Eight practice mistakes youre

making right now

by Nathan Cole of natesviolin.com
Playing music is one of my great pleasures, and if youre reading
this, its one of yours too. What a joy it is to hear sound that youve
created! Can you remember the sense of wonder you felt when you first
began studying your instrument? Your progress very likely exceeded
your expectations. As you mastered basic skills, you found that what
had been complicated was now automatic. Seemingly without effort,
you were able to take on more rewarding music. But now, those times
exist only in your memory. With enough effort, youre able to make
progress. But even then, it doesnt stick. Instead of two steps
forward, one step back it feels like the opposite. You may be hitting a
plateau, or more dramatically, a wall! Whatever you call it, you want to
know how to get past it. Im going to tell you about eight mistakes
youre making in your violin practice right now.

1. Youre not succeeding.

The greatest players spend nearly all of their practice time
succeeding. They rarely fail. How is that possible?
I assume that youre familiar with the phrase practice makes perfect. And
youve probably heard the popular rebuttal: No, perfect practice makes perfect! My first
teacher had that saying embroidered and framed on her wall, in fact. Like everything
else on the walls in her studio, it became part of the background of my violin study. I
accepted it as gospel. But when I was old enough to think about it, I had a question: if
Im already practicing perfectly, then why do I need to practice at all? Some kids will do
anything to get out of practicing!

So heres the secret: there is no such thing as perfect playing. There is great
playing, wonderful playing, transcendent playing, but not perfect playing. And what do
all of these lofty adjectives have in common? You can reach them by taking small steps,
as on a staircase. Each step up is a small success, each step down a small failure. And
I am willing to bet that youre taking too many steps down in your practice each day.
The fact is that the greatest players spend nearly all of their practice time
stepping up: succeeding. They rarely fail. How is that possible? Imagine yourself
practicing a thorny passage, and ask yourself this: does success to me mean playing
the passage perfectly, today? Unless youre nearly perfect already, thats much too high
an expectation for todays practice session. Therefore you are guaranteed to fail. The
best players spend almost all of their practice time succeeding because they define
success appropriately and constantly change its definition to meet the circumstances at
hand. Only when they are close to a performance does success mean presenting this
piece at my full potential. And by that time, they have months of success already under
their belts in the practice room. Since they know only success in their practice,
performing is no different.
Now listen to how an average player might describe daily practice, and see if it
sounds familiar. All the words in italics, by the way, are ones that youll learn to ignore,
because they will only impede your progress. Practice is a constant stream of small
failures, with each attempt at a passage falling short of your ideal. How far short doesnt
matter, because in your mind you are not there yet. You only experience true confidence
in the easiest passages, and even that seems hollow. After all, those are the passages
that you should be able to play, so why would you deserve confidence elsewhere?
To see this in action, take a fast passage thats currently sloppy in terms of
rhythm, sound, and intonation. It even ends with a run to a high note. You judge your
playing of this passage by whether you hit the last note or not. To start with, you try
several times to see if you can get it. Once gotten, you continue trying to see if you
can keep it up. You figure that this kind of testing will help you in performance.
Sometimes you get it just right, but nine times out of ten often you dont. That gives you
a batting average of just .100. Not an inspiring number when performance time rolls
around! With some work, youre able to hit the passage every other time. But that still
gives you just 50/50 odds in performance. And dont forget to subtract for nerves
So imagine a different method: before you play the passage even once today in
tempo, you know in your bones that youre not going to play it ideally the very first time.
So you dont! Instead, you work on the first half of the passage, the part that comes
before the run. You pick a tempo at which the notes are no problem, so that you can
focus on sound and rhythm. You play this way five or six times since it feels so
comfortable. In fact, after five or six successes it feels natural to play it a bit more

quickly since there are no problems. You do that five or six times as well, then move on
to the run at the end. You remember that the end of the run wasnt satisfying the last
time you played it, so you play only the end. Again, the tempo is quite slow so that you
can truly hear and feel the notes. You are succeeding at every turn. So you put this
passage away for now, and switch your focus to a different passage. Youll return later
today.
Now, just like the best players, your success rate is close to 100%. Of course the
best players have honed all of their tools with years, even decades, of this kind of work.
Without the tools for a particular passage, theres only so far you can succeed before
your technical weaknesses prevent you from going further. But rather than trying
anyway, which will end in guaranteed failure, you can work on an etude specifically
tailored to that weakness. You succeed there as well, and the cycle continues. What
was Yodas best line in The Empire Strikes Back? Try not. Do or do not. There is no
try. He was telling Luke how to succeed.

