I get asked about practicing all the time. Practice schedules, how to practice, what to practice, routines, habits, techniques… everything!
And while I’ll save my complete guide on practicing for another time (as it’s a very in-depth manifesto), I want to address an EXTREMELY common issue that adult learners have with the violin: consistent practice.
The Problem: Life
I’m sure you’ve encountered this scenario: you get home late from an exhausting day’s work. You plop down on the couch and take a breath, head starting to race with the things left in the day, whether they be personal or for family.
What am I going to eat for dinner?…
Gotta help the kids with their homework…
I should probably go to the gym…
Need to call my cousin back…
And then you see your violin staring at you out of the corner of your eye. You’ve committed to yourself to practice AT LEAST an hour per day, but gosh… so tired right now! A whole hour of violin practice suddenly looks like scaling Mt Everest.
Not gonna happen.
Understandably, this cycle tends to happen day after day, especially during busy pockets of life. It can become extremely discouraging because you can’t seem to build up any momentum.
Without momentum, practice takes a ton of mental energy which is hard to muster when life is crazy, which is most of the time.
I’ve seen this scenario play out a ton, especially with adult fiddlers (including myself!).
Showing up every day is the key to building the muscle memory skills needed to play the violin. Daily practice is way more important and helpful than doing a marathon practice one or two days per week.
Momentum makes it sustainable to practice every day. Once you have it, practice can feel energizing and relaxing instead of draining.
So how do you get that ball rolling the right direction?
The Solution: M-V-P (not the Lebron James kind but just as great…)
Here’s a gross confession: I once went years without flossing my teeth.
Most days I would feel too rushed to start my day in the morning and too tired at night. The toothbrush pretty much reaches in there right??
I just couldn’t maintain the habit until a friend suggested that I lowered my quota to one tooth per day. At that point it felt really silly to skip it.
It worked like magic!
Since I was already standing in front of the mirror, with floss just beginning to cut off the circulation of my fingertips, stretching my cheeks like a kid making faces, it was really really easy to just continue and floss the whole mouth most days.
Then sometimes I would exercise the right to literally take 5 seconds to floss one tooth, throw the floss in the trash and call it good!
Using this mindset, I created something for my students that helped them SO MUCH to form a consistent habit of practicing their violin.
I call it the Minimum Viable Practice, or MVP.
It’s a short (<5 minute) simple, yet useful practice which you set as your measure of success for the day.
It breaks the cycle of feeling like a failure when you can’t find time for a longer practice. It’s way more resilient against excuses because it only takes five minutes.
Defining “successful practice” is an incredibly healthy and helpful mindset shift. Our minds tend to skew negative, so if left to our own devices, we often tell ourselves that we didn’t do enough or we could have done more and then it feels like all is lost.
Our dreams are dead in the water.
An MVP is protection against “those days” when the thought of an hour of practicing seems really daunting. By just doing your MVP, you’ll have achieved success for the violin that day and everything else is considered gravy!
If it sounds a bit like an average warm-up, it’s supposed to! Just like my example of flossing, you’ll notice that on some of “those days” you’ll complete your MVP and think:
Well I’m already warmed up, I might as well practice that one song/technique/scale part.
These will turn into 10, 15, 30+ minute practices that will make a WORLD of difference compared to skipping days outright. And even the days where you just spend 5 minutes on your MVP will compound immensely over time in terms of positive momentum and muscle memory skill!
What does an MVP look like?
For an example of an MVP geared towards beginning learners, check out my video here, which comes from my beginner program ViolinWOD.
For more intermediate or advanced players, some examples could be:
- 8 full bows (frog to tip) on each open string, set to a metronome
- Basic scales: G major/minor, D major/minor, A major/minor, and E major/minor
It really doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as it makes sense for your particular skill level.
Remember, the goal is to get you to show up. The real power of the MVP is sparking practice sessions that would otherwise never have happened. Over time, the compound interest will accelerate your skill level faster than you could imagine.
Keep Consistent!
I have used it for a few years and I totally wish I had it when I was first learning! It would have saved a lot of discouragement.
Keeping a consistent practice schedule or starting a new habit with anything is a challenge, so don’t make it any harder on yourself than it needs to be. Set your daily quota low so success is inevitable, show up every day, and ride the positive momentum to achieving your goals!
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I want to hear from you! Please give this a try and leave me a comment down below with your MVP ideas or practices.
Thank you,Jenny. For one so young, you are so wise,(thought I was going to say Master,didn’t you?). I just retired and still there are times I don’t seem to have time or motivation. I will try this and see how it works out. Thanks young lady and best wishes.
