So much to practice and so little time: I think this is a feeling that a lot of us can relate to. I'm going to show you how you can continue to progress on the violin even if you're limited by your schedule.
In this episode, I discuss:
- The 2 keys to practicing with limited time
- How to fit more violin practice time into your day
- How to approach practicing during busy seasons of life
- My 3-template practice plan system
For lesson inquiries, contact me at violinclass.co/contact or violinclasspod@gmail.com.
So much to practice and so little time: I think this is a feeling that a lot of us can relate to. I'm going to show you how you can continue to progress on the violin even if you're limited by your schedule.
In this episode, I discuss:
- The 2 keys to practicing with limited time
- How to fit more violin practice time into your day
- How to approach practicing during busy seasons of life
- My 3-template practice plan system
For lesson inquiries, contact me at violinclass.co/contact or violinclasspod@gmail.com.
So much to practice, and so little time:I think this is a feeling that old lot of us can relate to. And in this episode, I'm going to show you how, even if you're limited by your schedule, you can still make a lot of progress on the violin. Like most of you, I have a busy schedule and many responsibilities that prevent me from doing whatever I want whenever I want.
And although I'm a professional violinist, I also struggled to make time for violin practice in the same way that I did when I was younger. This can really be a challenge, especially to those of you who are just starting out. Since you're not only maintaining your playing level, but you're also setting up your foundational skills and that takes time.
I'm here to tell you, though, that it can be done.
I've worked with people that have really blown me away with the amount of progress they've made, despite being parents working stressful jobs or being working full-time students. By the end of this episode, you're going to see how it's really a mindset game and seeing the big picture will help you to figure out the best way of organizing your practice in your life.
Currently, wherever you're at.
Lastly, I'll be dispelling the myth that you need to be practicing for an hour every single day in order for it to be worth it, to be playing the violin. Although, yes, that's an ideal, it's something that we hear a lot. Our situations are not always conducive to that. And I think that for busy adults whose careers are far away from that of a professional musician, it can be really discouraging if you can't find that time regularly. I'm going to share some tips that I've picked up in my over 20 years of playing violin, which has spanned most of my childhood adolescent and all of my adult hood with every single life event in between and how I was able to maintain the instrument over that period of time. And things that I've learned working with adults who have busy schedules.
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But first welcome to violin class. This is the podcast for anyone who's learning the violin as an adult. My name is Julia. I'm a professional violinist and a violin teacher who specializes in working with adult learners.
If you enjoy this episode, I would appreciate if you could take a minute to leave a rating or review in apple podcasts or wherever you listen, it's really helps me to reach new audience members and to grow the show.
Any resources that I referenced in this episode, I always send out in email form as part of the violin class newsletter, where I also send little extra tidbits with each new episode. If you would like to get that you can sign up for free at violin class.co/newsletter. And lastly for lesson inquiries, as I do teach privately online new episode requests, or just to say hello, you can email , violin class pod@gmail.com. With that back to this week's episode.
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So I'm in a particularly busy season of life. I'm a parent. I work. I try to keep up with friends and sleep as much as I can. I'm sure. I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate. everything else that I do is squeezed into the couple of hours of free time.
I have left over. And most of my violin practice needs to be compatible with either that time or while I'm taking care of my one-year-old, which as you can imagine, comes with many interruptions. So I have to make a lot of adaptations in order to get assemblance of a regular violin practice. And it certainly does not look like it used to.
Maybe your life doesn't look like mine, but perhaps you're starting a new job or you're going through a move or you're raising a family. Or you just work long hours and you are tired when you get home. You might be struggling to get it all done and make time for your hobbies.
And sometimes you wonder whether it's even worth it to keep going. If you have so little time to practice and you don't really feel like you're making any progress at all. This is something that I encounter pretty often in my studio. And as I said, there are ways that I think you can make it all work.
Some of my students work 60 hours a week. Some of them have four kids and a lot of them are busier than they were when they first started. For whatever reason. And here is what they do.
And here's what I do to continue making progress. Despite the challenges of scheduling and busy-ness.
I think that there are really two keys to make practicing work when you're busy and they are as follows.
Number one. Make a plan, but stay flexible.
And number two, practice, little and often.
So let's start with breaking down, making a plan. That is my first piece of advice.
I think like in a lot of things, when you're busiest, staying organized is really going to be key. It's going to help you to make progress when you have little time. And if you can make a plan for that time ahead of time, you are not going to waste as much kind of scrambling and trying to figure out what you're supposed to be doing.
So, if you don't already plan your practice, you should.
