Best Practices: How to make the most out of your performance preparation time!

There’s no substitute for being prepared as well as you possibly can be for a performance.  But peak performance requires smart, sufficient practice – not too much, not too little, but just right, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears!  What is practice, what is the difference between practice and performance, and how does optimal practice occur?

This course will review what is known from research on motor learning about how we best learn to do activities like singing.  We’ll define important terms, such as practice, learning, and performance, and examine different kinds of practice (massed vs. distributed; constant versus variable; blocked versus random) and when they are most useful.  This impacts how we organize our practice time, how we plan teaching others, and even how we warm up before a performance.

We’ll look at various strategies for reflecting on our practicing, tracking our progress, and seeing patterns in how we are or are not making progress.  These include daily, weekly and monthly reflections, having practice partners and lesson partners, planning schedules for major performances, goal setting, musical and character study prompts, and various apps to track what you do.

Time will be left for questions and sample materials will be available for your use.