My Daily Practice Routine And How To Find Your Own

I think I've mentioned a couple of times about my daily practice routine in this blog, but in case I haven't, here it is. [Edit: I started this blog like two weeks ago, and I'm finally just now getting around to finishing it. YIKES.]

Keep in mind, my routine does change every now and then. The ukulele practice routine that I use now is way different than the one I used when I first started, but I do include some of those exercises now and then when I think of them, just to see how my finger dexterity has changed. (And to test my old lady memory.) 

So what's a practice routine and why do you need one? Do you even want one? 

A practice routine is just simply a set of songs or exercises that you play, every day, or every time you pick up your uke. You can use pieces and exercises that you've committed to memory, or you can use written music in a notebook or on an electronic device. As long as it's something you can play every day, then you have a practice routine. 

There's something that's very loaded about the word "practice". When I was younger and played violin, the adults in my life would tell me YOU HAVE TO PRACTICE EVERY SINGLE DAY and the energy behind that statement made practice feel like a burden. So of course I didn't want to "practice" every single day because ugh who wants to deal with all that?

Don't mind if I get a little woo on you here, but then when I took up yoga in my early 20s, the word "practice" took on a different energy. Whenever I got on my yoga mat to practice, it didn't matter if I did everything perfectly, it didn't matter if I had to make modifications to some poses, and it didn't matter if I spent the entire hour in child's pose or savasana or in an easy seated pose. Just as long as I showed up, that was "the practice". 

So a couple of years ago, I signed up for a two week ukulele practice challenge. And of course, it was right in the middle of what would turn out to be a 7-week migraine that required several doctor appointments, trips to urgent care, a trip to the ER, and then scrambling to find a referral to a neurologist who said I was fine. (Fucking hormones.) 

At any rate, most of the time I was in so much pain that I just had to lie in bed and try to sleep it off. I would venture out in the evenings and forage for our bunnies and put a couple of prayer ties on the box elder tree that lives in our backyard, and then I might pick up a ukulele for a little while. 

What I started doing with this daily practice challenge was using the daily exercises (there were something like a dozen different exercises) and use them as a meditation for the day. I would simply meet myself where I was - there were some days when I would be in that migraine fog and my coordination would be totally off and my fingers wouldn't work, and I would have to slooooooooooooow the eff down. There were other days where I would get a break in between migraine pain days and then I would be able to play a little more accurately, a little faster. 

These days, I like to let my practice routine be a little more organic, and while I still sometimes incorporate some of the exercises I learned that summer when the migraines were trying to do me in, I've started including a lot of techniques that I learned during my first round of uke-jitsu with Andrew Molina. 

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So why would you want a practice routine, anyway?

Well, one good reason is to track your progress as a musician. Or to see if you've hit a plateau. One technique I've learned is to record short videos of myself playing songs or technical exercises (no longer than four minutes) for thirty days and then I go back and watch the first video before I watch the last video in the series. You'd be amazed at how much progress you can make when you practice for just five or ten minutes a day, every day. They key here is consistency, something I often struggle with. (See this blog for proof of my struggles with consistency. Oy.)

Another reason is to challenge yourself. What's life without a fun challenge every now and then, right? Like I wrote in an earlier blog, one way to grow as a musician is to learn to play something that is slightly above your current skill level. Find a couple of technical exercises that you think you're not ready for, and dive in. Slowly. 

Having a good practice routine is also a great way to warm up before a gig or a performance. It gives your fingers something to do so they can get "in the groove" before you play in front of an audience. Repeating the same exercises and/or pieces of music as your practice routine will also help you create new neural pathways in your brain, develop your muscle memory, and improve or maintain your dexterity. 

Finally, having a good practice routine can give you a space for musical meditation every day. It gives you a chance to meet yourself where you are, and to show compassion for yourself. Having a rough day? Slow down your practice routine. Feeling good and up for a challenge? Click that metronome up a notch or two. Either way, you can honor yourself as a musician and as a human being by adjusting your practice routine to what feels good for you in that particular time. 

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So what does my practice routine look like lately?

• I start with some basic scales up and down the neck of the uke. To be fair, I'm still learning some of these on the fretboard, so anything other than C major and G major go verrrrrrrrrrry sloooooooooooowly. 
• Next, I do some finger dexterity exercises up and down the neck of the uke. I usually go up to the 8th or 10th fret, depending on how I'm feeling that day. These start with simple 1-2-3-4 patterns and go to mix things up a bit, like 1-4-2-3 or 1-3-2-4, all up and down the neck. Fun stuff!
• Since I started learning techniques from Andrew Molina, I've included things like Hawaiian pull-offs (and just more pull-offs and hammer-ons in general), plus octaves up and down the neck of the uke. 
• Next I go to the Fingerstyle Fursday exercises by fourstringboy and work through the ones I already know from memory, and then I try to start two new ones every week.
• After that, I play through the first set of ten pieces in Choan Galvez's 50 Miniature Studies for Ukulele. I've set the goal of learning all 50 pieces and committing them to memory, and since most of them are like a page long, it's not an unreasonable goal. So far. 

After that, I'll work on whatever new music I'm learning and pull out an old piece or two just to refresh my memory. 

Mind you, I don't usually do all of this in one sitting. I usually break up my practice routine into two or more chunks of time each day, since there are things to do like dishes, cooking, walking the dog, etc. And like I said earlier in this post, there are some days when I just have to slow everything waaaaaaaaaaay down. And some days I don't actually make it to the working-on-new-music thing. 

But that's my daily practice routine. What feels good about your current practice routine?