Renewing Your Musical Practice: Challenges and Intentions for the New Year

The new year is the perfect time to renew your musical intentions, delve into a new project, and to challenge yourself musically. I personally like the idea of starting off the new year with a practice challenge to strengthen or build new habits. If you are looking to challenge yourself to practice differently, or to to approach your music with new ears, here are some practical ideas for enlivening your playing in the new year.

Habit-Based Challenges

Practice challenges can take a variety of forms, from the 100 days of practice popularized on social media by Hilary Hahn to customized challenges formed of individual goals. This challenge is long enough to form a solid habit, so it’s a great way to set yourself up to continue practicing throughout the year. If 100 consecutive days sounds like a daunting commitment, try a variant like a 30 day practice challenge. While the traditional challenge is intended to be consecutive days, feel free to modify the format to suit your lifestyle, for example, if you always have a rest day each week, build this in to your practice schedule. Practice challenges are about developing consistency without necessarily striving for perfection. Showing up in the practice room is the first step toward musical growth.

If you are looking for ways to track your practice habit, I’ve created free downloadable trackers for a 31 day and a 100 day practice challenge.

Scale and Etude Challenges

Another variant on the practice challenge is to set a goal to work through an etude book, a particular set of etudes, or a set of scales or scale exercises every day for a period of time. This type of challenge might include practicing scales for 30 consecutive days, or working through the entirety of Kreutzer etudes in a year. For inspiration, check out The Campagnoli Project, a violist’s challenge to learn and record every one of Campagnoli’s caprices for solo viola.

Ideas

• Play all three octave scales using Galamian style acceleration at 50 bpm to the quarter note. If speed is a challenge for you, you might set a goal to play scales at this tempo, working up to playing all the notes of the scale in one bow by the end of the year.
• Set a goal to play a scale each day with a tuner or drone to improve your intonation.
• Challenge yourself to play a different scale each day. Try randomizing your scale practice using dice, as I’ve written about here.
• Select a particular book of etudes with the aim to work through the full book, or a set portion of the book, this year.
• Set a goal to work on an Etude each time you practice. After all, it can take some time to learn an Etude, and working through a full book in a year may not be realistic if you are a working adult or simply, if the techniques you are learning are challenging.

Resources

Some resources to help renew your scale practice include the book Dragon Scales (violin/viola/cello) with play along resources, the excellent intonation advice included in Simon Fischer’s book Scales, and Nathan Cole’s course on scales.

If you already have a daily practice habit, you might enjoy focusing on a set of clear technical goals in the new year.

Skill-Based Challenges

During your 100 days (or 31 days) of practice challenge, you may want to set a goal to solidify a specific technique or set of techniques. Playing the violin takes considerably time to learn and keep in top shape, so consistent practice is necessary for taking your playing to the next level. Some examples of techniques and skills to challenge yourself to practice include:

• Vibrato – An excellent vibrato takes time to learn and substantial upkeep. The new year is a great time to renew focus on improving your vibrato technique. I wrote about some of my favorite vibrato exercises here.
• Spiccato – Like vibrato, spiccato and other off-the-string bowing techniques can be challenging to learn. As a starting point, Simon Fischer outlines exercises to build a good spiccato in Basics. Sevcik’s 40 Variations includes excellent exercises in spiccato, sautille, and other off-the-string techniques.
• Double Stops – Improve your double stops through targeted scale work and etudes. Sevcik offers many excellent double stop exercises if you are looking to build facility in double stops, but just working double stops into your scale practice is a great start. Barbara Barber’s scale books introduce double stop work in an easy to follow, manageable way.
• Sight reading – Sight reading is another often overlooked skill, as, unless you have a regular chamber group that meets to sight read, it’s often more interesting to work on repertoire than sight reading in your daily practice. If you are looking to incorporate sight reading into your practice, I’ve written a guide here that includes ideas for finding material.

Practice Journaling

Journaling is a fantastic way to renew intention, reflect on your practice and progress as a musician, keep track of your goals, and inspire musical growth. Journaling can be free-form, or guided, such as the Practizma practice journal which functions as a 16 week practice challenge on its own. This journal is great to work through with a friend as you can keep each other motivated and share insights along the way. But journaling doesn’t have to be a time-consuming commitment. Simply taking some time during your practice to set and reflect on goals and insights from your practice can boost your progress as a musician. If you are interested in exploring methods and strategies for practice journaling, I’ve written about it here.

Learn a New Instrument

Have you always been curious to try viola as a violinist? Or are you interested in branching out to a completely new instrument such as learning some chords on the guitar, or gaining some keyboard skills? Learning a second (or third) instrument can be a great way to broaden your musical skills, expand your ensemble opportunities, and gain new music theory knowledge. As a violinist who also plays viola, I have found both musical growth and increased playing opportunities through adding viola as a second instrument. Not only am I occasionally asked to play viola in orchestral groups who need more players, but I’ve found that playing the viola has increased my awareness of harmony. For inspiration and some practical tips, see my resource hub on starting viola as a violinist.

Study Music Theory

Music theory is not a subject that all violin teachers present in a sequential or particularly rigorous manner, so for many amateurs, there may be gaps in music theory knowledge. Maybe you want to learn bass clef to improve your ability to read scores while working with a pianist, or want to learn chord theory to help your study of Bach’s sonatas and partitas. If you haven’t studied music at a collegiate level, brushing up on theory and learning how to apply it to your practice can be a way to grow as a musician.

Join an Ensemble

Playing with a group can be both a social and musically motivating experience. While orchestra seasons typically begin in the fall, Orchestras often start new “sets” in the new year. It may be the perfect time to join your local community orchestra, a chamber music workshop, or find a friend (or a few) to play chamber music with on a regular basis. If you’ve always wanted to start or you are ready to get back into ensemble playing, give it a try. Even a few informal meetups with friends might spark a longer project and inspire you to play more frequently. For more tips on finding and joining an ensemble, see my article on the topic.

Tackle a Goal Piece

Learning a long-held dream piece can be incredibly rewarding. Whether you are an intermediate violinist tackling a challenge with the help of a teacher, or an advanced amateur wanting to take more time to practice solo repertoire, the start of a year is a great time to begin working on a new, challenging piece. It might take a long time, but with steady practice, you will grow technically while working on a piece you’ve long wanted to play. It’s also a great opportunity to put some of your technical goals for the year into practice in the context of repertoire. For some additional inspiration, Alan Rusbridger’s Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible offers a glimpse into the life of a very busy amateur pianist’s journey to learn Chopin’s Ballade No. 1. See my article on finding inspiring repertoire for amateur violinists and adult students if you are looking for new repertoire in the new year.

Closing Thoughts

As I look toward the start of the year, I myself am excited to renew my own practice with a set of practice challenges, and some new technical goals. But, especially for amateurs who work full time jobs or have family responsibilities, it’s important to be realistic about musical goals. Remember that when setting your own musical intentions for the new year, to keep it small, focused, and manageable with room to grow if time allows. Simply picking up your instrument to play a scale at least once a day for the next month might be enough to build a new practice habit to carry with you throughout the year.