3 effective ways to end your violin practice
This blog post accompanies Violin Class Podcast Episode 47. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I've talked a lot about violin warmups and technique exercises that you should be doing at the beginning of your practice session, but it’s just as important to look at how to end our practice.
The way we end our practice session sets up the beginning of the next day’s work, and ideally we end wanting to go on and not in a mountain of frustration (although that happens, too!)
Here’s my suggestion for ending your violin practice: the R/R/R method.
If you need some more ideas for practicing technique at the start of your violin session, you can download that here: Free Warmups Ebook
The R/R/R method
The 3 R’s are:
Run-throughs
Review
Reading
I will be breaking down:
What they are
Why and how you should be practicing
Some ideas for integrating these into your own practice sessions.
Let's start with number one: run-throughs.
Run-throughs:
Run-throughs are a little bit of time in your practice session where you play through whatever you're working on from, from beginning to end without stopping.
Wabout why it's important to practice. Run-throughs there's a few reasons. So if you've listened to other episodes on practicing, which I have many of on this. Podcast you'll know that it's really important to practice things really slowly. And to also break them up into little chunks.
Why are run-throughs important?
As you know if you’ve followed Violin Class for a while, it’s important to break things down into small chunks when we’re practicing.
Context
But, equally important is putting those chunks back into context. We need to build those small sections back up into a full, cohesive piece.
The way to practice this doing is to play run-throughs often, and without stopping for any mistakes.
When we do this, we train our brain to go from practice mode: diagnosing technical issues, figuring out solutions, experimenting, fixing, trying things again, repetition… to performance mode: big picture, musicality, and playing all of the notes without stopping for mistakes.
In early stages, you will inevitably have stumbles, but the more you do the run-throughs, the more comfortable you’ll get with pushing forward.
Stamina
The second reason is that run-throughs help us to build stamina.
Despite its small size, the violin is a physically demanding instrument. It's easy to get tired by the time we’ve reached the end of our piece, especially if it’s long.
In doing more of these, you're going to build up stamina to be able to play for longer amounts of time. And this is going to help you to make less mistakes in those longer sections as well, since you’ll be less tired by the end.
Performance practice
When done properly, run-throughs help us in practicing performance. The more you practice performing, the better performer you become.
How to practice run-throughs
Your run-throughs are going to look and sound different depending on where you're at and learning your piece.I
Stage 1: Early stages of learning a new piece
When you’re in the early days of learning a new piece, you’ll be working through it in sections and won’t have learned all of the notes yet.
So in this stage, you’ll end your session with a run-through of the section you’re learning rather than the entire piece.
If you're doing a run through of everything, it's probably going to do more harm than good, because you’ll be playing through sections that you haven't actually learned properly.
Even though this is really tempting, it will probably lead to internalizing mistakes. Be patient and stick with what you’ve already learned.
So, if you’ve only learned 1/3 of your new piece, your run-through will be just that: 1/3 of the piece. But, since you’re still learning it, you’ll want to play it under tempo: I call this a walk-through.
The goal is to play everything:
In time
In tune
With as many details as you can catch.
If you're in the early stages, you're going to have to slow it down quite substantially in order to do that.
Stage 1 summary: Play through the smaller sections that you’ve learned at a slower tempo.
Stage 2: Mixed-tempo sections
The next phase of a piece is when you finished learning everything, but it's not all at the same tempo yet.
Here’s how to play a run-trough in this scenario:
Take the hardest section and figure out the tempo where you can play that section without any mistakes. It will probably be quite slow.
Write down that tempo— this will be the speed at which you're going to do your run through of the entire piece.
This extra step ahead of time is what's going to allow you to build the stamina and the continuity that you need to be able to play your piece from A to Z.
Stage 2 summary: To summarize, Stage 2 is where you've got all your sections down, but they're not at the same level of playability. You're going to find the tempo where you can play the hardest section comfortably, and you're going to play your entire piece as a run through at that tempo.
Stage 3: The polishing phase
When your piece is starting to feel comfortable, and when you've learned all the notes and can play it reasonably in tune and in time, from the beginning to the end, you’re in the “polishing” phase.
In this phase, we're thinking about different things as well: especially how we can get the musical ideas to come forward more, and how to stay relaxed when playing.
All of this is going to take a bit of experimenting with more run-throughs. Remember, the goal with run-throughs is that you're able to play your piece from beginning to end without stopping. This becomes even more important when you're in the polishing phases, because we've got so many details here to think about that.
Sometimes it's tempting to just stop and fix something, but resist that temptation during your runthrough— instead, pretend that this is a performance. No matter what happens, the show must go on.
When you’re done, take a second and review. Make some notes in your music as to what you want to do for the next time. This way, when you come back to the instrument in your next practice session, you know exactly with what you want to start.
Stage 3 summary: In stage three, we're doing more run throughs and you are treating the run-throughs as a performance. Don’t stop for anything and then making notes as to what you want to work on next time.
This is how to improve your “big picture playing,” which will lead to making less mistakes when you're playing the violin.
Review
The second R is Review.
This means reviewing pieces you've already learned so that you can keep them in your fingers.
The goal is to build a bit of a repertoire which prevents all of the hard work that you've put into your older pieces from disappearing.
How to review your music
So how do we go about reviewing music? I’m a big believer in putting things on rotation.
My suggestion, especially to beginners, is to start a repertoire list. At first, it's going to feel like a very short list of just a few you these songs.
But, just add your repertoire to your notes folder because over the years, you're going to start to have quite a sizable list. From there, it's easy to make systems for practicing all of those old pieces.
It’s important to do this because even though we dedicate months of our free time to learning this repertoire, a few years down the line you really do start to forget that music.
So, keep a list, and rotate playing though your old music. As long as you're doing this regularly, you’ll never go too long without having touched a piece.
In your last 5-10 minutes of practice time, go into your list and you choose a piece and you work on it a little bit in the same way that you've been working on your other pieces, maybe breaking things down into chunks, working on maybe a shift or a bit of an intonation. Try to improve just one thing using the skills you have at your disposal.
This type of work will allow you to have a violin repertoire that’s always under your fingers, with lots of music to play at a moment’s notice.
Reading
The 3rd R is reading, or sight-reading
For some people, sight reading comes naturally. For others, especially those who are more comfortable learning by ear, it takes a lot more practice. Luckily, sight reading is a skill like any other, meaning that you will hear progress if you practice it.
So how exactly do we practice sight reading?
I’d suggest finding a source of sheet music a few levels easier than what you can currently play. You can use method books, fiddle tunes, pop songs, or simple classical music. Look through the piece making sure you understand all of the notation, key, and other markings, and try to read through it at a slow tempo as exactly as you can.
Then, listen to a recording and to hear if it resembled what you played, and try it again.
Being a fast sight reader is a useful skill for preparing music quickly, and is sometimes asked for in orchestral auditions like for a community orchestra. Try to do a few sessions each week, and you’ll see progress in your reading.
In summary - the R/R/R method for ending your violin practice
To review, the 3 R’s are:
Runthrough
Review
Reading
Realistically, you won't have time to do all three in each practice session, so instead I would suggest putting these R’s on rotation.
Depending on which stage of learning your piece you are in, you may benefit from more run-throughs. If you are in the earlier stages, perhaps you can practice sight reading instead.
I find all 3 of these skills to be enjoyable to practice, so this allows me to end my practice on a high note.
Free Vibrato Ebook
If you want to follow along more in-depth, download my free vibrato ebook.
You’ll learn about the historical background of vibrato, arm vs. wrist vibrato, more about the 4 stages of learning vibrato, 3 pre-vibrato exercises, and common vibrato mistakes.
