Practice Challenge 2014-2015

Because I'm slightly crazy, but mostly because I'm trying to help my students practice more and practice better, I'm running a challenge program this year.  I'm hoping that it will also make my own practicing and blogging more frequent and meaningful.  You can read the details below.

Practice Challenge 2014-2015

Jeannine Robinett

Objective:  Increase the frequency, efficiency, and effectiveness of practice for students and teacher. 

Dates:  This program will run September 2, 2014 through May 29, 2015 for students.  (June 5 for teacher.)  

Who can participate?:  Any student currently studying in the Robinett Studio. 

How does it work?:

1. Students who want to participate use the Robinett Studio Practice Journal (available in the File Area of the website)to organize and record their practice. Write on the back or use additional paper as needed.   
2. At each lesson, participating students turn in a Practice Journal for the previous week.  
3. After my last lesson of the week, I review all the Practice Journals and select the one with the highest number of qualifying minutes of practice.  
4. The following week, I match the number of minutes and the practice strategies the student used as I do my own practicing.  I will also blog about my practicing, probably one blog for the week, but it may be more.   You can read the blogs at http://jmrvoicenotes.blogspot.com
5. The person with the highest number of winner weeks for the year will receive a certificate of recognition and a prize.  The prize will most likely be a book about music or a Groth Music Gift Card.  

Requirements:

1. To count a day’s practice toward this challenge, all columns of the Practice Journal must be filled in for that day.  
2. Approved practice strategies include any listed in your lesson notes from me, or in the handouts in the File Area of the website.  Exceptions are listed  below.  
3. If you did not fill in all columns when you used approved practice strategies, or if you used strategies from the exception list or came up with your own ideas, please count those minutes in the “Other” category for your totals. 

Exceptions and other details:  

1. If a student has longer than a week between lessons, I will use their top 7 days in determining the winner for that week.  
2. The upper limit for practice time to be counted for this challenge is 90 minutes per day.  There are two reasons for this.  First, I can’t commit to more than 90 minutes every day.  Second, young voices don’t need to be practicing more than that, and excessive practicing can tire out the voice and actually slow progress.  
3. Listening to, or reading about music can count as up to 10 minutes of approved practice per day, IF your listening/reading comes from the listening list and suggested reading list found in the File Area or is approved at the lesson prior.  Any links I include in your lesson notes related to songs you are currently working on will count as approved listening and reading without the time limit listed above. 
4. Although these may sometimes be helpful, the following practice strategies DO NOT count towards your total number of minutes for this challenge:  singing in the car, singing in the shower, singing in choir or rehearsals for a show, singing while doing chores.
5. When we have a full calendar week off school, I will most likely skip that week for this program.  For example, I will use the winner from the week of December 15-19 to structure my practice for the week starting January 5.

The Practice Journal looks like this, but is set up as a table.  Evidently that formatting doesn't copy/paste into blogger. 

Robinett Studio Practice Journal

Student Name:       

Include name in blog & other recognition:  YES  NO

Lesson date:

Assignments or goals for the week (These can include technique, song study, reading, listening, etc):

1.

2.

3.

Date	Goal (s) for this practice session	What did you work on and which strategies did you use?	How long did you practice?   (approved/other)	How did you feel about what you did?  What did you learn today?  How did you improve?

Total # number of minutes from the approved strategies:

      Total number of other minutes related to your music: 

GRAND TOTAL:
Are there any questions or concerns that arose in your practicing that you need discuss with your teacher at your next lesson?

The Queen of Lists and Organization

Lest you think that this last crazy rush of blog posts is some new desire in me to organize and structure my life, I must tell you that I've been this way for a long time.  I'll spare you the details of my childhood and jump right to college.

The Book about Books

As an undergrad, I began a project reviewing any and every book I could find about the voice and singing.  It looks like about half the titles have my reviews of the books and half are just standard bibliography entries.  It might have started as part of a voice pedagogy or literature class.  I can't really remember.  It was saved on one of those huge floppy disks.  The printed copy I just found was done on a dot matrix printer and still has the edges attached to the paper.  For those of you too young to remember, it looks like this.

Anyway, this project is at least 25 pages long and divided into categories:

• translations
• diction
• song lists
• textbooks and pedagogy sources
• voice training in schools and choral singing
• opera and music history

Pencilled notes in the columns show that I clearly had plans to sort and add more subcategories:

• Maybe class voice section
• maybe separate phonetics and diction
• acoustics
• Russian 
• Bel Canto
• musical theatre

Totally nerdy, but what a great resource!  Maybe someday I'll get back to it and finish Jeannine's Annotate Bibliography of Everything She Could Get Her Hands On.  (That wasn't the title then, but if I do finish it, that will be the new title.)

Other Nerdy Organizational Stuff

The Catalog

About the same time I was working on the bibliography, I also started a special card catalog of the music I own.  Each 3 X 5 card was a song title and listed important information like the show it was from and the composer.  Then it listed which books I had that song in.  I still have those cards.  I can't throw anything away.  Plus, I want to check them against the new and improved (but still in process because I can't stop buying music) catalog in an Excel spread sheet.  

The spread sheet version has columns for title, composer, show, book title, key, if I own the book or my school does, and if either the school or I have an accompaniment CD for that title.  On another page, I also have a list of all the songs I own that have ranges of one octave or less, with a column for what the range is for that particular song.  Because I spend so much time with repertoire, much of that information is also in my head, but it is helpful for songs in books that I don't use as frequently.  For example, a few weeks ago, someone needed to borrow a copy of a song.  I knew that it was in one book for sure, but I use that frequently and didn't want to loan it out.  I was then able to search my spread sheet and find what the person needed in another book.  

Also, having the information organized like this has been extremely helpful in finding the right key for a student.  If a student is singing a song that they love from a collection that they own and it should be working well for them, but it's not quite locking in,  I will see what other keys I have that song in.  Sometimes keys make a difference, changing an OK song for that voice to a WOW song.  

The Books of Pictures

I also have a couple of binders that I created during grad school.  They are full of pictures that I ripped out of magazines.  I am a very visual person and wanted ideas, real things that I could look at to help me build the situation of the songs I was singing.  There are pictures of people, places, things.  Basically, I added any picture that spoke to me on some level.  If it spoke to me, then I would be more likely to use it.  As I write fiction, this also gives me some great inspiration for describing people, places, and things.  

Pack Rat Stuff

I keep everything, and sometimes I'm better at organizing it than at other times.  

I keep:

• programs
• letters, even ones I didn't send
• old business records including schedules and student lists
• papers I wrote for school  (I still have some from elementary school.)
• handouts from classes, conferences, workshops
• magazine articles from a variety of sources

So, if all the stuff I'm posting here gets to be too much for you, that's OK.  Read what interests you, and rest well knowing that at least my thoughts are somewhat organized here and not scribbled on some scrap of paper and stuffed in a box under the bed.