Focus During Practice

[DaveKnific]

I'm very driven to practice. I practice twice a day, once in the morning and another time at night.

However, I have problems when I practice. As I sit down, I prepare myself to play scales (Hannon, JR stuff), other technique builders, and pieces, but when I begin to practice, I'll play the exercises and QUICKLY fall apart and start doodling around and playing random things rather than my material.



Do any of you have problems with focus during formal practice? What do you do to keep yourself from wandering?

[Tiko]

When I practice I mostly just improvise and play. Usually that's when I learn the most :tongue: Of course I do some technique exercises as well though :smile:

[Bigs]

I'm very driven to practice. I practice twice a day, once in the morning and another time at night.

However, I have problems when I practice. As I sit down, I prepare myself to play scales (Hannon, JR stuff), other technique builders, and pieces, but when I begin to practice, I'll play the exercises and QUICKLY fall apart and start doodling around and playing random things rather than my material.

Do any of you have problems with focus during formal practice? What do you do to keep yourself from wandering?

I usually start with a few warmup excersises like the Basic Major 1-5 excercise @ JROC, 5 to 10 minutes max. Then first I'll do some fun stuff, like playing songs I already know or improvise a little. Only when I'm all loosend up and comfortable, I'll start with technical excersises or playing new parts. At the end I close up with some more fun stuff.

I find that just playing songs for 30 minutes brings you just as much into shape as 30 minutes of boring Hanon excersises. For real strength and independence I use the Online Conservatory excercises (shortnin' bread :cool: ). Also, the playing of songs is why I want to sit down behind the piano in the first place, so I always make sure I do plenty of that.

[P-dur]

I usually end up getting so focused on executing those exercises as perfectly as possible, and that's what keeping me from wandering. Exercises can be really boring if you don't want to do them, a couple of times I have found myself sleeping on the keyboard just 10 minutes into my practicing routine, because of excersises.

[arroyomusic]

The reason your mind is wandering is that you are not setting a time limit to you practicing. Do 1 solid hour of arpeggios. And stop! Then move on to something else. It is a lot more productive when your mind knows it only has one shot at getting a good practice in. It is like you are making the most of every moment. That is what I do with the guitar, and my practices are way more productive.

-Arroyo-

[PinkFloydDudi]

I'm very driven to practice. I practice twice a day, once in the morning and another time at night.

However, I have problems when I practice. As I sit down, I prepare myself to play scales (Hannon, JR stuff), other technique builders, and pieces, but when I begin to practice, I'll play the exercises and QUICKLY fall apart and start doodling around and playing random things rather than my material.



Do any of you have problems with focus during formal practice? What do you do to keep yourself from wandering?

You just described my practice routines...lol. I'll play some exercises, then come across a lick that sounds familiar, and it goes "downhill" from there in terms of what I wanted to accomplish technically.

"oh that sounds like song X"...
*goes and looks up song X*
*plays song X for a half hour*

Yeah...i wander. Sometimes I wonder if its a bad thing, but I am in this to have fun. I really understand that fiddling around is probably not giving me the benefit that working on exercises would, but I'm ok with that.

I think the suggestion of setting a time limit is a great idea. Although 1 hours worth of arpeggios? Oh my.

[Bigs]

Hmm.. 1 hour of the same thing seems like overkill to me. I can't imagine your mind and body picking up much after the first 20 minutes.

[P-dur]

I think maybe 1 hour for practicing arpeggios only is a bit much for key practice, unless you have some really weird arpeggios. If you practice a c major arpeggio, you have also practiced a d minor, e minor, f major, g major, a minor and b minor 7b5 arpeggios. But time limits is useful, or other kinds of limits. I have a warm up-routine to prevent tendonitis and other crap, which I bet others have too, and after that I usually put the thing I want to practice into a sort of homemade piece or something, where I also can mix different exercises. I hope I didn't just rabble on now without this making any meaning for others than myself :P

[mlunapiena01]

you are better off practicing in 20-30 minute blocks w/ 5-10 minute breaks than practicing for an hour ... (for physical and mental reasons)

Regarding how not to wander ... practice not wandering ... you're aware when you're wandering, so it's a matter of self-discipline & creating a new habit by consciously choosing not to go off on a tangent

Also, it could help if you decide to set aside time to improvise before or after your exercise segment