Practice Schedules

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veecc
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Joined: Thu Mar 30, 2017 3:28 pm

Practice Schedules

Post by veecc » Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:57 am

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to practice more regularly. :roll: I want to come up with a schedule for how much to practie each day. I also want to learn songs as well as going through the bootcamp. I want to divide up my time between the two. Does anyone have any ideas or schedules that worked for them?

Thanks,
Vee

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sw1tch73ch
Posts: 539
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2016 1:23 pm

Re: Practice Schedules

Post by sw1tch73ch » Thu Dec 28, 2017 11:10 pm

You probably want to play for no less than thirty minutes, an hour if you can. Part of being able to schedule significant stretches of time will be if you play with good posture - the more relaxed your body is while playing, the longer you'll be able to play or practice. Obviously you can only relax so much and not fall off the piano bench...

Thomas, one of the Playground Sessions staff, laid out some guidelines in a post a while back: https://forums.playgroundsessions.com/v ... 937#p12378

The idea is to spend time every day, roughly the same time of day if you can manage it, but spend some time every day. The time you set aside should grow as you progress. If you start with 15 minutes a day, you will want to push for 30 minutes. When you can do 30 minutes, you'll want to press for an hour (or forty-five minutes, it's up to you). If you find some days that you have a lot of time available, spend it on piano. If you have less time, do what you can.
== Just keep playing. Just keep playing. Just keep playing, playing, playing! ==

-- jbs --

veecc
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Mar 30, 2017 3:28 pm

Re: Practice Schedules

Post by veecc » Fri Dec 29, 2017 1:01 pm

sw1tch73ch wrote:You probably want to play for no less than thirty minutes, an hour if you can. Part of being able to schedule significant stretches of time will be if you play with good posture - the more relaxed your body is while playing, the longer you'll be able to play or practice. Obviously you can only relax so much and not fall off the piano bench...

Thomas, one of the Playground Sessions staff, laid out some guidelines in a post a while back: https://forums.playgroundsessions.com/v ... 937#p12378

The idea is to spend time every day, roughly the same time of day if you can manage it, but spend some time every day. The time you set aside should grow as you progress. If you start with 15 minutes a day, you will want to push for 30 minutes. When you can do 30 minutes, you'll want to press for an hour (or forty-five minutes, it's up to you). If you find some days that you have a lot of time available, spend it on piano. If you have less time, do what you can.
Thanks. I feel that at this point I have about 50 minutes to an hour of stamina for piano playing. But I do notice that I need to relax a bit; I tend to put unecessary pressure on myself to get all of the notes correct and learn very fast and this reflects in my body posture. So the link you gave will be helpful.

How has your practice been going? When did you start playground sessions?

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sw1tch73ch
Posts: 539
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2016 1:23 pm

Re: Practice Schedules

Post by sw1tch73ch » Sat Dec 30, 2017 10:27 pm

When I started we were still using stone beads on an abacus for our computing.

Just kidding.

I started in September or October 2016. I had to build up to consistent practice, and manage to slack off over the Christmas Holiday season. That's what I get for starting something new so close to Christmas. I got serious about practrice, though, in the new year and by March had built up to about an hour a day. I didn't realize just how little time I was accumulating in the program though because I would practice "off the clock" for most of that time and then play "on the clock" for the final few minutes. I still practice off the clock a lot - but I transition to using a slow tempo on the metronome as soon as I can.

It actually helps playing correctly at a slow speed rather than trying to rush to keep up and playing the wrong notes quickly. On the PC and Mac you can adjust the tempo in 1 Beat Per Minute (BPM) increments if you want (and I often do go as low as incrementing by 4 BPM - but 8 or 10 is more common). So if the normal tempo for a piece is 120 BPM, I might start at 50 or so. Once I can play all the way through correctly at 50, I bump it up to somewhere between 56 and 60, and keep bumping it up little by little until I hit the wall and can't play it through. Then I slow it back that one increment and practice until my fingers just go for the right notes, and then speed it up. Usually It takes me a few days for the hard lessons using this method. Some take longer.

I find that after about an hour, I start to run out of steam. Early on, it was my fingers that were giving out. Now it is my brain. One hour might be my limit when doing new stuff. My mind only wants to hold onto so much new information at a time. Then I take a break. I might come back later in the day and put in another hour. What I don't want to do is work my hands until they hurt and then have to wait a few days to get back to it. There are other things you can do while resting your hands.

Someone on Facebook suggested the "flash card" system called Anki. It's generic but has a lot of already built "databases" of cards. I downloaded the Music set and am working on my sight reading skills with those and they don't tire out my hands. They are cool because you self grade your responses to the cards and where you think you need more work, it will flash those cards more often.

I am up to about 130 hours of "active" practice time (where the program has tracked my practice) and have completed three 'Three-Star" Rookie songs. Remember to check the songs. You can start learning songs any time you want and take a break from learning them as you need to (if you find it too advanced, for instance). After all, we're ultimately here to learn songs - especially if our favorites are in the Playground Sessions Song Library.

If the songs you really want aren't already in the song liblrary, you can request them, but also you can get the sheet music from other sources and use the techniques you learn for learning songs work for that sheet music - you just don't have the automatic scoring. Practice just one hand of the song and just a few measures at a time. Go through the whole song a little at a time, then work on playing both hands - eventually you'll have learned the song. It's nice to use Playground Sessions to learn songs, but it's the technique that really is key (getting the instant feedback is a bonus of course).

I'm revisiting the lessons in Rookie Boot Camp, turning off the finger numbering hints and playing them again. I expect this will help my sight reading. There are some lessons in the new "Courses" section that I'm working on also, playing "Both Hands", and there is so much more to explore even before I get to Intermediate, but that's coming quickly.
== Just keep playing. Just keep playing. Just keep playing, playing, playing! ==

-- jbs --

veecc
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Mar 30, 2017 3:28 pm

Re: Practice Schedules

Post by veecc » Sun Dec 31, 2017 3:26 pm

Thank you so much for your help! Sometimes it's great to hear about someone else's progress (it keeps me motivated). I will definitely be trying out anki for the sight reading! I completely get what you mean my your mind getting tired. I can actually feel my mind when it starts to shut down, it's kind of a weird feeling. I practice mostly off the clock myself. When I start to make mistakes I immediately stop it and restart. It wasnt until a while later that I noticed that those times don't count (in the clock).

Good luck with your progress and Happy New Year!

Pohutukawa
Posts: 33
Joined: Sat Feb 24, 2018 8:18 pm

Re: Practice Schedules

Post by Pohutukawa » Sat Mar 03, 2018 6:05 pm

I use Anki for a language I'm learning, and have been using it for about thee years. Excuse dumb Q, but how do you use it for sight reading? to you have a visual of a measure on one side and the name of the note on the other??

scirocco
Posts: 33
Joined: Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:25 am

Re: Practice Schedules

Post by scirocco » Sun Mar 04, 2018 4:55 am

I tried Anki for music sight-reading training and quite frankly it’s really bad. While it is excellent for language training, sight reading is much more mechanical and the whole Anki “repeat what you don’t know” concept doesn’t work nearly as well, for me anyway.
There are much better options; google Sight Reading Factory for PC or for a phone app I use one called Music Notes.

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