How do you plan your practice?

[bernadette60614]

I tend to practice the hardest parts first and to do those repeatedly.

Then, to go back and clear up the "bumps" and "hiccups".

Wondering how everyone else practices.

Also, do you plan your practice for the week or do you go day by day?

[hfmadopter]

I think your way is a logical way to work out the more difficult sections of a piece. I do something similar myself. Much depends on what I want the piece for, sometimes I work on a piece of music to get practice in from it and freshen up an old skill or to learn a new one. It helps to have the section I want to work at to be included in a composition rather than a study all on its own ( exercises). If it's a piece I want to finish and polish up then I get all the rough work done as you describe above and then go on to polish the entire piece.

I have no particular time frame in mind. I think subconsciously that a month should do it but it may or may not ( again depends just exactly what the purpose is for the work in the first place). Obviously new levels of work take time. Some passages get fixed up in an evening of practice ( probably not often !) but very often within a week, then comes transitioning into and out of the phrases that took the work to begin with.

So much depends on the level of work we are speaking of though. Some pieces in the New Age genre I just pick up and basically sight read them, others take a week or two to get going. Level 7 classical right now for me takes considerable concentration, in fact some level 5 pieces may take a fair amount of that ( note that I played above level 8 at one point in my life and I'm slowly trying to work my way back up to someplace near that, just a year into it now, it's getting there). Pieces within Levels are not created equally, FWIW. On top of that I'm not a levels fan, it's just a way to gauge progress. i like to play pieces I love, that always makes the work easier somehow and more fulfilling for sure.

[pianoplunker]

I tend to practice the hardest parts first and to do those repeatedly.

Then, to go back and clear up the "bumps" and "hiccups".

Wondering how everyone else practices.

Also, do you plan your practice for the week or do you go day by day?

Lately I have had success by practicing the very last bar - the ending chord or riff - first.  then a few bars leading into the ending, and then a few more bars to the end until I can establish an ending section. Then a few bars leading into the ending section, and a few more until there is an obvious middle section. then a few bars leading into the middle section, and then a few more until there is a definate beginning section. Many pieces will have more sections but the basic idea is to work each section an equal number of times over the long run. This helps me not have a train-wreck at the end.  I used to play like "uh-oh, here comes that ending, I hope I can do it"  but now I already know I can since I have already worked it just as much as the easy sections.  "Planning" is something you do if you dont have dogs, rabbits, kids, and grandkids. As far as a plan- I have nothing

[lighthand045]

I don't plan my practice schedule.

When it comes to a new piece this is how i start:

1)Sight read the piece completely(at tempo).
2)Mark the hardest bits of it.
3)Sight-read the whole piece until i memorize a handful(on the piano or sometimes outside the practice room)
4)At the memorization of the easy parts of the piece, go practice the hardest parts.
5)Integrate the hardest parts into the piece and memorizate it as a whole.
6)Polish it.

People always told me that I should play the hardest parts first but it feels more comfortable for me to do it this way.