Two Effective Practice Strategies You've Never Heard of

THE RUNDOWN

SHADOW PLAYING

How To Do It
- Listen along with a song or metronome and mime playing movements -

Why To Do It
- Improve your timing with fretting and picking hands -

HOT POTATO

How To Do It
- Using the FOCUS feature in Tunefox, loop a measure or section of a song. Let it play through twice, then join in for 2 loops. Rinse and Repeat. -

Why To Do It
- Improve your melodic and rhythmic memorization

Watch the video for detailed instructions & examples. Read below for more information on how and why I developed these practice strategies for my private students.

Divide and conquer. What works in war and politics is also highly effective in learning music. This isn’t new or revelatory. Folks have been learning music a measure at a time for centuries. Music students have clapped rhythms in the classroom for ages before trying to play a selection on their chosen instrument. This strategy is effective. It isn’t broken. It works. Still, I sometimes wonder if there are ways time-honored learning techniques could be combined or revised to generate new results or new interest from students. Because fostering, growing and keeping a student’s interest while helping them develop as a musician may be the greatest challenge that most teachers face in regards to the average music student. With that in mind, I’d like to talk about a couple of practice strategies I’ve developed for use in my own lesson studio to help students divide and conquer the process of learning to play well.

I wanted a way to help students “feel” like they are playing the music they want while remaining focused on the kinesthetic foundations of timing, control, and accurate practice. Most students want to play fast now, and just telling them to practice slowly is often ineffective. People tend to hear what they want and disregard the rest. So I accepted the way things tend to be and tried to work within the limits of my students and I to come up with something engaging and effective.

I had heard of shadow bowing on violin, and had used a timed “chord pushup” in lessons with students learning new chords or working on changes. I also work at a busy music academy with a lot of other teachers, and I often learn about different teaching strategies for different instruments from my colleagues. In drums and piano, a student or learner is often encouraged to learn one hand or one musical element at a time, especially when they are reading music. For instance a piano player might only practice what the left hand is doing in a piece of music, or they may clap the rhythm before applying or before learning the changes in pitch. In my own playing, I have noticed that my fret hand was a weak link in tougher passages so I took this divide and conquer approach to focus on improving the timing of my fret hand. I did this with a metronome, fretting the notes of songs and scales accurately and in time and without picking. I noticed in doing this it allowed me to fully listen to the metronome while concentrating on the movements of my fret hand and fingers. The timing of the fret hand is often a secondary focus to the pick hand for a string player. I saw how this exercise helped me increase my own facility and awareness and knew I could also share it and use it to help students in my studio.

So I began to use this “Shadow Playing” technique in my lessons with students. I had already been teaching in ways mentioned earlier—having students clap or speaking the rhythm before applying the pitch, or encouraging listening as practice—but I realized when combining this Shadow Playing with Tunefox I could more quickly engage the student with the music they wanted to learn, while doing it in small and manageable pieces when it is combined with the measure looping FOCUS feature, and the tempo slider that controls playback speed. With this technique, what is being divided (and hopefully conquered) are the separate/various components of the act of playing in regards to the fretting hand and picking hand. Here, we're isolating and focusing on the physical movement of play away from producing actual sound. This keeps the student engaged with the feeling of playing in time, with proper technique, and without being distracted by the sounds they’re producing.

Along with “Shadow Playing,” I often play the game “Hot potato” with students. The original hot potato is played by a group of people that are standing or seated in a circle. A ball is passed from one person to another, with the goal being to get rid of it as quickly as possible to not be the last one holding it when a timer ends or when someone stops music that may have been playing. In the context of teaching, the student and I will pass a “measure” or phrase back and forth. I demonstrate it by playing with accurate time and musicality, and the goal is for the student to copy me, in time, and leave no extra beats after I finish. We pass the hot potato back and forth until it’s clear the student can consistently play the measure or phrase in time and accurately. To keep the student more engaged while listening, I’ll sometimes ask them to shadow play the measure with one or both hands. Many of my private students use Tunefox, and when practicing at home they can use the Tunefox player and focus feature to loop measure or a section of a song and play hot potato in that way. I know they will be practicing with accurate timing and hearing the music as it’s intended to be played.

This game allows the student to listen critically to my playing or that of the backing track and lead example in Tunefox. They can then compare it immediately, in real time, to the way it sounds when they play after. It helps them build awareness of the correct sound, and bit by bit they make the necessary adjustments with their timing and technique to play the measure or phrase correctly to match the example set by Tunefox or myself. Since we are playing in time and with a steady beat, not only does this game help with mastering a measure or phrase, but students will begin to build intrinsic awareness of the way a certain time signature feels and how long a measure lasts.

Using these two strategies, I consistently see positive results during class in terms of both student playing and student attitudes toward practice. When students see the positive results of Shadow Playing and Hot Potato, they are less likely to sigh or roll their eyes when I ask them to do it in class. Student timing, accuracy, memorization and awareness improves both in regards to their movement and to the music they are learning. Engagement increases and the lesson instantly goes from individual practice to a group activity. I hope that these strategies help you or your students. As for myself, the shadow playing method is something I come back to often as a practice strategy. I use it all the time to develop deeper control and awareness in my fretting and picking hands. I also use hot potato with a metronome, it helps to refine my timing and spatial awareness. It provides a welcomed short “break” to mentally reset and physically relax while I’m listening to the empty measure. As an instructor, I have noticed changes to my teaching philosophies and have developed an openness to teaching with new techniques and strategies. Some of these approaches are inspired by my own practice and many other ideas often come from a unique approach a student uses. I have also realized that concepts which are effective for beginners are usually also effective and applicable at higher levels of playing with slight modifications.

Try out some of these methods with the song below! These approaches work great for learning an entire song, and especially when learning new lick vocabulary. There's usually a lot of variations in each song to explore when using the lick switcher in Tunefox. So check those out after getting the basic arrangement down. If you have any questions about these practice strategies or about Tunefox, please send me an email. I’d be happy to talk or provide help if it’s wanted. There’s a lot of other built in tools to practice in unique, effective and inventive ways that are built into the framework of Tunefox. Check out this page to learn about more of the digital practice tools we provide.