The Most Important Piece You Aren’t Practicing

This is the third in a series of posts focused on how to set - and achieve - goals. Be sure to check out the prior posts, Why Being a Better Harpist Isn't Good Enough, Three Disciplines of a Trustworthy Technique and read on to the end of this post for a special invitation. 

There is a pivotal discovery that every musician makes sooner or later: making music isn’t just about what you can do. It’s as least as much about what you know. The information, concepts and experience that you garner as you practice and play is perhaps the most impactful factor in how quickly you grow and learn.

For example, the first time you learn to play a minuet, you learn about a minuet as well. You discover that a minuet is in a triple meter, commonly ¾ time; you learn that it has a specific form with contrasting sections and repeats. Understanding these concepts helps you to learn the minuet more quickly and play it with more musicality. More importantly, you will be able to bring your understanding to other minuets and to every other piece you play.

Teachers know when a student has begun to realize the importance of this aspect of music study when they suddenly express a desire to improve their sight reading or their knowledge of music theory or their note reading. 

All of these skills and concepts, and many more, fall under the general heading of “musicianship,” a term which covers everything about music except the actual playing of it. Every aspect of musicianship is vital to our personal achievement in music. Musicianship isn’t just a piece of the puzzle; it is the biggest piece of the puzzle. And yet we often content ourselves with learning notes and fingering and virtually ignore the most important piece, the one that would make the single biggest difference in our playing.

If one of your goals is to improve a musicianship skill, I’d like to show you how to tweak your goal a little to make it both easier to achieve and more powerful and useful when you achieve it. Instead of aiming to learn or improve one specific skill - sight reading, theory, rhythm, etc - I would encourage you to put a simple habit in place that would allow you to achieve all of these related skills in a gradual, practical and nearly painless way.

Can improving your sight reading or playing more musically or knowing more about chords really be as simple as a single habit? Yes. Almost.

Common obstacles to progress in any of these areas include the challenge of setting aside time to study, finding a resource to study from, figuring out what you should be learning first and devising a way to know if you have actually made any progress. 

I have always found that the easiest way to work on and achieve musicianship-related goals is to make the underlying skills a daily habit. Since improvement can be hard to measure objectively, finding 10 minutes or so each day to work on the skills will let you know that you are doing the right work to develop the right skills, even if you can’t immediately see progress.

Some simple ideas for including the “right work” in your practice might be:

  • Sight reading one piece each week. 
  • Practicing note reading each day. 
  • Improvising for 15 minutes each week. 
  • Memorizing a new piece each month. 
  • Doing a chapter in a theory workbook each week. 

If this still seems too much for you to tackle, you can still start on your path to progress by simply paying attention in a more focused way than you have been. Do you notice the key of each piece you play? Do you think about the chord structure or research the composer? Simple things yes, but a terrific step in your growth as a musician.

Whatever habit you choose to install to develop your musicianship, remember that you are training your ears and eyes to make connections between what you see on the page, what you hear, what you play and what you understand. Creating a more holistic approach like this will relieve you of some of the burden of trying to learn too many things at once, while at the same time putting your focus where it needs to be: on the music you are making. 

AN INVITATION

I understand that setting goals can be difficult and that actually achieving the goals you set can be even harder.In order to help you with this process, I’m capping off this blog post series with a free online workshop called “Don’t Abandon Your Goals - Achieve Them!” This is no ordinary webinar. This special online workshop will give you the chance to have me help you design your strategy, decide on your tactics and create a day-by-day working plan. By the end of the workshop you will know exactly what to do and how to do it to make your harp goals happen.

The workshop is scheduled for Saturday, February 1 at 1pm EST and will be the most interactive online event I’ve ever held. It’s about you, your goals and your harp happiness! Don’t miss it. Register now for the workshop.

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