Polyphony. (Professional Resources).

Musical Practice and its Transfer in Life

A Return to the Topic of "Practice"

I notice that in recent months I have returned several times to the topic of "practice." Perhaps it is because we spend so much of our teaching time helping students practice--seeking new and different ways to assist students in growing in their own practicing. Let's face it, teaching students to practice--to hear, understand and enjoy the music they are playing--is at the center of what we do as music teachers. It happens with all levels and ages of students. Recently, I have begun to think about how those same practice skills we teach can transfer to our lives at large.

There is no one reading this who has not mastered the art of practicing. We all have done it, loved doing it and loved playing the music no matter the occasion. Different people practice their instruments with varying skills and levels of insight, and we all find our own paths--that is, what works for us--so we can make music.

The summer is an opportune time to reassess and even to undertake changes in our lives--to try different things. This column for June and July comes at what is for most a fermata in the teaching year. It is a time of some rest and perhaps a respite from a busy year of teaching. Without realizing the full extent, we as teachers and performers have developed skills that now can transfer to our lives as a whole. Imagine you are practicing a piece for a forthcoming concert, for a church offertory, to accompany a trumpet player down the street, to play for a jury or for your own enjoyment. Or, imagine you are teaching a lesson to anyone--any of your students--and as part of the lesson you are teaching them to practice and listen. All these activities seem like regular parts of our lives, activities encountered every day. It is central to our work with the student.

So, it can be enlightening and encouraging to reflect on the ways that practicing an instrument or voice holds the potential to transfer to our lives, to develop significant changes in whatever direction we choose.

Musical practice involves regularity. We develop a method of practicing--by section, phrase, parallel musical keys, musical concepts and so on. As musicians and teachers, we know what to do to learn a piece.

Regularity in musical practice naturally is transferred to setting up a degree of routine in our lives. For our lives to function at a certain level, we need regularity. We ask, "What is important to include as part of a routine in our daily lives, and what, perhaps, can be less structured? What is essential and important, and what is not?"

Our music practice teaches us the importance of trying new ideas and new methods to master a passage. How many times do our students hit a roadblock in their pieces? At those times we help them find new ways to work through difficult passages. We offer the student the benefits of our perspective and creativity when developing different ways to practice to move past a perceived roadblock in a piece.

Thus, in our lives, we attempt new activities and develop new interests and insights in differing areas of life. We accomplish this the same way we did working with a difficult passage: by imagining something different in the music or our lives and then trying it. It requires no major effort to try a new idea--we simply do it. And we try many new activities; some may seem right, and others we may not keep. Continually, we are surprised at the results.

Our music practice teaches us how to overcome a seemingly insurmountable problem. Sometimes a piece of music is just too difficult--this is no surprise. We can continue to practice it with minimal results, perform it when it is not ready or put it aside and let ourselves grow until we are ready for it.

In life, too, we learn not to push, to let happen what will happen and to learn from all experiences, even those not so well suited for us.

Our music practice teaches us persistence, and, without a doubt, students reap rewards in proportion to their persistence. They learn this naturally over the course of time. The rewards of persistence in achieving a musical goal, learning a favorite piece or even mastering a passage, are so well known.

So too can be the rewards of pursuing a dream we may have in our lives. Or we may strive to change something in our lives or within ourselves, achievable in large part through persistence, awareness and consciousness.

Our music practice teaches us the magic of spontaneity! Sometimes we simply try a spontaneous musical idea on the spur of the moment, and it works! We may not know where the idea came from, but we experience its musical effect. So often, spontaneity is allowed in our practice due to prior careful practice, the interpretative decisions we have made, providing a framework to work from.

What about spontaneity in our lives? The spontaneity can enter if we are willing to take a chance and do something differently, perhaps even on a whim. Spontaneity is not something that is dreamed up. It is something that happens because we make room for it--we allow it to be. How much richer is a musical performance, and a life, with a bit of spontaneity within a well-structured musical plan or a balanced life.

Our music practice helps us develop sensitivity--sensitivity for musical tone, shaping of the line, color, texture balance. What greater gift can we share with a student than the ability to hear with greater depth and richness musical elements and sounds she has not heard before? A goal of practice is to listen with sensitivity, and we achieve this by varying the sound again and again in that moment, often with the help of a teacher.

In life, we develop sensitivity to what is around us by delaying our reactions, listening to what another is saying a bit more closely, observing nature a bit more consciously this summer or watching the ever-changing skies a bit more frequently. We listen to our inner voices, our intuition.

