Expand your skills and talents and take advantage of other musical opportunities to have fun with music lessons. No matter which instrument you’re learning to play, consider composing for your instrument or recording your performances. These two activities can help you understand your instrument and bring your practice to a new level to become a better performer.
Composing for your instrument is a great way to learn its boundaries and limitations, mainly if you compose music focusing on areas you struggle with. For example, if you have trouble playing staccatos, try writing a piece for your instrument that focuses on that technique, or if you have trouble with playing legato, compose a piece that contains beautiful legato phrases which can help you practice that technique. In addition to creating exercises that focus on the areas you need to improve on, composing for your instrument can help you explore music in different ways, help you understand music theory, and further develop your creativity.
There are so many fun things you can do when recording yourself playing. Quite often, when performing, we sound different in our head than we do to those listening to our performance. We know the piece so well that when we’re performing, it sounds slower to us than to a first-time listener, or in our mind, we’re playing the dynamics, articulations, and phrasing better than we are, and a recording can help us be more objective about what our playing truly is. Recording your performances can work both ways as we sometimes think we sound fantastic when, in reality, we can improve or believe we sound horrible and then realize after listening to the recording we sound better than we thought,
You can also take your recordings to new levels by recording yourself playing multiple parts in a Digital Audio Workstation. This way, you can play duets when you don’t have another performer available or create harmonies and add parts to your performance, which can help you with your timing as you have to keep up with the other part you performed on the recording.
Check out my blog post on the Five Stages of Recording if you want to make recordings.
There are just so many fun ways to expand upon your weekly music lessons through composition and creating self-recordings that music lessons can reach a whole new level of excitement, and having a written record of your music compositions and an audible record of your recordings is a great way to see how you’ve progressed as a musician throughout your music studies, More tips and tricks can be found by visiting the Bach To Basics Music blog categories home recording, and music theory.
Try incorporating composing and recording into your weekly lessons. Enjoy practicing, exploring, and having fun with music lessons.
