Struggling to Practice Consistently
Practicing music is so interesting to me.
It’s something that I’ve done for over 30 years, yet it remains one of the single most challenging things for me to get off my duff and actually do.
For me, the biggest challenges have been while holding down full-time jobs, particularly those that weren’t in the music world.
For several summers during college, I’d spend eight hours a day at a desk putting new legal pages into three-ring binders and organizing endless boxes of old files.
Drinking as much coffee as possible became one of my favorite pastimes at this dreary job.
After work, I’d come home and the last thing I wanted to do was get out the bass and practice. I felt totally spent, and all I could seem to do was plop down on the couch and mindlessly watch TV.
Sound familiar?
That job taught me what I didn’t want to do with my life.
Since then, I’ve been incredibly fortunate. Every job I’ve had has been music-related.
You’d think that these kinds of jobs would mesh perfectly with practicing.
I found that to rarely be the case for me.
Practicing has so often been that “oh, crap… forgot to do that” activity on my calendar.
The Joy of Practicing as a Kid
I remember really enjoying practicing as a kid, especially after discovering the bass. I’d pull out my latest solo piece with pride, working through what my teacher had told me.
Each new discovery was like magic, and I’d record them in my spiral notebook. I still have those notebooks full of early 1990s practicing observations.
Music School: Joy Killer
Entering music school, I quickly realized that I was spending ungodly sums of money for a degree that didn’t have much of a financial future tied to it.
Practicing began accumulating baggage with these thoughts racing in the back of my mind.
During my first year of college, I really enjoyed having practicing take on a central role in my life.
I’d get a coffee and hit the practice building at 7 am, getting in 45 minutes of technique before dashing off to my 8 am class. I’d circle the hallways after lunch, desperately hoping for an open room.
Every moment I could get on the instrument felt like a gift and in alignment with why I was at school doing what I was doing.
Slowly, things started to change.
I began to associate practicing with urgency and anxiety. I felt outside expectations weighing me down, and those musical “ah ha” moments became replaced by me beating myself up mentally for not measuring up to what I thought the world expected of me.
Endless Auditions: Nails in the Coffin
Perhaps ironically of someone who wrote a book called Winning the Audition, I felt totally over my head auditioning for professional orchestras.
After some early successes while still in graduate school, I felt like I was doing worse and worse at every audition over the years.
I did 30 professional auditions over a period of six years, rarely getting out of the first round.
Auditions Taken
All that I’d practice was this audition music!
Each day, I’d get out the same old pieces.
The dreaded Koussevitzky Concerto.
That same Bach Cello Suite movement that I’d been flogging for years.
Whatever collection of anxiety-producing excerpts my upcoming auditions required.
Outside of technique practice and gig music, this was literally all that I would ever practice.
I tried to do “everything right”:
- playing for people
- taking lessons
- recording myself
Each audition, I’d charge up another $800-1200 on the credit card for flight, hotel, and the like.
I was trying to hack away at that mounting bill with my gigs and student income, but that plus the student loaned car payment was driving me deeper into debt each year.
I took a stoic approach to this work, thinking that if I just “got in the hours” I’d be fine.
I developed a nasty habit of practicing in front of the TV almost 100% of the time.
Now, I know that a “dirty secret” for many musicians is woodshedding some passages in front of the TV, but I don’t think that it was a good direction for me.
My boxed sets of The Sopranos on videocassette were getting worn out from their endless rotations through the VCR during my daily practice.
Hours Don’t Equal Progress
A big problem for me during those years was measuring things by hours put in. I’d record the time I spent practicing on the inside of my technique book, tallying up the numbers each week and getting an average time for each week.
If I averaged three hours a day for the week, I was happy. Any less than that was unacceptable to me.
Getting Busy
During those audition years, I continued to establish myself as a freelance bassist and teacher. More and more gigs kept coming my way, and I took on more students each year. At the height of my private teaching (around 2004), I had between 40 and 50 bass students.
