6 Reasons To Record Your Practice Sessions (+Tips)

Have you ever listened to yourself talk on tape and thought "I don't sound like that!" Well, bad news. You do sound like that and the same phenomenon applies to how you sound on your music instrument. Recording your practice sessions is a great way to develop a more objective ear and identify issues in your playing. Here are just some of the reasons I recommend the practice to all of my students.

Allows You to Focus on Performance

Have you ever tried to do homework and watch TV at the same time? Odds are you end up not really paying attention to the show and you do a poor job on your homework. You get much better results if you focus on just one thing. The same is true for practicing music. Working through a new piece of music or practicing a difficult passage requires a lot of mental energy. Our mind is filled with thoughts like "Remember, more air on this note" or "Think subdivisions to keep a steady tempo." Paying attention to the "doing" aspect means you can't really pay attention to how you sound. Or, if you do, then you are taking away focus on developing or improving a habit. Recording your practice session frees up your mind to focus on doing one thing at a time, which means you'll do it more effectively.

Recording Serves As An Objective Ear

"A photograph doesn't lie." Have you heard that saying before? It's less true in today's world of photoshop, but the idea is that a photograph captures a moment in time without our personal experiences clouding our interpretation. You might have experienced this when retelling a story with a friend and you swear something happened one way, and they swear the opposite. Our point of view, emotions, and physical feelings can all cloud how we see or hear something. For example, if I am feeling dehydrated, then I am more likely to describe my sound as "tight" or "thin" because that is how my lips feel. The truth of how I sound might be something very different.

Recording yourself removes those other thoughts and allows you to focus on what really matters; how you sound. This is especially effective if you can give yourself some time between when you record and when you listen back. Allow yourself to forget how you felt when playing.

Capture "Ah-ha" Moments

Inspiration is always described as coming in a flash. It comes out of nowhere and then disappears just as quickly. These moments come from a unique combination of elements that are hard to recreate. They make perfect sense in the moment, but days later, these ideas somehow don't have the same resonance. It is important to capture your ideas as they happen. By recording your practice session, you can explain these moments in great detail as they occur so that later, you can recall the insight.

Capture "Uh-oh" Moments

Have you ever felt sick right until you walked into the doctor's office? Or have issues with your car until it rolls into the mechanic's office? Life has a funny way of giving us problems until we want to show them to the person with the expertise to fix them. This is true for our playing, too. Sometimes we might have issues that we want our lesson teacher's opinion on, but we cannot explain or recreate it when we're in the lesson. A powerful teachable moment has been lost. When you record your practice, you capture these moments, which makes it easier to (1) diagnose and (2) highlight to your teacher.

When you have a consistent problem, listen back and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is this problem a range, rhythm, intonation, musical, or articulation problem?
2. What happens right before the problem? Right afterward?
3. Are there trends in these problems?
4. Based on these other questions, what do I think is the cause?
5. What are five ways/exercises I can use to correct this issue?

Practice Getting Nervous

If recording your practice sessions is so valuable for improving, then why is it that all musicians don't do it? There are probably many reasons, but one that I hear from my own students is that they get nervous.

Good!

Do you get nervous in performance? Yes. Do you get nervous in auditions? Absolutely. The only way to reduce that is to practice getting nervous. When you force yourself to get nervous, you get used to how it feels and what you need to do to overcome those nerves. With that in mind, if hitting the record button makes you nervous, then that is a low-risk way to begin to work on that problem.

Track Your Progress

The journey to master a musical instrument is not an easy one. Some days are fun, and some days are frustrating. It's common for us to feel stuck in our progress and begin to lose motivation. That is because progress comes slowly and in small doses and it can be hard to notice improvement. However, if you listen to a recording of yourself from last month or last year, you might notice a dramatic improvement in your playing. Listening back can remind you how far your hard work has taken you and encourage you to continue.

Take Notes

Whatever your reason for recording your practice sessions, it is important to always write down your learnings. Two of the major reasons to write down your insights are (1) Writing things down actives more of your brain, causing you to remember them more easily.(2) Listening to an entire practice session again can take a lot of time. Jotting down the most important aspects in your practice journal will allow you to quickly skim and remember what happened. Personally, I like to also jot down time stamps so that if I want to go back and listen, I know exactly when to fast forward to.

Advice On Setting Up Your Recording Equipment

Try to practice and record yourself in different rooms. You will sound different when you are on stage than you do when you are in a practice room. Try to practice one a week in your schools auditorium or some larger space that is more similar to where you will perform. Place the mic several rows back so that you are getting the perspective of an audience member. You will likely realize that the nuance of your playing isn't as clear.

Do not put the mic at your bell. This is not what you sound like. Not to anyone else, anyway. This might seem obvious, but now imagine that you use your phone to record and you place it on your music stand. How far away is it from the bell? At minimum, put the microphone on a table a few feet away.

How Often Should You Record Yourself?

I would record myself in every practice session. Note, this isn't saying you should record all of the practice session, but that you should always try to perform a section of what you are working on and evaluate it. For example, if I am working on an etude and there are 12 measures that I am focusing on, at the end of my practice session I will perform those 12 measure and record it. I might also play the entire etude start to finish and record it. I can use this recording to track my progress, assess what needs work, and practice getting into the performing headspace.

As you get closer to a performance, you should record yourself more frequently. Try to record full runs of your concert material.

How Should Your Analyze Your Recordings

There are a few ways I would recommend listening back and analyzing. They depend on what you are trying to identify.

Problem Patterns

If you want to know where you are struggling, then record yourself playing the same thing three times in a row. Listen back to the recordings with a pencil. When you hear an error or something you want to work on, circle it with the pencil. After listening to all the recordings, look at the sections you have circled multiple times; This is where you should focus.

Focused Practice

When you are working on a specific passage, you should be recording attempts at performing it and then listening back to that attempt in real time. This will tell you if your adjustments were effective.

Recording Lessons

I love recording my music lessons. Sometimes a teacher says something that just makes sense in that moment, but is difficult to recreate outside the practice room. Recordings help capture that wisdom. I would recommend recording your lesson, then waiting a few days before listening. Listen back with your practice journal and take notes along with timestamps for important moments in the lesson. For example, at timestamp 5:02 my teacher talks to me about where to breath in order to make a more beautiful phrase. Try to a dd a note on how you will practice or apply what was learned in the lesson. Using the same example, I might take out my music and mark where to breath or schedule time in my next practice session to practice and record that passage with the new breath marks.

Performance Readiness

Do not listen to the recording right after you run a practice performance. It is too easy to listen with a bias on how you think the performance went. Give yourself a few days to forget the emotions. When you listen to the performance have a piece of paper ready. I like to write down all the pieces I am playing and leave plenty of space for notes. Don't ty to write down everything you are unhappy with. Instead, limit yourself to two or three items per piece that you want to improve upon. This ensure you have clear actionable steps.