2. Youre making a bad sound.

You perform how you practice. So make a great sound
whenever your bow touches the string.
If succeeding in your practice is the key to everything that follows, then what is
the most common cause of failure? Poor sound quality. Great players make a great
sound all of the time. That goes for slow practice, fast practice, and performance.
Lower-level players save their best sound for performance, only to find that its not
there for them when they need it. As we already covered, you perform how you practice.
So make a great sound whenever your bow touches the string.
So what happens when your sound loses quality in a complex passage? I would
ask you a return question: can you draw a good sound with a single bow on an open
string? Thats the basis for every other bow you draw, and Ill bet your answer is yes. I
return to this most basic stroke much more often than you might imagine, because its
always satisfying. I need that reminder in my ear, when the going gets rough and Im
tempted to lose track of my sound.
If you can make a good sound on one bow, why not two in a row? Now two faster
bows? If you can make one note ring, how about two and then three in a row? Entire
performances are built on these simple steps, if youre willing to keep a good sound
through all of them.
The process breaks down when you pile too many challenges on top of making a
quality sound. Soon your ear is pulled away from sound and toward the note youre

playing out of tune. Or the shift you keep missing. Or your uneven string crossings.
Even some of my professional students make an entirely different kind of sound when
theyre practicing for pitch as opposed to really playing. They sound like students
while practicing, hoping to sound like professionals again while playing. But I remind
them that the violin doesnt care about this distinction! When you make a sound thats
not your best, it pollutes your ear and it will creep into your playing at the worst possible
time.
By making sound your priority, you learn to put other aspects of playing in
perspective. And lest you think that this will cause you to make the same sound all of
the time, know that instead you will become more sensitive to the smallest nuances in
your playing. Youll open your ear to a world of colors and expressive possibilities.

3. Youre working too hard.

A nice, relaxed focus is all thats required. Its neither hard
nor easy, its just playing.
By working hard, Im not talking about putting in the hours, or making a long-term
commitment to your practice. You have to do those things if you want to advance, of
course. Im talking about the physical and mental effort that youre expending minuteby-minute when you practice. So lets talk about two more words that need to go in
italics: easy and hard.
All too often, violinists make a mental division between two kinds of material: the
easy stuff, such as warming up, playing scales, and running through familiar music;
and the hard stuff, like working on shifts, slow practice, or repetitions. Thinking this
way is like eating at a diner where the only good dishes are fried food and dessert. The
vegetables are unappetizing, even though you know you should probably eat some. So
what do you do? Get the fried stuff, choke down some vegetables, then feel guilty and
skip dessert. An unsatisfying meal all around. A practice session often works the same
way. You start easy by warming up and running something through. You dont like what
you hear, so you do some hard work until you cant stand it anymore. You figure youve
made some progress, but you beat yourself up a little for not doing even more.
The truth is that playing the violin, the actual act of playing the violin, doesnt take
a lot of physical effort. Why do you think we use the word play? Similarly, the best
kinds of practicing dont take extreme mental effort or a sense of deprivation. A nice,
relaxed focus is all thats required. Its neither hard nor easy, its just playing.
When you stop making the distinction between hard work and the rest, you
realize that all of your playing falls into the same category and deserves the same

focus. Warming up becomes more interesting, and varies from day to day. Slow practice
varies as well, from really slow to just a bit under tempo, depending on what success
means at that moment. Repetition may mean three times or twenty, depending on your
available mental energy. Thats right: mental energy is a finite resource, and you cant
spend what you dont have. When energy runs out, rather than doubling down and
trying to work harder, what you need instead is a break! When your focus returns, you
can continue playing. Just as theres no try, theres no hard or easy, only playing and
resting.

