Five Benefits of Keeping a Music Practice Journal for Amateur Musicians and Adult Students

When I first started taking violin lessons again as an adult returning to playing, I kept a dedicated music practice journal to track how much time I spent practicing and what I spent this time doing. After tracking my practice for some time, I realized that the component missing for me in this journal was reflection on my practice, goal setting. It didn’t make sense just to log what I practiced, but also how I practiced and why I wanted to keep practicing.

1. Practice with Purpose: Setting Clear Goals

Keeping a journal helps you set clear intentions for each practice session, making your time more productive. A journal helps prompt you to define what you’re working on and why. 

In your practice journal, write down your goals for improving your technique, learning new repertoire, and preparing for performances. Use these goals to guide your daily journaling.

These goals should be measurable and specific so you are easily able to identify how to practice to accomplish the goal. For example, if I worked on improving a specific shift in my lesson, one of my goals for the week might be “Improve my accuracy on the first finger shift in bar 82.” Because my teacher showed me a specific practice strategy for improving my shifting accuracy in this bar, I’ll already know how to practice it. If, at the end of the week, my accuracy on this shift has not improved, I can make a note in my practice journal to ask my teacher for additional strategies.

Try selecting three practice goals each week and keep track of your progress against these goals in your journal. I like to identify three key things that I worked on in my prior lesson to guide my practice for the week. I write these down at the top of my lesson notes after my lesson. You can also use a similar process to define long term goals which can guide what material you bring to your lessons and what you ask your teacher to help you with.

2. Seeing Your Progress on Paper

A practice journal provides a visual record of your improvement over time. It can be challenging to see progress week to week, so tracking small wins can help you see your progress over time. This can be  a powerful motivator to keep practicing, especially for adult learners who may juggle music with work and family responsibilities.

I recently spent a very long period of time working on the first movement of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto and I performed it at my teacher’s annual student recital. Progress was very slow, but I can see In my journal, what I did on a weekly basis to make progress including the etudes and exercises that helped me prepare the concerto movement for performance. 

Tracking your progress over time can help you recognize patterns in your playing, identify areas you want to work on, and celebrate milestones, like performing a major concerto movement or learning vibrato. 

3. Making Your Lessons Stick

Writing notes during and/or after your lesson ensures that valuable feedback isn’t lost between lessons. Your music journal can serve as your personal reference guide and helps remind you of  the most important corrections, advice, and practice strategies in each lesson. I have a template that I use to take notes after each lesson. Keeping my notes in a structured format each week helps me to identify key things to work on in my practice after each lesson.

Writing down the key topics addressed in your lesson, the exercises your teacher recommended, and any other tips or advice your teacher offered helps you apply what you’ve learned in your lessons in your practice sessions. This enables faster progress.

4. Reflecting to Solve Problems and Grow Musically

A reflective journaling practice encourages self-assessment and problem-solving. Taking a few minutes to consider what worked and what didn’t during a practice session and writing it down helps you become better at the act of practicing. Look at challenges in the practice room as opportunities, work with your teacher to identify practice strategies to improve in the areas you’ve identified, and you’ll start seeing quicker progress toward your musical goals.

Reflecting also helps you stay mindful of your emotional and mental state during practice, reducing frustration and making your practice sessions more engaging and rewarding. Learning a musical instrument is difficult, and reflecting on the challenges can shed light on how to turn occasional frustration into growth. 

5. Spotting Habits and Building Better Practice Routines

Over time, keeping a consistent journal can reveal patterns in your music practice habits. You’ll start to notice when you’re most focused, which tasks you tend to avoid, and how your energy and mood affect your playing. If you know that you are motivated by keeping a habit tracker, you might consider adding one to your practice journal to help you build habits around things you want to practice consistently like rhythm or vibrato exercises, or add something often overlooked like sight reading to your practice routine.

This awareness allows you to adjust how you approach practice, to develop more effective routines, and to build practice habits that suit your lifestyle.

Final Thoughts

Over time, I’ve explored keeping a variety of types of practice journals to help me set my musical goals, reflect on my progress, keep track of lessons, and grow as an amateur violinist. There is no one ideal way to keep a practice journal, and I encourage any amateur musician to try a variety of methods and formats.

Some journaling types I’ve tried myself include free form entries in a notebook, guided practice journals, and custom-built practice journal templates in Obsidian and Notion. If you’d like to try journaling yourself, I’ve written a guide that walks through some of these different ways to keep a music practice journal, from simple notebooks to digital tools.