Double-check Your Music

I've had no shortage of lessons where students think they've been practicing correctly. The emphasis in that last sentence should definitely be on the word think. Often, something is wrong. Maybe it's the rhythm, or one of the notes is played on the wrong fret, whatever. The moral of the story is this: if you double-check your music, this kind of thing doesn't happen.

When to double-check your music

My general philosophy for practice is as follows:

1) Look at the music once either right before playing it the first time, or (if possible) while playing.
2) Play without the music (work towards memorization) as much as you can. 
3) Look at the music again at the end of your practice session (either on your last run through the song, or right after, to check that you're playing it correctly).

This process solves a lot of problems. First of all, by checking your music every time you practice, you make sure that you've remembered everything. We all like to think our memories are bullet-proof, but in fact they rarely are, and sometimes a few notes or a particular rhythm falls through the cracks. Then, by playing without the music you work on committing the music to memory (I write about how to do that in the link above on memorization). Finally, by running through the song once more with the music in front of you, you make sure the music is still how you remember it, and you can feel confident you've properly committed at least some part of the music to memory.

Once you feel you've got the song memorized, try playing from memory before looking at the music. If you can do that successfully for the next three practice sessions, it's safe to say that you've got the song memorized. Awesome!

Better to be careful then to be wrong

Always double-check your music using the steps outlined above, until you can confidently play it from memory. Better to be extra certain you've got things right, than to practice something incorrectly!

Double check that music!