Practice technique: Section-by-section
Category: Practice and Performance
photo credit: Sean Rogers1
Here is another practice technique you may want to try. Divide your song into logical sections. Your section could be as short as a few bars, or as long as a few phrases. A good rule of thumb is: the more difficult the section, the shorter the section should be. An example of a section-by-section practice would be:
1. Play through the entire song
2. Identify the different sections. Rate the sections by perceived level of difficulty. (I recommend using a scale from 1-10)
3. Choose one of the most difficult section to focus on. (It doesn’t have to be at the beginning!)
4. Play the section the number of times corresponding to the difficulty. For example, if you rated the passage to have a difficulty of 7, play it 7 times in a row.
5. After repeating the passage a number of times, it is important to put it back into context. So play the entire song again. (If it is a really long song, just play a section of it again)
Now, of course – this is just one of the ways that you can use the section-by-section technique to your advantage. The main idea is to identify the difficult sections, and to repeat them a number of times. The more difficult the section, the shorter it is, and the more times you should repeat it. Play around with different ways of using the section-by-section technique. I’m sure you’ll find something that works well
for you!
Posted on January 23rd, 2009 by sharlene
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