How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully Quotes

“Music students sometime get so engrossed in their new material that they neglect to review the music they've already learned. It's important to do this review very regularly. Not only is it the only way to keep a repertoire of music you can play for self, family, and friends, but reviewing serves as a constant reminder of your success. Playing an older piece really, really well builds confidence and the will to move forward in your lessons.”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“Our music must be learned and then continually relearned if we want to perform it to the best of our ability. The speed of memory decay varies from person to person, from task to task, even from day to day. It is this decay that forces all professional musicians to constantly practice the pieces that make up their "repertoire." A professional who did not do this would not be a professional for very long.”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“Practice: stop at each mistake and work hard via repetition at permanently killing that goof. Performance: never stop at any mistakes, go start to finish keeping the beat. Fun: pause and correct mistakes by playing the right note and moving on if that makes you happy!”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“You, too, can learn to perform simply by practicing the act of performing. It all starts with your decision. Practice or performance, what will you do when you sit down? From that decision comes the actions of the next few minutes, chiefly whether that time finds you working diligently on correcting mistakes (which is practicing) or ignoring the mistakes completely and keeping that beat going despite everything (which is performing.)”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“Once a day, decide to sit down and play straight through some music (simple music is better at first!) ignoring all mistakes and somehow keeping the beat going. No pauses. No "instant replays" of messed up measures. Play from start to end with no breaks. It's hard! The urge to correct is intense. But have you ever heard a professional musician perform, make a mistake, turn to the audience and say,”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“4. When can I  put the hands together? The "50% Rule" applies to this one. After learning each hand separately at the full performance tempo, begin practicing hands together at 50% of that tempo. There are problems which will only occur when the hands are being played together. Thus, it makes sense to SLOW DOWN again when beginning two-handed play. Once fully competent, increase your tempo a little and see if you remain just as competent. If so, increase a little more and so on, until, tempo increase by tempo increase, you are now at full performance tempo.”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“How should I correct mistakes? The "5 to 1 Rule" applies here. When practicing, play each mistake correctly 5 times before moving ahead. You must realize that it may actually take 10 times or more. But 5 is a good start. You'll know when you've done it enough - it will be VERY easy to do correctly again and again.”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“your pieces without watching the keys for three weeks and see what happens! These Six Principles must be mastered if you want to have comfort and ease when playing.”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“Practice trouble spots separately. If practice is programming the body, then we can see that starting the piece over every time we make an error is worthless. Actually, it is worse than worthless, since it wastes the time needed to fix the actual trouble spot. The motions the body makes at the start of the piece are only somewhat related to the motions several measures later. Of course, all the notes connect and relate, and this tricks us into thinking that the motions relate in the same manner. Practice only the motions which are faulty, then integrate those motions back into the piece. 5. Diagnose and treat each error, VERY thoroughly. Every error has a nature, and to fix that error you must ask yourself questions: What went wrong? What didn't go right? What finger failed to play? What finger played when it shouldn't have? What did my wrist do? What finger was in the wrong position? Should the fingering itself be changed? Once you have accurately answered these questions, the treatment of these troubles is usually quite obvious. Apply the indicated treatment and the error should disappear. Fail to take the time to do this analysis and you will meet that error over and over as you waste time and become more and more frustrated. 6. Do not watch your hands. Humans are "eye-minded," meaning that our chief sense is our eyesight. When we are concerned with getting something correct we watch it carefully. Unfortunately, this is not a good way to play. The key perceptions we need to use are the sense of hearing and the sense of where and what our arms, wrists, and fingers are doing, which is called “proprioception.” Programming the body's "automatic pilot" depends on playing by feel and using your hearing to check your work. If this sounds like a violation of common sense, then I invite you to make an experiment. Play”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“Break the music into small, easy pieces. It is far better to learn a small section of music well than to learn the whole piece poorly. For example, take the first phrase and practice it according to the Principles given below. Learn that much well. You'll have a sense of satisfaction. Learning the entire piece badly will only leave you frustrated. Once the first phrase is done, do the next and so on. Do not worry that the whole piece may not get done before the lesson date. Remember, the lesson is NOT a final exam only a progress check. 2. Practice hands separately, then together. Begin any diffiuclt tune by working with each hand separately. When each hand has become fairly competent at playing its part, try playing slowly with hands together. SLOWLY! There are errors that will only appear once you try to play two-handed. Just as slow practice helps us overcome difficulties in each hand, it will fix these two-handed problems as well. This point, hands separately then together, and the next regarding slow practice are "sure cures for what ails you." 3. Practice slowly at first to gain accuracy, and then speed up a little at a time. This is another point of obvious common sense which most students don't heed. Since we can hear the music in our minds at full speed, our impatience leads us to repeat a section of music over and over and over at this speed with little improvement. Simply slow it down, whether playing hands separately or both together, learn to play well at that speed, and then increase the speed GRADUALLY while you maintain complete accuracy. Curb your impatience and make the hands slow down so that the mistakes disappear.”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully

“IN OTHER WORDS, DON'T LET MISTAKES HAPPEN AT ALL. AND IF THEY DO, CORRECT THEM IMMEDIATELY BY MANY REPETITIONS OF THE CORRECT ACTIONS.”
― Dan Starr, How to Practice Joyfully and Successfully