Finding the Motivation to Practise

We’ve all been there. The lesson ends, you’re keen to work on mistakes and try new pieces. But then life gets in the way. Homework, extra-curricular activities, and general tiredness kick in. Before you know it, a week has gone by and you’ve barely picked up the fiddle. This becomes a habit; you don’t see a immediate decline in your playing, but over time you start to realise that your progress has been stalled. Talking through what’s causing a rise of disinterest would always be my first port of call, followed by positive reinforcement of the progress they have made, and how much more they can achieve just by adopting a new mindset.

Here are some ways to combat this:

• Medium-term plans – With christmas round the corner, it is never too early to ask your students what christmas carols they want to perform to friends and family during the holidays.
• Practise Charts – Begin a discussion with students about what days they are able to practise on. Reward them with stickers and fun activities when they achieve their goals.
• Plans – Practise should involve a warm-up, scales, then pieces to work on. If each part takes 5-10 minutes you’re looking at up to half an hour of practise each time, which should fly by when they have been given a few small activities to learn.
• Little and often – It is more time-efficient to focus on a small aspect of a piece regularly than play through it several times. Many musicians of all abilities like to start by playing the whole piece, identifying the tricky parts, then playing just those before finishing with another play-through.

Hope this helps, if you have any more suggestions, please get in touch.

Happy violining,

Vicki