Practice in a setting that is ideal for you. For most people, this means a quiet, well- lighted room with absolutely no distractions. Use a music stand and an armless chair. Try to practice at the same time each day for 20 to 30 minutes.

Practicing doesn't have to occur in one long session. In fact, many professional players will break their practice time down into half hour or one hour sessions. If you are tired or no longer paying attention, stop practicing. It's no longer worth it. Come back in an hour or two when you're not tired anymore. If your attention is wandering while practicing, take a short break and come back to it. You will end up getting more out of your time if you take breaks and are focusing better, than if you try to play straight through.

The French for "practice" or "rehearsal" is "repetition". A very wise and musical race, the French! Because that's exactly what good practice should be - repetition. Playing a thing once is not practice.

  Scales are important! You are practicing patterns of notes that will occur over and over again in all sorts of music. Treat scales just like pieces: don't just play them a couple of times, take them apart and work on the difficult bits over and over before putting them back together again. Work on scales 5 to 10 minutes to warm up and start your practice session..

Playing a piece all the way through and then putting the instrument away is not practice. Only very rarely should you play any piece all the way through.

 If you notice that you are making some mistakes (or even if you feel like you are going to), stop and isolate those sections. Play them EXTREMELY slowly until you can get them right. If rhythm is a problem, put your instrument down and clap and count the rhythm. Then play the rhythm on your instrument without changing the notes (no fingers). Then, put it all together again, still slowly. Don't allow yourself to practice mistakes -- this is useless! Anything you do wrong more than once is a mistake, and you should stop and correct it immediately.

  Practice SLOWLY. Too many people think that speed is the key, that practicing at a fast tempo will help them move faster and become a better musician. This is not true. Practicing slowly and accurately is much, much better than fast practice. If your playing is accurate at a slow tempo, speed will come naturally. If you practice too fast, you will trip up over the same things over and over again.

 

When practicing, here are things you should keep in mind:

  *Have specific goals

  *Practice in a place where you can focus

*Practice SLOWLY

  *Practice with good tone quality

*Don't practice mistakes; fix them immediately

*Stop practicing when you are too tired to play or can no longer focus

  *Practice often (but not necessarily for a great amount of time)

  If you remember these things, you will grow to be a fine musician!