4. Your short-term expectations are too high.

Listen to whats coming out of your instrument, and forget
both your preconceptions and your value judgments.
Instead, start hearing specifics.
Imagine a world without credit, where living within your means was the only
option. A lot of problems would disappear, but so would a lot of possibilities. Used
wisely, credit can help you build the future you imagine. But you have to have a solid
foundation, or income, to build on. The world of practicing works the same way. A player
who always lives within her means may play well, but she never advances, or
advances very slowly, because she never imagines anything beyond her current level.
So I want you to have imagination, but just as with credit, trouble comes when your
imagination runs away with you. When you finance a fancy life on credit, you may
pretend that you deserve that life, despite the fact that you dont have the income to
pay for it.
Take a look at any article on taking control of your finances, and what is the first
step? Figuring out exactly how much money is coming in, exactly how much is going
out, and how youre spending it. It can be a painful, unfamiliar process. But its crucial,
not only in the beginning, but going forward as well. Many people realize that theyve
been imagining a very different financial life from the one thats staring them in the face.
I dont deserve this debt! Im a careful spender! In the same way, you may be unable to
hear yourself with your own ears. Instead you hear a recording of sorts: a Joshua Bell
recital, or an Itzhak Perlman CD, or the way you sounded last week when you were
really nailing a passage in the practice room. You feel like you should be sounding that
way instead of how you actually sound. In other words, you believe that you are a
certain type of player, even if youre not sounding that way at the moment.

This leads to frustration when the playing that comes out of your instrument
doesnt match the recording, the high expectations. Your first response is probably to
make a value judgment and a vow to work harder. Im playing badly now, and I have to
get better. Time to break out a shop-worn practice method such as working it up with
the metronome, or even worse, trying the passage several more times in tempo to see if
it improves on its own (it almost never does). And even after working the passage up
from a slow tempo, it can break down again and leave you feeling worse than you were
before.
But what happens if you truly listen to whats coming out of your instrument, and
forget both your preconceptions and your value judgments? You start hearing specifics:
instead of Im playing badly, you hear there is a scratch during this string crossing or
I would like to play this note higher. Those are two examples of changes you could
make without breaking a sweat. Thats how you transform your playing starting today:
one achievable goal at a time.

5. Your goals are too low, or they dont exist at all.

Your long-term goals should be ones that you can write
down, along with steps you can take to get there.
Now your ears are open, attuned to making changes that you can make today.
But those changes wont add up to much unless you have a long-term goal. This kind of
goal is not, Id like to play this piece more in tune or I wish I had a steadier spiccato.
Those are things that you can work on right now and see results day by day. No, the
kinds of goals Im talking about are performances, auditions, or learning new material.
One of the reasons that the Suzuki method is great for children is that long-term
goals are built in from the start. The first goal is simply to earn a real violin, as an
upgrade from the cardboard so many of us began with! And once you get a violin, the
goal becomes to play a song (Twinkle Twinkle) in front of people. Then to get through
Book One and to perform that for an audience. Then to win a spot in a special recital.
And all the while, in group classes and recitals, you get to see the bigger kids playing
the fun songs that youre working towards. And if you take the Suzuki method all the
way to the end, theres a graduation recital after Book Ten.
But what happens when we practice as adults? Our goals, if we think about them
at all, become quite abstract: becoming a better player, feeling more confident, etc. The
problem with such goals is their lack of definable steps to achieve them. Your long-term
goals should be ones that you can write down, along with steps you can take to get
there. What do you mean by becoming a better player, anyway? Do you mean the

kind of player who could play a Mozart concerto, memorized, with piano? Then learn a
Mozart concerto, find a pianist, and set a date! Thats a long-term goal. Feeling more
confident would be great as well. Do you know what builds confidence? Setting a goal
and achieving it while friends and family show their support.
Regardless of what your long-term goals are, see that they include some kind of
performing. Ive talked to enough great players to know how much importance they
place on it. When you play in front of people, when you put something of yourself out
there, it becomes easier to do it the next time. You also discover things about your
character that you cant learn by just staying in the practice room. These discoveries,
while not always welcome, inform your musicianship and make your playing a truer
representation of yourself. After all, whether you play for paying audiences or just a few
friends and pets, one goal should always be to share your joy with others.