I have an entire episode on how to plan your practice. It's one of the earlier ones and I will link it in the show notes. So go ahead and listen to that if you haven't already after this episode, because. I go over a lot of practical steps to doing that. I am going to take that concept a little bit further and I'll encourage you if you're busy or even if you're not busy because things just kind of come up.
Practice plan templates. For different increments of time. So this is a concept that I started when I was a student. And it really helped me because, I was busy then in a very, very different way than I thought I was busy then. Um. I did really have a lot of things to balance at that time. And I found that even though I was practicing a lot, I didn't always have the same amount of time to practice.
/ here's what I discovered really helped me. Instead of making a universal practice plan I I made a time-based system. where essentially I created practice templates. for different lengths of practice sessions . I'm going to walk you through this in a minute, but first here is why this works.
First of all, you're reducing the friction that you have when it's actually time to play the instrument.
It's the same reason that nowadays I like to make a meal plan for my family for the entire week. That way, when I have 10 minutes to get dinner ready, I'm not trying to also scramble and think about what I can make with what's in the fridge, how I can use it. My leftovers. I've written it down. I've decided ahead of time.
. All I have to do is just make the meal and I don't really need to use my brain anymore.
And second of all, it allows me to be really flexible and accommodate for expected or. not expected changes in my schedule.
So here is how this system works.
Take three pieces of paper and make three different practice templates. The first piece of paper, you are going to make a plan for when you have 30 minutes to practice. And, you know, maybe you'll make this longer. If you, at least once a week have like an hour session that could work too. And you can go and listen to my, make a plan episode, and you can kind of go all out here.
You'll have time for scales for all of your exercises, time to review your pieces, working on certain chunks and this is where you can kind of put all of your, all of your reach stuff, the things that you aren't regularly always getting to, but would like to get to.
/ if you want some inspiration, I have an example template that is up on my website. You can check that out at violin class.co/practice template. And I'll have that linked in the show notes for you.
/ Now, the second piece of paper is going to be what you're going to do. If you only have a 15 minutes to practice.
I chose 15 minutes specifically because it feels like kind of a throwaway amount of time. Like, I don't know if you have something to do at four and it's 3 45. You don't really feel like you have time to get anything meaningful done. But in fact, I find that if you're smart about it, you can get a really productive practice session and.
So on this sheet of paper compared to your, your first sheet of paper. You have to cut a lot. You have to be very specific.
And I'd also recommend to have some things on rotation. This is a really great way of making time for more exercises, more techniques and concepts that you don't really feel like you have time to visit every single time you practice. But maybe you'll have time to visit it every other time.
Here is how you want to organize your 15 minute practice session. You're going to divide your time into three categories. The first category should. The last or the first category should last about five minutes. And is going to be your time to warm up.
Here I'll be here. You'll do some left-hand exercises, some right-hand exercises, and then put everything together with a scale. If you want some guidance for figuring out how to practice and plan for a really effective warmup. I have an ebook for that on my website. It's free and you can download it at violin cost.co/warmups. I'll link it in the description in the show notes as well.
The next category is working on your piece. .And you're going to pick just one goal because in five minutes, I think it's not realistic to do more than that. That could be one measure that you're having trouble with. The one that, you know, is the most problematic that, you know, you need to practice. Possibly the thing that you are skipping over. When you're doing run-throughs and figure, you'll just get back to later on. This is the five minutes where you're going to be attacking that head on.
I'll actually probably be working with a timer here, so I don't get carried away and I still have time for my last category too, but really this is like the essence of the practice.
It's going to be the most focused and the most productive part of my practice. And if I can really give. 100% of my energy to whatever problem I'm trying to figure out, whatever goal I have, that I've identified ahead of time. Chances are you're going to be able to figure it out in five minutes. And that is worth so much because once you figured that out, And your next practice session, then you can start to drill it. You can focus more on muscle memory. And. that's going to help you progress in the piece that you're learning.
The next category is I'm going to try to pick one single goal. In my piece. So this is maybe one measure that I'm having trouble with.
/ then the last category is going to be for review. I want to do some more big picture stuff. So if I'm like halfway through the piece and in my second category, I'm figuring out a brand new measure that I've never learned before here in this last category, I'm going to go back, play a slightly larger section of something that I've already learned before.
Maybe it's my second week on something. Maybe it's my 10th week of something, but essentially this is not new material It's things that I.
want to reinforce.
