20-year-old violist who now studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, says that her number one practice technique is to write down those benchmarks: “Set goals, hold yourself accountable to them and create a practice log you can be proud of!”
“The only way I have found to efficiently work efficiently on large amounts of different kinds of repertoire — solo, chamber, orchestral — is to have a premeditated plan,” Martin-Doike continues. “For instance, I may decide to devote my first practice block to warming up, my second block to working on isolating difficult passages from a concerto, my third to putting fingerings in my orchestra part, my fourth to studying a new chamber work and spend my last block on playing through or stitching together the various smaller sections I worked on earlier in the day. By having a plan, I am able to maximize my time, juggle lots of different music and prevent aimless practicing or mindless playing through.”
For more go to the article at –
Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/06/18/155282684/getting-kids-to-practice-music-without-tears-or-tantrums
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