DAILY PRACTICE

Primary Instrument
All students in the Young Artist Program Levels 5 & 6 are expected to practice at least 60 minutes daily. All students in the Young Artist Program Levels 7, 8 & 9 are expected to practice at least 90 minutes daily. Students in Levels 10, 11 & 12 are expected to practice at least two hours daily. Students preparing for college audition are expected to practice three to four hours daily. If a student misses any day of practice for whatever reason, the practice time for the remaining days of the week must be increased to make up for it. If the student expects to miss practice for an extended time due to illness or vacation, the faculty will give the student specific instructions on what to do and how to maintain acceptable progress. It is suggested that the practice time be organized as follows, and the recommended times are given in order per the above groupings:

Technique: The student should have a planned daily technique regimen that includes five important aspects: 1) Warm up consisting of a large volume of exercises that increase endurance and speed (playing all the exercises in the technique book learned to date could fill this goal). 2) New techniques that are difficult, and require daily practice to master. 3) Scale work, especially for speed and accuracy. 4) Etudes that include scales, arpeggios and other technique to be performed very musically. 5) Metronome work that monitors the student’s ability to play very fast (acceleration). (30/45/60 min.)

Learning New Repertoire: Each new repertoire piece will take several weeks to learn, but the student should have specific goals for each week and specific goals for each day of practice. The student should approach each small task with the goal of playing it perfectly, and should never just play through unlearned pieces. A play-through approach only creates mistakes that will take much more time to fix later. (20/30/40 min.)

Performance Readiness: 1) New Memory Pieces should be played once daily, or every other day and it is important that they are played perfectly the first time. Follow the teacher’s directions regarding fixing memory errors, or suggestions for improvement. Some pieces may be placed on “long term memory check” which means they should be played only once a week and possibly only at the lesson. 2) Old Memory Pieces should be played only rarely, but at all times, the student should perform the pieces perfectly as if playing for any audience. In fact, it is best to have someone in the room to add the feeling of audience. (10/15/20 min.)

Secondary Instrument
Time to practice on a secondary instrument is in addition to the above times, and should be the same amount as the recommended for the primary instrument under the Music Appreciation section according to the student’s level.

Coursework
The musicology homework must be done at some time during the week, and usually the best time is soon after the class because the student is less likely to forget the instructions and lesson topic. Musicology homework will include reading, listening, writing and even learning music for performance in class. If the homework includes musical examples which must be practiced, play them daily until they are mastered. Coursework homework does not count toward practice time, not even the playing examples.

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(See BEYOND BEGINNER for more understanding of music study at the intermediate and advanced levels.)

(See SERIOUS STUDENTS for more understanding of serious study at these levels.)