/ So in summary, we have three categories. The first one is your warmup technique exercises. And the second one is focusing in on one measure or just one section for five minutes. And the last one is reviewing more big picture things. 15 minutes, divided into three categories like that. Goes by pretty quickly and you can be, really productive in that time.
/ Lastly on your third of a sheet of paper, you're going to make a plan for if you only have a five minutes to practice. And I think this is the most important of the three, because you know, when you have an hour, it's good to have a plan, but you have enough kind of built in buffer time that you can just kind of do whatever and you'll still get things done most of the time. If you only have five minutes, it's really easy to tell yourself that it's not really going to make a difference in the longterm, which is not true. You'll see why in a minute, but it's important to be laser focused. So what I would do if I only had five minutes is. Pick one exercise that relates to what you're working on. And if you're not sure what to work on, just work on tone. So tone exercises are like long tones, just something that's really long and slow, and that feels comfortable.
And you're really just kind of paying attention to your sound and having your, your tone sound as good as you can possibly get it. You put on a timer and you just play some long tones for five minutes. Those little bits of progress in your tone is really going to add up.
So that's what I would recommend that you do. Three sheets of paper, three different plans. And what this is going to do is it's going to give you flexibility. That is, I think what is the most important part of anything in life, you know, it's, I try to stay organized.
I try to plan ahead and think about the future, but I find that at least with my personality, if I am too dead set on a plan and something comes up, it becomes kind of stressful.
/ that way, if something comes up like, you know, your kid gets sick and has to be home from school, or you have a friend that's in town that wants to visit. You have something that you can just reach for and is it going to help to guide your practice that way you're not throwing it all away., because, , I think it's quite frustrating to, in anything, if you had planned to do something for 30 minutes and that time gets cut to five.
It's always going to be worth it, to still pick up your instrument and play.
You just have to reevaluate what you're going to get done that day.
The other thing I want to say. Regarding plants is it's very important as an adult learner to be realistic with your schedule. And I'm talking what your schedule is right now today. You know, if you are starting out and you're telling yourself, oh right now I'm a little busy, you've got this, this going on your ideal plan is to practice every day for 30 minutes, because that sounds right. That's what you were encouraged to do as a kid, but you look back and in the past few weeks, and you're barely fitting in two sessions per week. You're just going to get discouraged and really quickly. I would much, rather as a teacher that you embrace the time that you have, which has just those two sessions, you choose a few goals and then you work on those. Rather than feeling like you're always behind.
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. So I said there were two keys to making it work. If you're busy, first one is making a plan and being flexible with that plan. And the second one is getting used to practicing in small chunks often.
As kids, there are certain, I wouldn't say rules, but certain ways that we're kind of taught to practice. Especially if you're a former Suzuki kid like me, If you had lessons, your, your teacher might've asked certain things of you.
So for instance, this might be. Practicing at the same time, every day for the same amount of time, always with a parent, always in this certain order of things. And that's great. I think that's obviously. An ideal. It's something that is very effective, especially to younger children. But it is just, again, not super realistic for most of our schedules.
my schedule is different every single day. And I don't always have the same times available. They're not always the same length and a lot of the times something comes up.
Instead of always trying to fit in your practice time in one longer session.
So we'll say like 30 minutes, 40 minutes. An hour or whatever is kind of your, your ideal, whatever you have in mind. Don't be afraid of chopping up that time into small increments. maybe you can't find a 40 minute chunk of the day where you're just only playing violin. But maybe you can fit in 10 minutes in the morning where you're doing your warmup and maybe a couple, couple of scales, something like that. When you get home from work before dinner, you can squeeze in another 20 minutes and maybe another 10 before you go to bed. I think that this is a really effective way of practicing.
This is pretty much how I do things nowadays I don't really spend just like an hour at a time practicing. That said I have a lot of years of experience in practice, so I can be pretty productive in short amounts of time. . It's definitely something that takes a little bit of getting used to. But as I said, it is very effective.
if you're the parent of a small child, this is something that you probably do with everything. He squeezed in a little bit of housework here, a few emails there, and somehow at the end of the day, you've gotten a lot of things done. I think the same will work very well for violin.
/I talked a little bit earlier about how it's important to reduce friction when you are busy. And I think this is especially true. If you're going to be coming back to your instrument several times throughout the day and in those small chunks. One tip that I give my students is to keep your violent stuff out.
If you can and that's going to help to reduce some of the friction from practice because you can see everything you don't need to spend any time, getting things ready. I generally keep mine out on a wall-mount. I will link the one I use in the show notes.
