Everyone who has been in the process of gradually acquiring a new skill has faced the only absolute requirement to be successful: self-discipline. No matter how professional your teacher is or how perfect and expensive the tools that you use are, nothing can happen without your thorough devotion and regular effort. Systematically, regularly and efficiently spending time on the correct learning process. Let’s break this last sentence a little.
Why indeed systematically?
Following a particular routine that has defined elements, e.g. doing one thing after another without rushing or underestimating any part of the learning process will only get you further, faster. Any wrong pattern of learning which usually means avoiding the difficult or tedious parts actually slows down the process, and after a while you end up with wrongly memorised melodies and bad technique, feeling less confident then you were in the beginning.
Why indeed regularly?
Because our beautiful brain will be so happy to know that it receives the certain dose of this on a regular basis so that it organises itself and the muscles start to develop the necessary strength and agility, required for the skill. Better 20 minutes every day, then one time a week for 3 hours. As Dalai Lama says – if you can’t devote 20 minutes to your meditation then you should do one hour. In other words – discipline yourself in regularity. Might be three times a week for 20 minutes, but there is still regularity.
Why indeed efficiently?
As mentioned earlier, we would love to become great as fast as possible. Well, it doesn’t really work that way. What are the typical mistakes when it comes to learning an instrument?
Most of us, at least in the beginning, find it hard to follow the notes and read music and play it at the same time. What usually happens is that we prefer memorising the piece and move away from the sheet, then repeating it passionately but yet absentmindedly, not being able to refine the technique, dynamics and the order of the bows. In the end, we do play a piece, but it is only a memorised melody (very often with mistakes that appeared during repetition without referring to the notes), which doesn’t have that fine tuning that caresses the ear of the listener.
In order to build the right self-discipline and avoid eventual disappointments, here is a suggested step by step routine you might follow when learning a new piece. First, we listen to the piece played by other people to get the general idea about the style and what we are aiming at. Preferably we listen to recordings of good, renowned musicians.
Second, we listen but with the sheet music in front of us, just following the notes and making a visual connection with the sound.
Third we start marking with pencil everything we need to, like the direction of the bows, dynamics, etc.
Next, we are starting off with playing through the music. You might make mistakes but still, you will be gathering information about the piece, and here and there you will be putting some marks. Remember – the pencil is indispensable! Practising with a metronome in the very beginning is recommended.
Spend time on certain difficult parts, which require refining the technique. Do take your time – better do it in this phase of the process then after, when the piece will have already settled in your mind with some gaps here and there, that you avoided.
Next stage is polishing the piece. You might want to record yourself, listen after that and take notes. Repeat as much as necessary until you are finally satisfied with the result.
Learning a piece of music never has a final stage, because as you grow and develop you start seeing more details and meaning behind the notes and more ways to express this meaning. It is a sweet and rewarding process, and undoubtedly beneficial for the practitioners and those around them.
So get ready, charge your battery with a lot of patience and passion and you’ll be on the right track.