Additionally, I was playing gigs pretty much every week during the September-May season. I was averaging 50,000 miles of driving each year, going between Chicago, Milwaukee, Memphis, Des Moines, and other venues.
As you can probably guess, my practicing became less and less frequent. I eventually quit recording my hours of practicing.
I started to take a day off of practicing here and there.
I did that more and more, until I found myself only practicing when I had an upcoming audition. Even that was a struggle since I found myself on the road so much.
I don’t think I learned single new piece during those six years of auditioning.
Quitting the Audition Scene
I decided that I was done with auditioning around 2006. Making this decision felt like a giant weight being lifted off of my shoulders.
All of a sudden, I found myself with more time on my hands. This was when I started to write, blog, podcast, and do other activities which put mean the course for what I’m doing today.
The only thing: I didn’t fill that time with actually practicing my instrument.
I’ve often wondered why that was the case for me. I’ve noticed a lot of other musicians in similar situations to mine pour their energies into chamber music projects, solo recitals, and other explorations on their instrument.
Not me. My practicing actually decreased after quitting the audition scene.
Why?
In hindsight, the answer is obvious. I’d come to associate time at my instrument with audition preparation and nothing beyond that. Taking my bass out of the case held no joy. It was simply a way to further my career or generate income.
On the other hand, the writing, podcasting, and other activities felt very creative to me.
Back to School
I decided to return to school and get a music education degree, which led to a great mini-career as a full-time orchestra director. This was also right around the time that I had started blogging, and I found my time 100% maxed out with school, gigs, and teaching.
In terms of practicing, something happened:
I had to learn how to play violin, trombone, flute, and a whole bunch of other instruments.
In order to teach in the schools, I had to go back and get a music education degree.
This was a humbling but also interesting experience, as I found myself in the beginner role on all these instruments and needing to practice consistently to develop some basic skills.
I found this process fun, actually. I’d arrange all of my instruments in a semi-circle, moving between trombone, oboe, bass, and even piano. I’d work on one for a few minutes and then move on.
The feeling of getting better at something that I had no experience in was a lot of fun. I could feel my progress each day, being able to do that unintuitive clarinet fingering or get that lip slur on the trombone.
Conducting Ensembles: A New Kind of Practicing
I also got really into the process or learning how to actually conduct a group and run a rehearsal. This was something that I had no experience in, apart from sitting in the bass section on my gigs and passing judgement on each hapless person to take the podium.
Though bass practice remained in the background for me during these years as a music teacher, I found myself getting really into the practice and improvement process as a conductor.
I started reading every book I could find on conducting. I spent hours watching famous conductors on YouTube.
Once I got my own group to work with, I spent tremendous amounts of time studying scores, listening to rehearsal recordings, and charting out rehearsal plans.
If only I’d taken that energy and enthusiasm for conducting student groups and channeled it into my bass playing!
I never pictured myself as a conductor, but I became obsessed with gettting better.
Working Seven Days a Week
One of the problems successful musicians face is calendar overload. I had a blast conducing my student groups, but my schedule was hilariously packed:
- full-time job 35 miles away in dense urban traffic
- teaching bass at DePaul University
- at least a week per month playing with the Elgin Symphony (that made for an 80 hour week easily)
- guest conducting various local youth orchestras
- chamber music coaching programs on Saturday and Sunday
A day off happened perhaps once every couple of months.
Now, many folks find a way to work their practicing into their schedule even when it’s maxed out. I just couldn’t seem to will myself to do it.
I’d actually keep my bass at school in the hopes of pulling it out for a bit before or after my work day and playing. I may have done that a handful of times over the seven years I taught, but it was a rare sight.
Maintaining… or declining…
Not progressing.
Moving to San Francisco
My professional life got turned upside down upon learning that my wife and I would be moving to San Francisco. After 23 years in Chicago, I’d built up a strong network of professional contacts, and I knew that starting over would be a challenge.
I also knew that there was really benefit to wiping the schedule slate clean and building up a set of activities that I really wanted to be doing.
