Five Signs That You Are Progressing as A Musician

Performing a piece at a recital or concert is usually a good sign of the progress you’ve made as a music student. But what about day to day progress? Or perhaps, week to week? Being able to track your progression throughout your practice week is important, not only to size up where you are in learning your piece, but to also provide positive reinforcement and motivation.

1. Metronome: The metronome is a beautifully simple way to track how well you know a piece. Select a tempo and practice at that speed for a day. Try speeding it up. The next day, try at the faster tempo; if you can maintain that tempo comfortably, then you have progressed. If not, you may need to slow it down and practice some more.

2. Phrasing/Dynamics: When we start practicing a piece, the primary concerns are notes and rhythms. After we get this under our fingers, we can start to connect the notes into groups of phrases. Can you play the melody with one hand without any mistakes? If so, can you start to add dynamics to shape the phrase? An even better way of practicing phrasing is to sing the phrase out loud!

3. History: Do you know anything about your piece? Each day try to learn a little bit more about the piece of music you’re playing. Unless you’re an absolute beginner or if you’re studying an obscure work, there’s usually a plethora of information on the piece you are studying on the Internet. You’d be surprised by how just a little bit of background info on you’re music can affect the way you perform it.

4. Your instructor: A very easy way to tell if you’re progressing is if your teacher says so! Always ask for feedback from your instructor (although most of the time they will give you feedback during your lessons already). If he or she thinks you are flying steady, then keep up the good work. If they think you need to practice, get to it!

5. Record yourself: I cannot count how many times I have told my students and written blogs about recording yourself. The instant feedback you get is invaluable, and perhaps one of the greatest learning tools you can have. Recording devices these days are very cheap, and on top of that, almost all cell phones have some sort of app to record audio. Get one, start listening to yourself and fix the mistakes!