Practice Journaling

I've mentioned in past posts that I keep a practice journal. There are many benefits to practice journaling. You can see the progress you're making, you can look at what you've been spending the most time working on, it makes it easier to plan what to work on, it makes it easier to diagnose problems with fatigue, and the list goes on. I recommend that  all my students keep a practice journal.

For this post I've included pictures of my practice journal in the three main sections in it. I'll go over exactly what I keep track of in each section and the various elements of each.

Section 1: Daily Log
​In section 1 I keep track of the things I do in my daily practice sessions. There are several elements I like to track from one day to the next:









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• Average Practice Time Goal
  • By the end of the practice week, how much do I want to have practiced?
• Week
  • What week in the practice cycle is it?
  • More about Practice Cycles
• Date
  • Today's date
• Meditation/Mental Work
  • What meditation process did I use?
  • How many times did I meditate?
• Daily Routine Duration
  • How long did I spend working the routine?
• Daily Practice Time
  • How much total time did I practice in a given day?
• Routine Exercises
  • Which routine/exercises did I work?
  • What tempos did I work the exercises in that routine?
• Practice Material
  • What materials did I spend time practicing?
    • Etudes
    • Exercises
    • Excerpts
    • Chamber repertoire
    • Solos
• Total Practice Time
  • At the end of the week, how many hours did I practice?
• Average Practice Time
  • At the end of the week, what was my average practice time?
    • Note: I typically practice six days a week and take one day (usually Sunday) to play something to help me recover for thirty minutes.

Note: Slashes through something (a time value or a tempo) mean that I didn't achieve a goal for that day. Sometimes these goals are to limit my daily routine to fewer than 25 minutes, or to execute an exercise at a specific tempo.

Section 2: Listening Commentary​
Any time I do a run-through I record it, listen back to it, and take notes over what I hear. It's a great way to teach yourself! The picture here is of the last page of the commentary for my third run-through and the first page for the commentary from my fourth run-through. I'll go over this page from top to bottom.








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• Comments
  • What general observations did I have from the run-through?
• Priorities
  • After a run-through I rank each piece/movement according to what needs the most help.
  • This helps me to focus on the biggest problems first.
• Run #
  • Which run-through is this?
• Location
  • Where did the run-through take place?
  • This also implies who was listening
• Date/Time
  • When did the run-through take place?
• Repertoire
  • What piece did I run?
• Problems
  • What did I hear that I didn't like?
  • These are the thing I need to work on.
  • I like to cross off the problems as they are solved. 
• Praise
  • If there's something I did that I really like I write it down.
  • I put an asterisk next to each praise to remind myself that there are things I'm doing well.

Section 3: Success Log
The Success Log is something I started doing recently. It's a great way to end a practice session on a positive note. It's pretty simple, but often not as easy as it seems it should be. It's also pretty self-explanatory.







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• Date
• 1) What 3 things did I do well today?
• 2) Based on today, what do I want to improve?
• 3) What's one thing I can do that could make that happen?

​I experimented at one point with using an Excel spreadsheet, but there's just something I like about having a handwritten journal that I enjoy more than tracking in a spreadsheet. Using some form of electronic journal is fine as long as it works for you. I like that I can hold my journal in my hands and that it's ready to accept or display data as soon as I pick it up, no searching necessary. 

As I mentioned above, there are many benefits to using a journal. You can use as many or as few of the elements I listed. Journaling is a great way to make your practice more effective, efficient, and deliberate.

Happy journaling!