4 Steps To Creating Your Home Practice Zone
Have you ever tried cooking dinner at a picnic table? It’s quite a miserable experience to even try and light the little camping stove let alone slice and dice veggies, heat up water, or make toast. Sure, its doable, but you just can’t cook on a camping stove like you can in your kitchen. You just don’t have the right tools out there. There are also pests to contend with and a million other distractions (like watching the road tripping biker dudes try to set up that pop up tent for the last 45 minutes.) If you can’t cook at a picnic table, how can you expect your child to productively practice their piano in the middle of the family chaos?
image by: marganz via sxc.hu
When I was in school, I had choices about where to practice. I could practice in the basement of the dorms on the clunky old upright while hundreds of kids walked by on their way to and from class. I could practice in the instrumental practice rooms where my friends would wander by and stop to knock on the doors just to say hi, or I could practice on the Steinway baby grands locked away in an upstairs hallway, away from everyone else. Guess where I was most productive?
Your child needs a “Practice Zone” at home. We probably can’t send the piano away to a locked and guarded tower so we have to make the most of what we have available. These are some of the most basic needs of a home practice zone:
1) You need an instrument in good, working order ready to go at all times. Don’t make finding the plug for the keyboard the first part of practice. Place your instrument in a spot where it is always there, ready to go. For some, the piano in the living room is the way to go, for others, a keyboard in the bedroom works just fine. Find the spot that works for your family.
2) Your music should be easily accessible. One of the first suggestions I make to new parents is to keep all the piano music for lessons in a bag at the piano. Have a backpack, reusable shopping tote, or even a paper bag your child decorates next to the keyboard at all times. If we have to hunt down our music, we won’t be practicing it.
3) Have a practice tool box. Practice isn’t just about playing music over and over again. There are writing assignments, notes that need to be named, fingerings to be reminded of…and we need tools for those purposes. Have a small container on or near the keyboard stocked with sharpened pencils, markers, erasers, and paper clips. Let your child know that these are for marking in their music books. They can circle anything they keep forgetting, write in a finger number (or two) as needed, or even write a reminder to ask about a certain term in their book. Children can be timid to write in their books but they shouldn’t be. The best pianists usually have music so marked up it’s almost impossible to read by the time they have it learned!
4) Remove distractions. If your piano or keyboard is in the middle of the home, make it clear to others that practice time is starting and that our pianist is not to be disturbed. Even going so far as to put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on top of the piano can help signify to family members that this is not just free play time.
Giving your child the tools for a successful practice time can really help improve their chance of success in piano lessons as well as show them that you value their musical education.
Give this a try for a couple of weeks and let me know how it goes!
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