Practicing a musical score teaches us to take time for the beautiful and the meaningful in the music. We learn early as students about the rewards of taking time for expression in our own musical practice, perhaps with no performance on the horizon, but really to read through a score a student is playing, to practice a piece for a church service or a concert. We learn to make space and take time for our own music making.

As we transfer this to our lives, we realize the importance of taking time for what is beautiful and meaningful in our own lives.

Our musical practice teaches us to breathe within a musical score. This is what we teach. How many students try to play too fast? How many times have our teachers suggested we take time, let the music breathe and observe the "pregnant pause"?

With our lives, how many of us, myself included, set a pace that is too fast? Whereas once we resisted letting the music breathe and grow toward a more mature interpretation with expansiveness, now too, we should allow our lives to breathe like the musicwbreathe and become more expansive, more balanced.

Practicing teaches us how to make changes in a musical score and have them stick. We teach students to change the way a piece sounds and to play in a way that is more satisfying to them.

Eventually, we grow to make changes in our own lives, to move toward spending more time in what is meaningful to us. In life, we make changes that provide balance and peace.

Practicing music teaches us reflection and inner hearing. We learn to hear a piece in our minds as we would have it played, and teach this to our students. In music practice, we reflect on how a work should sound and then achieve that sound.

Now too, we transfer this to life realizing the necessity of reflection and of hearing our own inner voice.

Practicing our instrument or voice teaches us patience. There is no way around it, because one must be patient to learn a work well. It often does not happen overnight, and patience is a key element in our practice.

Perhaps it is one of the greatest challenges in life--to be patient with all that is; to let things unfold in our lives and allow others to have their own space and experience their own rate of growth.

Our music practice teaches the value of planning. This is something every student deals with: planning and projecting when a work is ready to perform--truly ready. All too many students would play a piece in public weeks before it is really ready, but once they realize how long it takes to learn a piece, the rewards in terms of confidence and mastery are grand.

In our daily lives too, we plan, but do not allow all to be structured with no room for freedom.

Our music practice helps us etch out a bit of time for ourselves to do what we most enjoy. It is our special time when we are alone with our instrument, the music and ourselves.

How frequently do we spend time with ourselves to reflect and do what we most enjoy? It sounds like a great practice to me!

Our music practice lets us express ourselves, our feelings and emotions. It lets us communicate with the world.

So too do we move toward a fuller and richer involvement with our personal expression in more ways than our music as we grow in age and move along our own life paths. We express our feelings more freely, openly and authentically.

Our musical practice helps us develop insights, lets us create what is buried in our hearts. As we grow in life, through our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and into full maturity, we find additional ways to create what is in our hearts. As life evolves, we seek to not create only through music, but in additional ways as well. Life provides richer and deeper experiences as a partial result of our added creativity.

Our music practice teaches us how a piece of music can grow on us, simply by giving ourselves a bit of time and perspective through studying it and by listening to what it has to say. Our musical practice teaches us to give a piece of music we may not be drawn to at first a chance.

In fact, we learn to give life a chance or to give a different idea or differing personality the benefit of the doubt. We do not impose our ideas on others and listen to what they have to say--attempt to understand their perspective. Perhaps the more we listen, the more we understand. And perhaps if we listen more carefully, allow others their space, try to understand different perspectives and show compassion, wars can cease.

This is what we are teaching our students when we teach them to practice.

Wanted: Teaching Tips

MTNA has a website feature devoted to teaching tips. Please share with us some of your favorite tried-and-true ideas. Send your tips to: MTNA, Attn: Teaching Tips, 441 Vine St., Ste, 505, Cincinnati, OH 45202-2811; fax [phone]; or e-mail to [e-mail], putting teaching tips in the subject line.

Send Us Your Questions

Do you have a teaching question you would like to have answered? Perhaps you have a practice tip for students you would like to share or a studio idea you are trying differently this year. Please write and share your questions, ideas and tips, or other experiences in teaching. Send us your reflections. Questions and other items may be sent to: American Music Teacher, Attn: Polyphony; 441 Vine St., Ste. 505, Cincinnati, OH 45202-2811; fax [phone]; or e-mail to [e-mail].

Jane Magrath

Norman, Oklahoma

Jane is internationally known as a pianist, author, clinician and teacher. She is professor and director of piano pedagogy at the University of Oklahoma.