Back in Chicago, I’d already decided to go all in on the blogging and podcasting and see where it led me. Since this was all very bass-centric, I figured that bass would come back into my life more prominently.
Still, practicing was a struggle when I moved. I think that I’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of practicing as a part of my life at all.
The Power of External Motivators
Richard Duke, the organizer of the Golden Gate Bass Camp and other bass activities in the Bay Area, asked me to play the guest recital for the 2017 Winter Bass Bash. I was thrilled to do so, of course, and this was a great practicing motivator for me during that first year in San Francisco.
I roped my harpist wife into playing for this recital, and we spent several months practicing together for this.
Though I got back into the practicing habit for this recital and other external events, I couldn’t seem to rekindle that intrinsic practicing spark.
The bass would come out of its case when I had a specific reason for it, but otherwise it sat in the corner collecting dust.
Rekindling the Practicing Spark
In the summer of 2018, I discovered the practicing app Modacity, which I 100% credit for getting me back in the practicing habit.
The tools that this app provides are simple, but they run deep:
- Timer
- Recorder
- MetroDrone (metronome and drone combined)
- Practice items and lists
- Practice stats and history
It sounds silly, I know… but the app gave me a reason to practice.
I didn’t want to lose my practice streak.
I wanted to beat last week’s practicing score.
I wanted to get a few more improvements.
Building the Habit
Like many good habits, this one started small. In fact, the only reason I started using Modacity was because I was getting together with one of the team members and wanted to road test it for research purposes.
I wasn’t intending to get back into practicing consistently. In fact, I’d accepted that practicing was not really a part of my daily existence. I told myself that I was spending my time going things more uniquely suited to me, like writing, podcasting, and other such projects.
There’s no shortage of people wanting to practice bass all day, so why should I devote time to it when I could be doing other things?
All this may be true.
I started to notice, however, that I wanted to pul the bass out and play, even if it was just for a few minutes.
At first it was because I didn’t want to lose my practicing streak in Modacity.
Eventually, though, it was because I could start to feel myself getting better.
Learn more about Modacity
My Practice Stats This Year
Hours of Practicing
Deliberate Practice Improvements
Getting Better All the Time
I’ve always thought that I’d continued to make progress in my musicianship. All those years of conducting had given me a wide new set of skills, and I was enjoying getting better at working with the loosely organized chaos that is a high school orchestra.
In terms of my bass playing, I was hoping to maintain. I hadn’t learned a new piece in well over a decade, and I wasn’t particularly interested in doing so.
Ironically, even though I had been devoting a substantial portion of my time to interviewing people obsessed with learning new music and growing as players, I hadn’t felt much of that rub off on me.
But Modacity kept calling to me, encouraging me to pull my bass out of the case.
While I started off my practicing some familiar old music, over time I started pulling out pieces that had crossed my desk over the years.
Slowly but surely, I started to learn new music.
It felt good, like lifting weights or any other habit.
Things I Love About Practicing Consistently
I have always noticed how playing a lot of bass made me feel stronger as a teacher.
While I know that all those years of knowledge are still accessibly to me even if I’m not practicing, I’m simply more on my game when I’m playing bass.
My thinking is quicker.
I suggest more creative solutions.
My empathy for the learning process is stronger.
Also, the act of problem-solving, even if only for a few minutes a day, seems to transfer over to other areas of my life. My mind feels sharper, and I seem to solve problems faster and more creatively.
Final Thoughts
While the practicing habit seems to have returned to my life, I know that habits can be a delicate thing and subject to external forces.
In retrospect, I had associated bass playing with stress and failure in my mind. Pulling it out and playing made me remember all those lost auditions, those excerpts that I couldn’t ever seem to really master.
This new chapter, thankfully, has me looking forward instead of fretting about the past, and I’m having a great time building this (old) new habit.
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Do you think that modacity is useful for a beginner?
For sure! I use it with students all the time. My go-to practicing app.