I get asked about practicing all the time. Practice schedules, how to practice, what to practice, routines, habits, techniques… everything!
And while I’ll save my complete guide on practicing for another time (as it’s a very in-depth manifesto), I want to address an EXTREMELY common issue that adult learners have with the violin: consistent practice.
The Problem: Life
I’m sure you’ve encountered this scenario: you get home late from an exhausting day’s work. You plop down on the couch and take a breath, head starting to race with the things left in the day, whether they be personal or for family.
What am I going to eat for dinner?…
Gotta help the kids with their homework…
I should probably go to the gym…
Need to call my cousin back…
And then you see your violin staring at you out of the corner of your eye. You’ve committed to yourself to practice AT LEAST an hour per day, but gosh… so tired right now! A whole hour of violin practice suddenly looks like scaling Mt Everest.
Not gonna happen.
Understandably, this cycle tends to happen day after day, especially during busy pockets of life. It can become extremely discouraging because you can’t seem to build up any momentum.
Without momentum, practice takes a ton of mental energy which is hard to muster when life is crazy, which is most of the time.
I’ve seen this scenario play out a ton, especially with adult fiddlers (including myself!).
Showing up every day is the key to building the muscle memory skills needed to play the violin. Daily practice is way more important and helpful than doing a marathon practice one or two days per week.
Momentum makes it sustainable to practice every day. Once you have it, practice can feel energizing and relaxing instead of draining.
So how do you get that ball rolling the right direction?
The Solution: M-V-P (not the Lebron James kind but just as great…)
Here’s a gross confession: I once went years without flossing my teeth.
Most days I would feel too rushed to start my day in the morning and too tired at night. The toothbrush pretty much reaches in there right??
I just couldn’t maintain the habit until a friend suggested that I lowered my quota to one tooth per day. At that point it felt really silly to skip it.
It worked like magic!
Since I was already standing in front of the mirror, with floss just beginning to cut off the circulation of my fingertips, stretching my cheeks like a kid making faces, it was really really easy to just continue and floss the whole mouth most days.
Then sometimes I would exercise the right to literally take 5 seconds to floss one tooth, throw the floss in the trash and call it good!
Using this mindset, I created something for my students that helped them SO MUCH to form a consistent habit of practicing their violin.
I call it the Minimum Viable Practice, or MVP.
It’s a short (<5 minute) simple, yet useful practice which you set as your measure of success for the day.
It breaks the cycle of feeling like a failure when you can’t find time for a longer practice. It’s way more resilient against excuses because it only takes five minutes.
Defining “successful practice” is an incredibly healthy and helpful mindset shift. Our minds tend to skew negative, so if left to our own devices, we often tell ourselves that we didn’t do enough or we could have done more and then it feels like all is lost.
Our dreams are dead in the water.
An MVP is protection against “those days” when the thought of an hour of practicing seems really daunting. By just doing your MVP, you’ll have achieved success for the violin that day and everything else is considered gravy!
If it sounds a bit like an average warm-up, it’s supposed to! Just like my example of flossing, you’ll notice that on some of “those days” you’ll complete your MVP and think:
Well I’m already warmed up, I might as well practice that one song/technique/scale part.
These will turn into 10, 15, 30+ minute practices that will make a WORLD of difference compared to skipping days outright. And even the days where you just spend 5 minutes on your MVP will compound immensely over time in terms of positive momentum and muscle memory skill!
What does an MVP look like?
For an example of an MVP geared towards beginning learners, check out my video here, which comes from my beginner program ViolinWOD.
For more intermediate or advanced players, some examples could be:
- 8 full bows (frog to tip) on each open string, set to a metronome
- Basic scales: G major/minor, D major/minor, A major/minor, and E major/minor
It really doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as it makes sense for your particular skill level.
Remember, the goal is to get you to show up. The real power of the MVP is sparking practice sessions that would otherwise never have happened. Over time, the compound interest will accelerate your skill level faster than you could imagine.
Keep Consistent!
I have used it for a few years and I totally wish I had it when I was first learning! It would have saved a lot of discouragement.
Keeping a consistent practice schedule or starting a new habit with anything is a challenge, so don’t make it any harder on yourself than it needs to be. Set your daily quota low so success is inevitable, show up every day, and ride the positive momentum to achieving your goals!
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I want to hear from you! Please give this a try and leave me a comment down below with your MVP ideas or practices.