6. Youre not practicing for performance.

The moment you decide to get into performance mode is
often the same moment you realize youre not prepared for a
performance.
Lets say that you have a date to perform the music youre working on. Knowing
when youll present what youre practicing, even if its an informal performance, helps
motivate you to put in the work every day.
But once youre working, its all too easy to lose sight of that eventual
performance. Life gets in the way if you let it! Growing up, I would think to myself, Ive
still got a month, I can take it easy with this piece for now. We already covered the
fallacy of easy and hard work, so I neednt tell you that this kind of thinking didnt
help my playing. Two weeks before the performance, I would think, Im still in learning
mode, so Im doing everything under tempo for now, just getting the notes clean. In
other words, I wasnt using my best sound and I was building bad habits that might
show up when they were least desired! Finally, with the date one week away: OK, time
to get into performance mode. No more messing around. Does any of that sound
familiar? If so, you know that the moment you decide to get into performance mode is
often the same moment you realize youre not prepared for a performance!
So what is the proper timetable? When should you get into performance mode?
As soon as you begin learning a piece. Think about a meal in the past that you planned,
cooked and served. The meal day and time was set, and you chose a recipe. Once you
gathered your ingredients, you didnt just begin mixing things together, then partway

through say to yourself, from now on Ill really prepare this for people to eat! Indeed,
you knew from the moment you chose the recipe that your guests would eat the meal,
and all of your efforts were geared toward that moment.
You need the same mindset with music. Every bow stroke you play, from your
very first reading of a piece, should contribute to the eventual performance. The
difference between recipes and scores is that recipes are written so anyone with basic
technique and tools can reproduce the final result: a meal. But the printed score from
which we practice is not a recipe: its more like a menu. The notes on the page are the
final product, waiting to be transformed by you into musical sounds! No instructions are
given as to how you should get ready for your performance. Imagine cooking a meal
with only the menu as your guide, and you begin to appreciate the task of learning a
piece of music.
So without a step-by-step guide as to how to prepare your piece, how can you
even get off the ground? First, always make a sound that youre proud of. Thats why we
talked about that before anything else. Next, imagine that your teacher, or another
musician, is listening to you practice. Not a paying audience member who expects
perfection, mind you, but someone who is interested in how a piece is put together and
who wants to understand every step that youre taking. Would you expect to see a chef
spend 20 minutes meticulously dicing onions, tomatoes and peppers, only to throw the
whole lot into a blender? As someone who has cooked before, you wouldnt understand
that use of time. So why would you spend 20 minutes playing something slowly with the
metronome, only to play it fast and out of tune several times in a row? Yet I hear
violinists practice this way all too often. Some passages need slow work with the
metronome, and others dont. Your eventual performance must guide your practice.
Then why practice scales and etudes, since theyre rarely (if ever) performed?
Because some tools need honing away from the work zone. Imagine an archeological
dig, where the goal is to extract a precious artifact from its surroundings. When a chisel
needs sharpening, you wouldnt do it right next to the ancient objects! Youd step away,
sharpen with purpose, then return to the dig. Similarly, working on complex passages
without properly honed technique is pointless. Continuing to hammer away at a passage
can implant bad habits that will be difficult to root out before your performance. So step
away and sharpen that technique with a scale or etude. Pick an etude that deals with a
weakness you or your teacher has identified. Then the performance idea continues on a
smaller scale: practice the etude as though you were going to perform it! That means
using your best sound and relaxed focus. Then when you return to your piece, youll be
able to resume preparing it for presentation.

7. Your problem-solving is one-dimensional.

See that your slow version contains the same direction and
articulation that youd like to have at tempo.
If youve been following me so far, then youre practicing with a great sound and
open ears. Youre not labeling things hard or easy, good or bad, but you have identified
some spots where you want to make changes. Now for nuts and bolts: how do you
make these changes? In other words, how do you solve problems?
You probably already use the most popular method: play under tempo. But have
you thought about why you do that? Because its easier, you might answer! But why is it
easier? Remember that tempo means time. At a slower tempo, you have more time to
perform the actions that make up the passage. Pilots begin their training on slower
planes, for example, and only later graduate to jets where they have to make decisions
more quickly and further in advance.
Whats the biggest flaw in most violinists slow practice? Even under tempo, it
doesnt sound good! Thats right: most of the same issues that were problems at tempo
remain problems under tempo. This tells me not only that you arent really listening, but
that youre wasting precious mental energy. You must have slowed the tempo down for
a reason. What was the reason? Solve that problem first, whether its sound quality,
even-ness, intonation, or whatever it may be. Then, before you bring the tempo back
up, see that your slow version contains the same direction (or phrasing) and articulation
that youd like to have at tempo. By the time you are able to achieve musical playing in
a slow tempo, most of your work is done. Increasing the tempo becomes a matter of
fine-tuning timing, something that our bodies and minds usually accomplish quite well
as long as we dont interfere with unrealistic expectations.
But not every difficulty is a matter of time or timing. Think about your bow arm.
You know that theres a relationship among three variables: bow speed, bow pressure,
and bow sounding point (distance from the bridge). Changing one usually necessitates
a change in the others. These changes are usually not difficult to make at tempo; what
takes work is building the ability to decide which sounds result from which combinations
of speed, pressure and sounding point. Therefore some of your practice time on a
passage should be devoted to experimentation with these variables, and not necessarily
under tempo. You may come up with several good options to choose from! Or youll find
that a particular passage improves dramatically with a certain combination. And you
never needed to take out the metronome.