Hi Keith
Just retired too, i planed to attend to music academy courses. And had task to do every week. Shifting position, scales according to each song i havé to play, orchestra training , schelduded skype with jenny teacher. Now it is vacations…. I train bike In Alps And loose my winter fat;-)
End august i havé schelduded orchestra playing camp with our orchestra professor And then In septembre back to academy courses And jenny advices by Skype.
It is very difficult to train alone without aims And help.
Dont stay alone!
Practice with others
Set up objectves
Practice with method
Hi Jenny,
Thank you for this most interesting insight. I am going to implement the five minute a day regimen into my musical life starting tomorrow and work my way up from there.
Excellent! Please keep us posted on how it’s going. Do you have a specific 5 minute MVP regimen selected yet?
Yes…thanks for these great tips. I’m going to us this with my young students…the MVP. : >) This is what I do in my studio with my kid students: I have the parents made up practice cards..about 10 cards per week for practice at home regarding the practice plan (written) I have sent home. The kids choose 2 cards from the pile/day. They can not see what is written on one side. Each card has a different technique, etude, exercise, scale, piece/tune (2-3 phrases..8 measures); several cards to play the whole piece through, one card to play the whole tune at a practice and two cards out of the 14…have a creat-your-own-card practice (I want them to be creative and independent). After choosing the two cards they take one and turn it over and practice what the card tells them..for how long and how many repeats. Then card two…same. Then they are finished for the day. : >) It works like a charm. I have started it as well for my adult students to…they really get a big kick out of doing the card game for practice…it fun and they don’t have to worry about what to practice. Stay tuned. Diane
Wow! I love the card deck idea, brilliant! Do you just jot the practice idea down on index cards? I would love to see a photo of one of these decks. 🙂
Hi Jenny. I can send you pictures of my cards in early Sept. I leave for fiddle camp back in NY state…Ashokan (Southern Week) in a few days and will not have time before that….email me in a private message from your site here and I would be very happy to share this with you. Also, if you teach children violin/fiddle…you should know about this incredible website and one of the programs that is going on now. Coursera.org Program: Teaching the Violin and Viola, Creating a Healthy Foundation. It’s a free 10 module course produced by Northwest University, School of Music. I’m a mentor for this course having taken the 10 modules on Coursera in late 2014. I highly recommend this free course to all teachers, both advanced and beginning.
Jenny, email me and I will share with you my practice card game for kids and young adults.
Stay tuned. Diane in SoCal. (Diane Gravlin)
I solved the problem of being too tired after work many years ago: I practice in the morning before going to work – for me that means to get up at 5.30, but hey it’s totally worth it 🙂
This is really good. I also like the card game from the Gravlins. I use cards to randomize the tunes I practice so I work through all the tunes I know to keep them fresh.
I often find I lose practices due to life intervening. This will help.
How many cards are in your deck? I love this idea, and I’d love to know what all your cards say!
Well said Jenny!
Hi Jenny
What a great concept. I know there are days I want to practice my violin, but as you said life gets in the day..I am certainly going to work this into my routine. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Always scales (2-octave) works for me. C,G,D,A,E then F,B-flat,E-flat and A-flat. Aftr that, if motivated, thirds for each scale and arpeggio’s . It is so good to receive your email on this issue. Thank you.
Yes, a thousand times, yes. I practice for at least one hour every afternoon six days a week ( hey even God rested one day 🙂 ). On days when I just can’t if I at least play scales for a bit it helps, my fingering has gotten better and faster, my sight reading has improved despite being severely dyslexic and I have more confidence. My bowing still needs a lot of work, but I’ll get there.
Thanks Jenny! As a high school teacher (Spanish) I often told my students to study a little each day which is so much easier than studying everything the night before a test. Your advice is a life lesson that applies to many activities.
Hi Jenny,
Yes! I’ve found that even during the sailing season, when I tend to be on the water 9am to 8pm some days, I know if I just pick up my fiddle at least for 15-20 minutes, usually ends up being about an hour…having too much fun. But if I feel like, after 5-10, that I’m just too tired, I stop there, so I don’t end up too frustrated. Been able to practice pretty much every day, so far. I also have my fiddle right there on my desk, behind my laptop, so I can just grab and go for it. I just start out by tuning…one thing leads to another, LOL! Good advice from you, Jenny, thanks! 🙂
The idea of carts is Bright. because We trend to do what We have rather. Randomized cards allow to study every fields even those we dont like;-)
Probably cards are made according the level of the student….
Thanks Jenny, I subscribed over a year ago and now Last of the Mohicans is one of my go to fiddly bits I do when I pick up my violin. I’ve definitely fallen into the trap of feeling like all is lost because I haven’t practiced in months, but what you’ve said here is so much kinder, I’m going to try it 🙂