Practice Skill Builder

Helps your kid and adult students at any playing level learn…

→ Why practice is an essential part of taking music lessons.

→ How practice is related to progress and the motivation to keep playing.

→ How to establish home practice habits by designing a system borrowing the four laws outlined by James Clear.

→ How to use deliberate play in practice.

Why this Studio-Licensed resource?

→ It’s my mission to not only help others play the piano but also empower them to embrace their creativity at the keys through Jumpstarts, Space to Create, and Composiums. However, for pianists to be creative, they must develop skills at the keyboard, which requires practice. Just as music and creative skills are learned, practice skills must also be learned.

So Practice Skill Builder provides steps toward developing practice habits that guarantee progress and ultimately allow for freedom in which to create.

→ After new students arrive in my studio, there’s a period where they must simultaneously learn new concepts at the keys and how to practice them. I wanted to find a more efficient and effective way to explain why practice is important and how to practice, so I made a video. It explains why students just learning an instrument may tend to avoid practice and how they can establish practice as a habit with four crucial “laws” from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Share this video with students and ask them to watch it before the start of lessons or during the first lesson's Off Bench Time. Then, have them complete the companion form (shown below) to help them design a system to make practice a weekly habit.

→A chapter in Adam Grant’s New York Times bestselling book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things sparked an idea for a fresh way to engage practicers. An article is included in Practice Skill Builder to explain how Grant’s book inspired a practice strategy I call the MVP Challenge. It’s a strategy patterned after the deliberate play approach used by the coach of Steph Curry to launch Curry’s career as an NBA superstar.

What’s included?

→Video

This video, with sound advice and clever graphics, provides an efficient way to explain why practice is important and how to practice. Share it with your students and their parents. Here’s a peek at the first two minutes.

→Practice Plan Sheets

Along with the video comes a companion form for students to complete, helping them design a system to make practice a weekly habit based on the four laws from Atomic Habits.

→ Unique Practice Strategy from the NBA

An article is included in this Practice Skill Builder to explain a practice strategy I call the MVP Challenge. It’s a strategy patterned after the deliberate play approach used by the coach of Steph Curry to launch Curry’s career as an NBA superstar. Check out some of the pages included for the MVP Challenge below.

Who is this for?

This content is for teachers who want to equip students with practice skills that will encourage them to stick with lessons. It’s appropriate for students ages 6-96.