My passion is to help others in the community, young, old, and everyone in between, find relevance and joy in learning, performing or listening to classical music.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Making practicing public, live, and personal

Here comes another crazy idea of mine and thankfully I don't have just myself to blame for this one.    It started a while ago after I had tweeted quite a bit during a practice session of mine.  One of my friends on twitter tweeted to me, "I wish I could hear you practicing over twitter."  

My initial reaction was, "Ewwwww...I don't think you really want to know what's going on when I'm practicing."  But especially since I've started my own practice coaching business, I have put some more thought into my friend's statement and began thinking that livestreaming my practice sessions just might be the thing to do.  It would be a great way to hold me accountable for practicing what I preach, would give me more motivation to set aside time to practice every day, and if people actually chose to watch it, it could give them some insight into how I work, think, and deal with life as a busy musician.  It would show that even professionals have problems, that we make mistakes, and have bad practice days - in other words, that we too are human.  If nothing else, on good days it could provide folks with some decent background music.  

So here we are.  Thanks to the joys of the internet and technology, I am now able to jump off the cliff and let you all into my little strange, obsessive little practice world.  Right now I happen to have a lot of time to practice so I'm practicing several hours a day.  In a few weeks, once school gets going and rehearsals start up I'm not sure how it's going to work.  My plan, however, is to post a schedule for the day each morning on my Beyond the Notes Facebook page.  You can also come here to my blog and look at the sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen.  I have my ustream channel embedded there and it should automatically show when I'm livestreaming.  

If you miss my practice sessions, which is very likely since everyone is so productive and busy, you can always watch the archived videos that are also stored on my channel.  I'll keep a week's worth there at any given time.  

This is all very new so I welcome feedback on how I can make this work better so that it will be more interesting and informative.  And if you have specific questions about what or how I'm practicing shoot me an e-mail at practicecoaching@yahoo.com. This is now my third day of streaming and I was encouraged yesterday when another friend on twitter, a pianist, responded to my livestreaming yesterday by saying, "Could only tune in for a few minutes.  Long enough to send me to the piano."

I'm not sure if she was already headed to the piano, but if it was watching me practice that drove her to practice, this crazy experiment is well worth it!

So go pop some popcorn, pull up a seat, and join me...Beyond the Notes...live!


10 comments:

  1. I love that you're live-streaming your practice sessions Erica. It reminds me of my days in the practice rooms at college... as long as I could hear other people working I stayed motivated to keep at it.

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    1. Yay, Cathy. I love that it brings you back to college practice room days - how perfect! Thank you for the feedback and I'll stick with it until someone screams, "Mercy!!" :-)

      -Erica

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  2. I think your courage to broadcast your practicing is going to encourage and inspire a lot of others. I love what Cathy said - I agree. I enjoyed my practicing a little more today because of you :)

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    1. Another yay, Sensible Flutist. That means a lot to me - thank you!

      -your faithful pianist when you want :-)

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  3. Not gonna lie, I used you as background music the other day while I was doing homework. (:

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    1. Ha ha ha, Katie! That is fine with me!! :-) I really didn't expect anyone to enjoy listening but I love unexpected surprises.

      See you soon and thanks for listening and taking the time to comment,
      Erica

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  4. I'm just watching your archived practice sessions now - have been meaning to for some time, but didn't get round to it!
    Although people have often suggested that I record or video my practice sessions to help me improve, I've never done it because I was afraid it would make me self-conscious and unable to practice productively.
    On the spur of the moment this evening, I decided to video myself practicing. watching it was really interesting and informative, as I've never actually seen myself play close up before!
    I've been wondering if there might be any point in putting it on youtube...I'm very shy though. Mostly, I'd just like to be able to put annotations on it to point out to myself things I like and don't like, which would be easy to do on youtube. what do you think?

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    1. Thanks for watching, Dorothea!
      I say give it a go. The annotations can take a bit of time to do but I really think it could be interesting to have more people filming, posting, and livestreaming their practice sessions. Practicing is typically such a private thing more the most part that I think it's too mysterious for many others that might not really know what they should be doing in the practice room. I guess we run the risk of also driving people insane with it all, but I kind of think it's worth the risk.

      I look forward to seeing what you decide to do!

      Happy practicing (and maybe recording!)

      -Erica

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  5. Great idea to hold yourself accountable! Good for both teachers and students alike to see - love it.

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    1. Thank you, Suzy! Good to know that others are interested in these livestreaming practice sessions.

      All the best,
      Erica

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