If you're interested in getting one. And if you're tired and only have a few minutes, I just find that it's so much easier to just pick up the violin from it. Stand. I play a few notes call today rather than have to go get it out of its case. Search for your music, your lesson notes, all of that jazz. So, uh, obviously this won't work for everyone, but if it's something that you can do, I have really enjoyed having my violin out on the wall where I can see it.
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okay, to wrap it up, I wanted to touch on a few tips for those of you that are in those busier seasons of life. The first one is to learn how to do mental practice and I could absolutely, and probably should do a whole episode on this. I have one where we've touched on this concept. My interview with my student, Olivia which I will link in the show notes.
She talks about how she has managed to learn how to figure out, how to practice on the bus while traveling between university and , her job. And if you've never heard of mental practice, it is essentially practicing without your violin.
You might've heard me say this on the show before violin is 80% mental. And although we are really. Trying to develop muscle memory. A lot of things take figuring out before that. And a lot of that figuring out you can do without your instrument. Especially when it comes to working on rhythm on tempo and making a plan for articulation musicality. There's a great article that I will link in this week's newsletter by the Bulletproof musician. That kind of goes over how this works.
, and the details are going to be beyond the scope of this episode.
But definitely something that I'd like to cover in the future. ,so look into mental practice and that's going to allow you, especially if you're someone that travels a lot to get work done on the violin without actually having your instrument with you.
The second tip is to make sure that you don't forget your technique practice.
You'll notice that in my recommendations for your practice templates, the less time you have, the more time relatively you're spending on technique, this is going to set you up to be able to be really, really focused on those. Goals that you have in that kind of second category of practice when you're working on your, on your piece. And. A good warmup is just really foundational.
That's something that my teacher would always say. If you don't have time to practice, make sure you're really doubling down on your technique. , if you want any guidance for how to set up a warmup routine, you can check out my warmups ebook. On my website@violinclass.co slash warmups. And that should get you at least started with how I would recommend to set that up.
Lastly, and this is one that is maybe a little obvious, but is so common that I find myself doing as well that is a worth. Covering, and that is make sure that you remove distractions. Put your phone away while you're practicing. The phone's a great tool. It really is. You can use a tuner, you can use a metronome, you can record yourself, all things that really do help to make you more effective.
But if you are receiving a text, if you take a break and find that you are wanting to scroll. That's going to take you out of the focus that you have, and especially if you only have 15 minutes or. Even five minutes. I think that the cons really outweigh the pros. So what I would recommend to do, because I, the tool that I use the most on my phone is the metronome. And I can hardly go a session without using my metronome. Is I use an old fashioned digital metronome That I got in like 2010. And it's still going strong. And, um, I'm glad I have it because that allows me to put my phone in airplane mode, put it where I can't physically see it.
And then I don't get distracted. I get more done and I feel good at the end of the practice, it feels good to be able to accomplish something without having had your phone. Right. So. I'll link the digital dimension home that I use in the show notes. It's just a really basic one. Um, I think that if, if you're into aesthetic things, you can get one of those old fashioned. , mechanical metronomes.
Those are, really nice as well. I don't have one personally, I just use the digital one, but it works great. And.
It helps to remove distractions.
So let's review what you should think about doing, if you are a busy person and still want to make progress on the violin. And avoid getting discouraged, because you just don't have the amount of time that you want to have to play. First of all, you can do it.
You can still make a lot of progress on the violin. I'm all, I'm actually constantly surprised with how much progress you can make. Even if you just have 15 minutes a day to practice, but often, you know, not 15 minutes once a week. If you can squeeze in 15 minutes every day, that's going to be a lot more effective than doing one hour, just once a week or even twice a week.
The keys to making it work is to make a plan. But to stay flexible.
I'd recommend making templates that outline what you would do. If you only had 30 minutes to practice, 15 minutes to practice or five minutes to practice so that you can reference those without having to think and come up with a new plan. And again, if you want some inspiration for what this could look like, I'll have my template examples linked in the show notes, or you can find them on my website, violin class.co/
practice template.
I would also embrace practicing in small chunks, but often, and spread out throughout the day, instead of trying to find the time to do one hour all at once.
I think that small chunks will prevent you from getting fatigued, especially if you have any preexisting injuries. And once you get used to practicing that way, you can be really productive.
That's it for this episode, I hope that you have found a few tips in there that speak to you, and that you'll be able to integrate in to your next practice sessions and my assignment for any of you who are still listening to this is to make your own templates three for three different lengths of time and list out what you will ideally practice for each of those sessions and then try it out this week and let me know how it goes.
You can email me@violinclasspodatgmail.com. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you guys on the next one.