Stepping Away From A Stuck Practise Session

Recently, I was in the middle of a practice session when I noticed there was a vibe shift. Up until that moment, everything was going fine - I’d started out super focused, working on an arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” that I was getting ready to perform in this semester’s Spring Recital.

Before actually sitting at the piano, I’d mapped out my intentions for that practice session: I’d practice for 30-40 minutes, isolate the piano part from the vocal part to focus on rhythmic accuracy, and end by putting it all back together Verse/Chorus/Verse. 

So far, so good.

About halfway through, I realized I needed to zero in on a couple of measures in the Chorus. I noticed that I was having trouble getting the piano part to align with the vocals, and the reason was because my rhythms at the keyboard weren’t accurate. 

I started with one of my favorite practice strategies: the practice box. 

With the Practice Box, I’ll mark a section of the music I’m about to focus on with brackets. In this case, I was focusing on one single measure. I’ll also put a spare pencil on the C8 key of my piano. Every time I play the measure correctly, I’ll move the pencil down to the next lowest key until I’ve completed a certain number of reps (typically 3-5). 

But my strategy didn’t stop there.

I realized I needed to make my Practice Box even smaller, zooming in on one beat at a time instead of trying to play through the whole measure at once. My struggle with the rhythm was happening at a micro, not a macro, level.

To smooth out the wrinkles, I needed to be certain that I was confident in all the notes - how they moved, how they aligned, and how they fit within each beat. 

So, here I was, dissecting the measure to its foundation, taking it one beat at a time and only moving to the next beat after I’d played the previous one smoothly and confidently at least 3 times.

Slowly and steadily, I made it! I was able to play through the full measure from start to end without stopping, and I understood its foundation now. I understood its structure. I could instrumentally speak it just as easily as telling the rest of the musical story. 

The next layer was to add the vocals back on to that measure. If I’d thought rhythmic dissecting was tough 15 minutes ago, I was in for a whole new kind of challenge!

First, I worked on the vocals alone. I realized that my hiccup was happening on beat 3. To my horror: I didn’t know my pitch. I kept wanting to hear it in the piano part, waiting for the accompaniment to hand me my note, and I couldn’t find it. 

So, I broke it down beat by beat once again, this time adding the vocal line, pausing on beat 3 to hold out the pitch, and check it against the piano to make sure I was singing the right one. If I could do that smoothly, confidently, and accurately at least 3 times, I was golden! 

I did it! 

The last layer, the final boss, was to be able to sing through to beat 4 whilst also playing the piano part and doing it well. No hiccups. No pitch correction. No rhythmic inaccuracies. 3 - 5 times. I could do it, right? 

Well…not quite. 

Beat 3 continued to be the bane of my existence, even when I’d already thought I’d smoothed out all the structural wrinkles. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make it over the hurdle into beat 4. 

That’s when I realized this was my sign to take a breather. 

So, I pulled out my Real Book (gifted by my beloved soul tie years ago) and did some jazz standard sight reading for a couple of minutes before officially stepping away from the piano.

Sight reading and noodling around with chord structures in a low-pressure, zero-stakes mindset gave my brain the little reset it needed to be okay with wrapping up the session. I didn’t want to leave the piano frustrated, and allowing myself to just play for the sake of playing helped regulate my feelings about not being able to hit my goal 100%. 

Not every practice session is going to be amazing, energizing, or perfect. (In fact, I caution against using the p-word when it comes to practicing, but that’ll be another post for another day). 

Sometimes, we’re going to start out with a clear goal, a neatly portioned map of how we want to spend our time at the piano, and then the exact opposite will happen. Or, we’re met with an unexpected challenge that asks of our focus first. 

Other times, we may find ourselves playing repetitions without being present in the moment, or overworking ourselves to the point where we wind up on autopilot anyway, confused about why we can’t get a measure smoothed out. (Guilty!)

All of that is okay. It’s part of the process and the journey of being a musician. 

It doesn’t mean we’re wrong, or bad, or unable to figure out whatever we’re working on. Sometimes, it just means we need a break. 

So, if this post is finding you in mid-practice frustration, know that it’s going to be okay. Give yourself the space and grace to step away from the piano for a bit. Do something else that you enjoy - take a walk, read a poem, call a friend - and then decide if you’d like to come back to the piano later in the day, or wait until tomorrow. 

Trust me, that quiet walk out in nature will be way more helpful than trying to trudge through one more autopilot-driven frustrated repetition at the piano. 

~

If you’d like to sharpen your skills on learning how to practice smarter not harder, fill out our inquiry form HERE. Let’s kickstart your piano learning journey and book a FREE 30-minute Discovery Call!