Efficient Music Practice: Learning Before Practicing
Improve music skills by learning before practicing. Focus on accuracy, challenging yourself with new things, and balancing warm-up, technique, projects, and review.
00:00:00 Learn before you practice. Focus on acquiring new knowledge and skills. Practicing without learning is like dancing without knowing the choreography.
🎵 Getting better at music by practicing less.
📚 Differentiating between practice and learning.
💃🍳 Examples of how practice and learning apply to different domains (dance, cooking).
00:02:13 Learn before you practice. Understanding the requirements and familiarizing yourself with the music will lead to efficient practice and better performance.
🎶 To improve at music, it's important to first understand the piece and be able to physically play all the notes on your instrument.
⏩ Practice is about refining and reinforcing skills, while learning is about acquiring new knowledge and understanding.
⚠️ Skipping the learning phase and only focusing on practice can lead to wasted time and inefficient improvement.
00:04:24 Learn first, then practice. Practicing mistakes can be detrimental. Choose accuracy over speed.
🎮 Video games allow you to move on after beating a level, but in music, mistakes can accumulate.
🎶 Practicing a mistake in music can result in learning it incorrectly and struggling with it later.
⏩ Prioritize practicing for accuracy over speed, as accuracy leads to smoother and faster performance over time.
🍔 Learning first and then practicing is more effective than rushing through practice.
00:06:38 To improve at music, learn before practicing. Start by learning notes and rhythms, then understand the other aspects. Avoid practicing mistakes. Make time to learn new things instead of only polishing old ones.
📚 Don't skip the learning step and jump straight to practicing.
🎵 Start by learning the notes and rhythms carefully and accurately.
🔄 Avoid practicing mistakes and focus on continuous improvement.
📖 Make time to learn new things and challenge yourself.
00:08:44 To improve at music, challenge yourself with new scales, pieces, exercises, and repertoire. Learning new things unlocks new puzzles to understand and brings growth and satisfaction. Structure your time between learning and practice for short and long-term improvement.
🎵 Challenging yourself with new scales, pieces, exercises, and repertoire improves your musical skills and helps you play old repertoire even better.
🧩 Learning new things and developing the ability to learn unlocks every new challenge and brings satisfaction and happiness derived from growth.
📚 Make time to learn and grow with new and challenging exercises, songs, and projects instead of practicing the same things over and over again.
00:10:55 Learn the four basic sections of effective music practice: warm-up, technique, projects, and review. Each section contributes to improving musical skills.
🔥 The warm-up section is about physically preparing to play by adjusting your space, loosening up your body, and tuning up.
💪 The technique section focuses on maintaining and enhancing mechanical skills like scales and patterns, improving key fluency, and working on accents and articulation.
🎶 The projects section involves preparing repertoire and making progress on specific pieces or songs, even if it means struggling and sounding inexperienced.
00:13:08 Learn first, then practice. Make time for growth and challenge. Balance warm-up, technique, projects, and review. Enjoy music. No sponsorships or subscriptions.
🎵 Don't worry about what others think of your playing, focus on deliberate practice to improve
💪 Have different projects at different levels of readiness and work on them with attention to detail
🌟 Maintain and revisit repertoire, and remember to have fun with music
Want to deep dive into this video?
