Tips and Tricks
Effective practice techniques to speed up musical learning
Always Play Slowly at First
Speed is a result of mastery, not a goal to be pursued. Always learn new material at a slower tempo (50–60 per cent of the final tempo). Once you can play it perfectly at a slow tempo, the speed will come naturally.
Isolate the Problems
Don’t just play the piece from start to finish, hoping that the difficult sections will improve on their own. Identify the tricky sections, isolate them, and practise them on a loop until you’ve mastered them. Then work them back into the piece.
Mental Practice
You can practise even without an instrument. Visualise the movements in your mind, sing the notes in your head, and practise the fingerings on your leg. Mental practice builds muscle memory almost as effectively as physical practice.
Ideal for: travelling, lunch breaks, before bedtime. Professional musicians practise mentally all the time.
Memorising a Piece
Don’t try to memorise the piece by playing it from start to finish. Use these techniques:
- Chunking: Learn small sections (4–8 bars) and link them together
- Backward chaining: Start with the final bars and work your way back from the beginning
- Spaced repetition: Revise the passage after 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month
- Multiple keys: Transpose the piece into other keys to really understand it
Developing a Sense of Time
Timing is everything in jazz. Here’s how to improve it:
Set the metronome to half-time and treat the clicks as beats 2 and 4 (backbeat). This creates the most authentic jazz feel.
Walk or tap your foot to the beat whilst you play. Physical anchoring helps to keep the tempo steady.
Practise without a metronome, but THEN try it with one. Find out where your tempo stabilises or speeds up.
Sing the notes as you play them. Singing helps you internalise the rhythm better than any other exercise.
Always Register
The most underrated piece of advice: record yourself whilst practising and playing. Listening critically to your own recordings reveals issues with intonation, timing, dynamics and musicality that you don’t notice whilst you’re playing.
Rest Is Part of the Practice
The brain consolidates information whilst you sleep. Take 5–10-minute breaks every 45–60 minutes of study. A week of regular 30-minute study sessions is more effective than a single intensive 3-hour session at the weekend.