Guidelines for Practicing a Musical Instrument

1. Be there. Have your attention on what you are doing.
2. Be willing to learn something and accept the fact that it probably won’t happen over a weekend. You could learn something specific in a few minutes, but application to your overall playing takes some time. (Though certain things can happen quickly depending on your current skill level. Different people progress at different speeds according to current ability levels, past experience and the subject being studied.)
3. Understand what you are practicing and why you are practicing it. Keep you personal goals in mind and practice for that result.
4. Learn to relax your body when playing. Accumulated tension is one of the biggest causes of body problems, rough playing and a host of ills. There are about 120 muscles, bones and tendons in both forearms and hands, and all of these “parts” are learning new coordinations. While you are learning control you will get tense. It can be natural to use force to do something until control is developed. Not being relaxed when you play is like driving a car with the brakes slightly depressed. The brake pads are going to wear out real fast and you’re in for a bumpy ride. Notice and release tension when you play. Tension can occur in any part of your body: hands, wrists, arms, neck, shoulders, lower back, face, mouth, legs, feet.
5. Learn how to practice at the “right” speed. To play anything well, you need to develop complete control over what you are doing. Control is developed by repetitive actions at the speed that you can actually do the thing you are suppose to be doing. If you go too fast you can’t “grab a hold” of whatever it is and it’s like screeching around a corner in a car while driving too fast in the mountains. Go too fast and you end up in the trees. (If you ever got mad and frustrated while practicing I bet you were just going to fast!)
6. Understand the words and symbols on any written materials you are using. (I was giving a kid a piano lesson recently and she almost fell asleep in the middle of her lesson, but was bright and awake when she walked in. I snooped around and discovered that there was one symbol in a song book that her dad got her that sent her under the table. I found the symbol, defined it for her and she instantly brightened up and came back to life.)
7. Learn to sing in tune if you don’t already. If you can’t, this is easier to learn then you might think. It’s almost impossible to fully enjoy playing music if your ears aren’t working.
8. Develop a good sense of rhythm. Having good rhythm is vital, probably the most vital aspect of being a musician. Good rhythm can be developed with the proper drills. If your sense of rhythm is really bad it could take some time; however, you CAN develop good rhythmic ability with efficient instruction and drilling.
9. Have fun. Music isn’t worth doing if you can’t have some fun while doing it. Not all studies are fun — many things aren’t. But there is always a way to make some part of what you are doing fun and rewarding.

Making Time to Play Music

Time, money, work, family obligations; when do I have time to play? Let’s see, well, ah… I don’t know!!!

Have you ever gone through this routine? Unless playing or practicing music is the major priority in life, finding time to fit in this personal enjoyment can be a challenge.

If you’re in this category, the following steps might help:

1. Work out exactly what you want to do: what you want to play and what you want to get out of it. Shoot for your dreams, but be honest with yourself and keep it realistic. If you haven’t already put enough (or any) music into your life, if you start to broad or too big you could crash. Choose something that’s concise and looks doable.

2. Look over your life activities, plans and schedules. Create a concise overview of everything you do. Write this out on one or two pages. If you already have a clear life plan use it as a guide.

3. Decide on about how many hours a week you think you could spend on music. Keep in mind that playing for ten minutes a day can be more workable then playing for five hours on a day off. Keep in mind that you don’t want to start off too small or too big. It needs to be a “realistic” amount.

4. Have a blank weekly calendar to write on as a schedule template.

5. Write in ONE, set-stone-activity as a aligning factor. Use what ever is the most stable and predictable activity such as work hours, going to school or driving your kids to school.

6. Create some regular times to play music. Choose what might be the most workable times, while keeping in mind your other activities. (I practice the best first thing in the morning.)

7. Write in your other regular activities. You might need to adjust some priorities if you have hobbies, read a lot or watch TV.

8. Work over your basic schedule template and adjust activities as needed.

Now, at the beginning of each week create a weekly schedule including your personal music time and any thing else you need. Each week can be a little different so this should be done at the beginning of each week.

As you proceed through your new schedule, work out the kinks. If music is going to work it has to be made a priority to a certain degree—even if it’s ten minutes a night four days a week. The idea is to be at your instrument at the scheduled time and DO SOMETHING ! If you don’t get in all your time right away don’t worry about it. Just get some motion occurring and have fun.

There are many productivity concepts around. Find or develop the ones that work best for you. Playing music adds some sparkle to life. It’s an opportunity to create your own universe.

Now go play something!

About Reading Music

This article lays out some various gradients to reading music. A gradient to learning is a step-by-step approach starting with the easiest thing and progressing to more difficult levels.

Many musicians read music fluidly while others are either stumped by it all, are mildly confused or just don’t really know what’s it’s all about . I’ve been teaching people to read music for years and it’s actually not that difficult a subject. To read well takes a lot of practice, of course, but if approached correctly is a very understandable subject.

There is a hierarchy of things to learn. When you start with the easiest aspect of reading and proceed from there one can learn smoothly. A common difficulty students have is simply not drilling each level of skill long enough to get comfortable before advancing to the next level: too much too soon. When you learn things one step at a time and become proficient with each element before going on to the next element, learning to read well is quite doable.

