The Practice Revolution

The Practice Revolution by Philip Johnston

I wish that my violin teachers had read this book when I was learning the violin. I have no recollection of my practice habits as a kid, but I'm sure they weren't great. First of all, violin came easy to me at first, so I probably didn't "need" to practice in the first year to keep up with my class.

Then, I'm sure that this was the model. At the lesson, the teacher would write something in a book, or maybe in my music about what I should work on. Like, play this scale. Play this etude. Work on this piece.

Not very specific, huh? And that is how I have been operating as a music teacher for the past 18 years. The problems with this approach? We ask our students to define their own methods of practicing, and that can lead to very unfocused playing, working on only the easy parts, playing the wrong way over and over, playing too fast, playing through the entire piece instead of breaking it down, etc.

This book helps the teacher define small goals for students and games and methods for students to practice more effectively. For example, if the student is working on a difficult passage and they can focus and thus play it correctly in 10 minutes or 30 minutes, then they are done with that goal. In the old method, they set the timer and just play their instrument until the alloted time is up.

Disclaimer, it seems as though too much of this book is geared toward selling you other materials by Mr. Johnston, especially towards the end. Also, the link does not work anymore, although with a little googling, one can get to the site.

I have already started using a few of the ideas with my group students (as I wrote about in my last post) as well as my private students, and I see movement in the right direction!