Top Five Tips For Learning an Instrument by Katie Brunt

These five easy tips have been compiled to help beginners starting out on learning an instrument, and can be read in no time at all to acquaint a beginner with some handy hints and to promote good practice habits.

Getting Comfortable: Though some specific instrument teachers might be eager for you to sign up for six months of lessons, any respectable instructor will recommend trial sessions, especially if buying the instrument in question is likely to be costly. From a session like this you are unlikely to envisage yourself as a virtuoso, but at least it's a chance to get the overall feel of a particular discipline before you plunge into learning a skill when you wish you'd thought the whole thing over a while!

Leave Your Mark: An instrument or a folder full of carefully marked scores is not difficult to lose, and this happens most of all when you're not used to having your instrument with you when travelling between places. Therefore, it's always good to label your cases and if possible your instrument with your name and a postal address: with classical guitars, you can even stick a label inside the body for the best chance of return.

The Sibelius Technique: Often attributed to Sibelius is the study method using twenty pebbles and a cloth bag. Though brutal, as we shall see, it is the optimal way to rehearse a piece to performance level with confidence, so that one can concentrate fully on how you wish to express the piece yourself. It goes thus: set the pebbles on a table (or on your piano) by the bag. Play the piece. If you make it through without a wrong note or a hitch, place a pebble in the bag. Repeat. When you make a mistake, empty the cloth bag of pebbles, and start over. And, yes, even the time you reach poor pebble number 19.

Learn Your Acronyms!: Like any discipline, music theory has a very idiosyncratic history of acronyms which, once memorized, will mean you can think through complex theoretical issues without the aid of charts and reference books. There are many, but here is one example: 'Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle', which gives you the number of sharps in each key (F: 1b, C:0, D: 1#...) and is reversible for counting the number of flats. Learning your acronyms might not be as much fun as playing your favourite piece, but printing them out in gigantic letters for your music room could help you pick them up quicker.

Regular Practice Times: Whatever your instrument, most teachers will tell you that ten minutes absorbed practice per day for a week (though far from a desirable amount) is better than an hour and ten minutes before your lesson. To do the latter, you're only ever likely to disappoint yourself and the person tasked with overseeing your musical development. Design a realistic practice timetable and use a Laser Printer to print it out, and place it where you will undoubtedly see it daily. Getting into good, regular practice habits makes progression in your learning a much swifter process.

There are no easy routes or ways to cheat your way to learning an instrument, but hopefully these easy tips will send you on your way to establishing a comfortable routine and a confidence in playing.