One of the common difficulties people have isn’t the notes on the page but the notes on their instrument! In order to read well you need to first understand your instrument and, ideally, have a basic foundation about how music is put together. The most basic “theory” is simply knowing what the notes on the instrument are called. How could you read notes on the page and transfer that visual to playing those notes on the instrument without knowing what they are? Well, I’ve had many students who “had trouble reading” when they actually read just fine: they simply didn’t know their instrument well enough. So when they learned their instrument better, like magic they could read. It’s very interesting.

Another common difficulty is lacking basic musical skills such as being able to feel the rhythms they are looking at and playing. Ultimately one should look at a piece of music and hear and feel what one sees. There are many levels of this and the most fundamental skills needed to enjoy reading music can be readily learned with some good instruction.

This is a suggested order of things to learn to get your reading skills up to par:

1. Knowing the definitions of the words and symbols used.

2. Learning to navigate a piece of music. This consists of learning the symbols that tell you where to go. The most basic piece of music to learn to read is a “chord chart.” A “chart” is a slang term for any piece of music. A chord chart is simply a piece of music with only chord symbols and the form written on it. The “form” is the order of the sections, such as verse, chorus and bridge. There are no notes or rhythms written on the paper. To read a chord chart you need to understand what chords are. For example, a “C Chord” is made up of the single notes C, E and G. The chart will just have a C written on it and you need to know the rest. Learning chords is easier to learn then many think, and there are only three or four symbols to learn that tell you where to go on a chart. These symbols just tell you to repeat a section however many times or to jump from one part of the chart to another: like a driving direction telling you what street to go to and which way to turn. You can also take a piece of sheet music for a song and just read the chords without dealing with all of the notes and get use to that.

3. Understanding pitch notation. A “pitch,” for this example, is just a note. There are five lines and four spaces that big dots (note heads) go on that tell you what note to play. If you know the notes on your instrument it is easy to learn what note on the page means what note on the instrument, and the more you know about music the easier it is. When you can speak a word and know how it’s spelled you can easily recognize it on the written page: so it goes with music. When you can play a certain thing you can recognize it when you see it.

4. Understanding rhythm notation. Various lines, dots and shapes tell you when to play notes and for how long to hold them out.

5. Putting it all together on complete pieces of written music. Written music goes from easy to difficult, and learning to read just takes a step-by-step approach to putting it all together.

There are only 6 shapes that make up most of reading music: 6 shapes. That’s not too big a mountain to climb. Combine that with some fundamental instrument skills and musical abilities and you can learn to read music.

You don’t need to read music to play well; playing is playing and reading is reading.

But if you want to improve your reading or get started, start with the above steps, get a few lessons with someone who knows what they are doing and start the adventure!

About Reading Music by Marty Buttwinick

Can music lessons ruin your originality?

Contrary to what some people believe, music instruction does not have to blunt one’s creativity. “Good” music instruction will enable one to expand and be MORE original, whereas “bad” music instruction can most definitely ruin your originality.

If what you study promotes understanding, practical skill, creativity, thinking on one’s own and expressing oneself, taking lessons can increase your ability to be original. Anything that promotes and nurtures these things can be considered to be “good.” Anything that inhibits these things can be considered to be “bad.”

From my experience, musicians who have had “bad” music lessons were taught one or more of the following: (1) things they didn’t need to know, (2) things they didn’t want to know, (3) were given bits and pieces of things instead of tying all the pieces of the puzzle together into a clear picture, (4) were showed instrument techniques that were either too hard, too easy or seemingly not relevant, (5) given lessons that didn’t seem to relate to their goals, (6) weren’t given the skills, information or guidance that the student really wanted and needed, (7) were given too many silly songs to play, (8) was taught to read when they didn’t want or need to, (9) was given false information that didn’t seem to relate to anything, (10) had mechanical things to do without any musical application (i.e., learn scales but not how to use them or lean song form but never write a song), and (11) wasn’t taught want they really wanted to know: had their personal goals neglected due to the teacher forcing upon them the teacher’s personal interests.

I am fortunate enough to have had a rather diverse background to pull information from and relate things to. I started piano at age three, drums at five, clarinet at eight, guitar at twelve, electric bass at thirteen and upright bass at eighteen. I’ve studied at universities and played gigs in ghettos, have played Mozart, Bach and Beethoven with 150 piece symphony orchestras, as well as playing rock and blues in garage-bands. Along the way I’ve studied with great teachers (and a few lousy ones), learned from books, copied licks from records and attended classes with wise old professors.

Music lessons should be fun and effective. Delivering quality music lessons is actually quite easy. After 25,000 hours in the teacher chair I have experienced the simplicity of it all: (1) discover what the student wants to do, (2) determine what the student needs to do to accomplish what he wants, (3) create a program that directly guides the student to his or her goals, (4) deliver the instruction in an efficient yet interesting manner, (5) give lessons that are neither too easy or too difficult, (6) set attainable short- and long-term targets (goals) for the student to reach (i.e., a performance, writing a first song, etc.), and (7) communicate freely about how things are going.

