Polishing Your Pieces – Practice Methods to Polish Music

Once we’ve learned the notes of a piece of music, the next step is to polish it.  This means we smooth out all the bumps.  Ideally, we can then play the piece reliably with no major upsets, and with all the beautiful moments intact.

To polish music, we use practice methods that are often different than how we originally learned the music.  As we progress as musicians, we learn more of these practice methods.  This lets us become quicker and more effective at polishing our pieces.

Here are a few places to start:

• Ace the Tricky Spots and Polish to Perfection (pt 1: First Things First) – This is the first of a small series of practice methods to polish your music.
• How to Learn Classical Guitar Pieces – This 7-step process helps to remove any confusion about the music.  This is a great way to learn pieces to begin with, and also to work on any troublesome spots.
• How to Video Yourself for Practice – Video and audio recording is one of the most powerful tools we have to polish music.  They let us stand back and hear and see what is happening.  Then we can “become our own teacher”, and fix many problems.
• How to Fix Rhythm Problems in Music – This practice method helps you play rhythms with precision and accuracy.  It’s great for any musical challenge involving rhythm.

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All Polishing Lessons