If You Are Thinking Of Going To College To Study An Instrument, Whether You Are An Education Or Performance

If you are thinking of going to college to study an instrument, whether you are an education or performance major, start developing a healthy relationship to practicing now.

When you get to college, you will be expected to practice way more than you currently do. You may be the best musician at your current school; that will likely change in college. You won’t be the only person who is practicing daily anymore.

Your band directors and your private lesson instructors will want you to practice as much as possible. You may see your peers practicing 4+ hours per day. You will feel a lot of pressure to practice more no matter how diligent you already are.

Practicing is a skill that you need to learn. There are a lot of aspects to practicing that you will learn for yourself; however, from a health perspective, these are the three main skills you should learn.

All of these are from the perspective of a band kid. These may or may not apply to strings, piano, etc.

Make sure you have good playing posture

If you didn’t have a private instructor, it is very likely that you learned to play your instrument from a director who played something else. To avoid stress injuries, it is essential that you perfect your posture before you go to music school.

No matter what instrument you play, you need to have a relaxed posture with no tension. Your shoulders should be down and back; you should sit straight up without straining; you should not be gripping your instrument any tighter than you need to support it. I have a tendency to push my clarinet up and out from my body while I’m playing, and I grip it very tightly during technical passages. These issues led to me getting carpal tunnel twice in two semesters.

Along with this, look up some back and wrist stretches to do before and after playing to relieve pain and prevent injury.

Motivate yourself to practice without shaming yourself

You cannot bully yourself into wanting to practice. Shaming yourself for not being a good enough musician, worrying that you’re falling behind, comparing yourself to your peers, all of these things will cause you an immense amount of stress and make you dread practicing. It will become a chore and a punishment, not something that you do because you love playing and want to improve.

It’s similar to how motivating yourself to exercise just to lose weight is an unhealthy and, often, ineffective strategy. You’re thinking of exercise as a punishment for not having the body you want, rather than something you do because you love yourself. I was never able to make myself work out until I started doing it because it improves my mental health, rather than because I thought I needed to lose weight. And even if the shame does motivate you to work out, it will be hard to give yourself a break if you need it because “I have to do this.” It’s the same with practicing.

Learn to practice because it is time spent on something you love, not because you’re a failure without it. Practicing is absolutely essential to a music degree, but it doesn’t have to be a source of stress and shame.

Know your limits

You do not have to push yourself as hard as you possibly can to be a good musician. Steady progress is far more beneficial for your musicianship and your overall health than burning yourself out or getting injured from over-practicing.

I cannot consistently practice for more than two hours per day. Whether I practice all at once or break it up into multiple sessions, that is my physical and mental limit. Your limit may be higher or lower than that; that is perfectly okay. Practice for an amount of time that you can be consistent with every single day. When you know how much time you are going to spend practicing, you can design your practice sessions to fit your goals within that time frame.

However, it’s also important to give yourself breaks when you need them. There are going to be days where you just cannot get yourself to practice; you are allowed to take days off. While consistency is key, everyone needs breaks once in a while. You should also watch out for signs of pain or frustration while you’re already practicing. If you are in pain or getting frustrated, distracted, and tired, you can (and should) stop. “No pain, no gain” is a lie. Take breaks before your body takes matters into its own hands.

My strategy for figuring out if I genuinely can’t practice or if I’m just having executive dysfunction is to give myself a short warmup that I play every day - in my case, all the major and minor scales (I alternate between NM, HM, and MM each day). It takes about 10 minutes.

If the issue is that starting things is hard, I’ll get invested in practicing and I’ll continue my session. If I still don’t want to practice after doing scales, I take that as my sign that something is wrong and I need to take the day off.