Another pitfall in problem-solving is trying to solve too many problems at once. In

fact, two is usually one too many! Take, for example, this passage from the
Mendelssohn concerto, starting with the last bar of the first line:

These bars are notorious for their difficulty in performance (despite the fact that
youll no longer think of them as difficult). But so often theyre practiced exactly as
written, when in fact most players would be better off separating the difficulties. Listen to
yourself play the passage with one bow for each note: is it out of tune, uneven,
scratchy? All of the above? If its all of the above, then start at the beginning: sound.
Can you play the passage, slowly and in tune, with a great sound? If not, which note or
notes would you like to change? Dont expect more than this at first: changing a single
note to match the high standard of the others. Move on to other problem spots in the
passage until it feels comfortable. Youve completed the groundwork.
Now, you could work up the tempo with these separate bows, but for now, switch
tactics and keep the tempo comfortable. Add in the slurs so that you are bowing as
written. Is your sound keeping its quality? If not, is there a particular string crossing
where the quality takes a dive? Perhaps your bow arm is not changing levels to match
the string that youre on. After solving one problem, then another, youll soon be playing
the passage comfortably and musically, under tempo. You may have to repeat this
process in the coming days, but as you get used to playing comfortably, your maximum
tempo will rise without effort. Your former problems will remain just that: solved!

8. Youre not getting feedback.

How do you know that your playing is as good as it could
be? In the end, you need a set of ears other than your own.
Youd like to share your violin playing with the rest of the world (or at least your
friends and family), but how can you know how it will be received? If only you could
jump outside your own body and take the place of your listeners, all would be well!

Failing that, however, you must develop the skill of hearing yourself as your listeners
hear you. We touched on this in number 4, when we talked about hearing yourself as
you actually sound. But now lets get into more detail about how to develop that skill.
The best way is to record yourself playing, while at the same time keeping your own
ears open. Write down your impressions, both general and specific. Then, when you
listen to the playback, are you surprised by what you hear? Does your impression as a
listener match your impression as a player? If what you hear in the recording is just
what you heard yourself playing, then congratulate yourself! You already have the tools
to shape your playing however you like. If you do hear differences from what you
expected, write them down and note where they occur. Then play those parts over
again, listening while you play. Do you hear what you heard before, or are you listening
differently now? Youll have to repeat this process over a period of weeks and months to
attain an ideal ear.
But even then, how do you know that your playing is as good as it could be? In
the end, you need a set of ears other than your own. For many violinists, thats a
teacher. But it could also be another respected musician or colleague. Or even a music
lover! The greater the range of your listeners experience, the more valuable this
feedback will be.
If youd like regular feedback from someone who performs and listens every day
at the highest level, then visit me at the Nathan Cole School of Violin. You can start by
watching any of my hundreds of video lessons on a variety of repertoire. Or you might
read more of my thoughts on practicing, teaching and performing. Then, no matter your
current level, make a video of yourself and send it to me. Ill watch and listen, and tell
you the most important aspects of your playing to work on, and exactly how to work on
them. Youll be able to compare your impression with mine, which will refine your ear.
You can also visually compare what youre doing with what Im doing, and well work
together to make positive change. Between your ears and mine, you will improve more
quickly than you ever thought possible!
copyright 2015 Nathan Cole, natesviolin.com