The key points in a student’s goal attainment, whether professionally, just for fun, or for the development of personal style and originality are: (1) the willingness and ability of the teacher to personally work with the student before him without being rote, (2) the willingness and ability of the student/musician to “be a student” and honestly strive to get the most out of what he is being instructed in without having the attitude of “already knowing it all,” (3) the workability of the teaching method itself, and (4) the instructor’s ability to instruct. When these points occur, abilities expand, professional skills are developed and originality blooms. If these four points aren’t there you might not get better with lessons, and your ability to create your own style or original music could be diminished.

Can music lessons ruin your originality? Not when they are right on the mark! Good music lessons should let you take your originality into a screaming affluence of creative ability and production.

Marty Buttwinick

The Language of Music - Part 2

An interesting part of teaching has been getting the idea across to students that you can’t experience something until you actually experience it; and you can’t experience it until you can actually do it. As you don’t know what it’s like to sit on a horse until you sit on a horse, you don’t really know what it’s like to play something well until you actually play something well! And until you actually hear something, recognize it and play on it on your instrument the first time you try you haven’t experienced “playing by ear.” To learn these things, calm, relaxed and efficient practicing is necessary. There’s no way around this.

On a physical level, the purpose of practicing is to work out the kinks and hesitations to develop control over what you’re playing. To play with a tense body is like driving a car with the emergency brake on. Practicing too fast is like speeding through the mountains and screeching around the corners—you will most likely end up in a tree. You need to develop relaxed control before going fast—even with playing one note. Learn to relax when you play!

For ear training, practicing achieves a familiarity with sounds and what they are called. It’s similar to knowing what words mean verses being able to say them without understanding their definitions. An infant most likely doesn’t know what “green” is until someone points to something green and says “This is green.” It’s the same thing with ear training. You take some sounds, learn what they’re called and how to play them, then drill listening and identifying them. Then as you can know and recognize a few different colors or many of them, you learn to recognize a few musical sounds or hundreds of them: small vocabulary—large vocabulary.

A major part of learning the language of music is practicing at the right speed; the speed in which you can actually DO what it is, then through repetition gaining control and certainty. (And some things need to be repeated hundreds of times before you get it so be patient!) Then once you can do whatever it is you can get it faster and more fluid. Practicing too fast is probably the number one boo-boo students make.

There are many elements to the language, and until the pieces are put together the puzzle remains unfinished. When I teach I spend a great deal of time simply filling in the holes that people have in their puzzles and creating sequences of things to do to complete the picture: small picture or big picture.

Whether you are learning your first songs, learning to read or filling in the holes, find something you want to improve and create a realistic practice routine. Put your puzzle together piece by piece and eventually the picture will appear and you’ll speak more of the language of music.

Play on!

by Marty Buttwinick

The Language of Music - Part 1

After teaching one-on-one for more than twenty-five years I have a good understanding of the successes and difficulties people have with learning to play music. Everything I have ever played, studied or taught boils down to some simple facts; and the most basic of these is that music is a language. This is not a new idea to mankind, but it is something I want to point out because its relevancy is often missed.

As in speaking, one communicates with words, in music one communicates with notes and sounds. There are only so many symbols, sounds and words to understand and when you learn them you can speak, read and understand what it’s all about. Then one either develops a small yet functional vocabulary or a large and involved one. And as people learn to speak before learning to read, learning to play music before learning to read music is an efficient first step. (And did you know there are only six little shapes that make up most of written music?)

You could break down the musical language into three categories: melody, harmony and rhythm. Melody is a series of single notes (note: a specific musical sound), Harmony is combinations of notes and Rhythm is the placement of sounds and notes. Besides physical technique and lyrics – that’s all there is to the mechanical fundamentals. The mechanics of music are finite. The creative application is unlimited.

To get more out of your playing, or get re-started if you’ve stopped, you can address your understanding of these elements, increase your vocabulary and clear up any confusions you’ve had. Start by looking up these words in a simple dictionary, as music dictionaries can get extremely involved. Also look up any related words you think of, then take your new understanding and listen to lot’s of music. Within that music find some melody, find some harmony and tap out some rhythms you hear. Get some “ears-on” application.

Speaking of “ears,” you’ve heard of “playing by ear”? This means to hear or conceive sounds and duplicate what they are on your instrument. Some people naturally do this to a certain degree, whereas most people have to work at it. But all this entails is gaining some understanding of the language — the relationships of the sounds to each other.

As the intention behind the words you speak are actually the true communication, when the sounds you play parallel the sounds in your “inner ear” the music is truly alive and meaningful. This is easier to learn then one might think.

Two additional things you can do to increase you musical vocabulary are to: 1) Play single notes on an instrument and match them with your voice, and 2) Create some simple sounds in your head and sing them: try and match what you create in your inner ear with your voice.

These are main entrance points to learning the language of music.

by Marty Buttwinick