July 2022

Practicing on Your Own

by Frances Blaker

We love to play our instrument but oh, how easy it is to let days go by without practicing! Why practice at all? I practice so that, when I play in a group or even just for myself, I feel ease of movement, I hear flowing and beautiful tone, I hear and feel the sparkling variety of articulation. When I don’t practice, I feel sluggish. I find myself unable to make the sounds I wish to hear. 


In a way, those are the selfish reasons for practicing. I want to feel free as a bird in my playing. But we can also practice for the benefit of others. When I go to my ensemble rehearsal, I have a responsibility to my fellow players; I need to be ready to play the music as well as possible so that they (and I) can have the maximum musical fun during rehearsal. Why waste our opportunities to play together?

But How, Oh How, Do We Keep Up Our Motivation to Practice? 

One of the big reasons we don’t practice is that we don’t know what or how to practice. Here are some tips, gleaned from my many years of practice at practicing.

Make it EASY to practice.

Choose a place in your home that is your practice area (whether that’s a whole room, or a corner of a room). Have all your tools nearby (ideally, organized neatly so you can find exactly what you need): your recorders, swabs, metronome, music books, music stand and the all-important pencil. 


Make a plan.

First, just plan that you will practice tomorrow at such and such a time. Then think about the pieces you will play in your group or practice for your lesson – if you are the list-making type, create a list of the pieces. Don’t have a group? Then you must find some music that you want to play. More on that below. 


I read somewhere that “failing to plan = planning to fail.” I know from myself that if I don’t plan the day before to practice at a certain time (8:30, or even after lunch) I usually end up letting everything else take over the day and I just don’t practice.


An important part of this planning process is knowing yourself – are you happier practicing early in the day, late in the day, when hungry, when not-hungry, hidden away in a quiet place, or in the midst of family action?


Decide ahead of time what piece or exercise you will practice FIRST. 

This will mean that when you pick up your recorder you can dive right in. I like best to start with some technique warm-ups. A blowing exercise, a finger exercise, an articulation exercise. When I’ve done these (which can take a short or a longer time) I’m ready for whatever I find in my pieces of music. Others like to start with some playing by ear, or working on a piece of music. 

Practicing a specific piece of music? Try different practice methods.

Varying your approach keeps practicing fresh. It also helps us to learn more and better. When practicing a piece of music, let’s say it’s an allegro by Handel, we can:

  • Play the whole movement from measure 1 until the end, trying to play as well as possible, but not getting hung up on flaws; 
  • Play through to find the more difficult sections, then practice each of those sections on its own; 
  • Discover the musical sections, the phrases or groups of phrases that seem to make up a section. Then practice one section intently one day, another section intently the next day; 
  • Memorize the difficult measures; 
  • Play the whole movement using what I call the X method: start playing; when you make a mistake, stop, mark a light pencil X by the note you played incorrectly, resume playing until the next mistake. You’ll end up with 5 or 6 (or 20…) X’s. The next day, go back and practice (slowly) the X places with the few notes before and after. This method is intense, but extremely effective. Once you have mastered spots marked with an X, all the Xs should be completely erased, leaving no trace.


The one thing you should not do is always and only play the whole movement once through. That is not practicing. 

So, What IS Practicing? 

Practicing is playing the music with attention to where your flaws are, then examining those flaws, playing the area several times to root out the flaw, whether it is a fingering misunderstanding, an actual difficult move, or excessive tension. Playing with attention to where your fine points are is also valuable – notice what you like about your playing. 


We can practice specific techniques – smooth finger action, precise and varied articulation, or breath control. But we can also practice the music itself – the art of expression. Practice the first eight measures of a piece of music (a) to discover where you want to play louder, where quieter, and how you want to get from one loudness to the other; (b) to discover where you want short and energetic notes, where you want flowing and lyrical notes; (c) to discover where you want light, dancing fingers, where you want bold, shy, hesitant or exuberant motions. In doing these things you bring all your techniques (breath, fingers, tongue) together. 

In my years of practicing and teaching I have discovered that there are basically two reasons we make flaws and mistakes: 

1. We have excess tension in our muscles, thus tripping ourselves up and tangling into a knot;

2. We don’t actually know what the next note is – we aren’t noticing, we aren’t reading, or we expect it’s this note coming up when actually it’s another.

If you don’t have a group or a teacher, but you still want to practice to improve and to enjoy your playing, you will need to find music you want to play.


  • First, discover what sort of music you like. Perhaps it's baroque music – Bach, Handel, etc. – or renaissance consort music – Holborne, Senfl, etc. – or medieval music – Landini, Dufay, Hildegard, etc. Or perhaps you prefer pop music – the Beatles, show tunes, movie soundtracks, Ed Sheeran, etc. Do you prefer folk music, traditional music from some certain country or culture? If you don’t know, go to YouTube and search for some of the composers or types of music I mention here. This will start you on a path of discovery! 
  • To find the sheet music for the types of music you want to play, you can use the incredible Internet. In the US, check the websites of Honeysuckle Music, Lazar’s Early Musicthe Von Huene shop and more. You can phone one of these shops and ask for help finding what you are looking for. The people who run these shops are very helpful and know a lot about what is available.
  • There are many online resources for finding music. One of the best places to start looking is the American Recorder Society. The ARS has searchable online music libraries and has published several ARS NOVA articles on finding music online, all available in the ARS NOVA eMag archiveThere is so much!


The topic of practicing is large and multi-faceted. One could write whole books about it. In fact, there are books! But what’s most important right now is to go forth and practice. Happy Practicing!

Frances Blaker is a recorder player trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. She is a long-time and sought-after teacher both of private students and at workshops around the country. She performs with Ensemble Vermillian, the Farallon Recorder Quartet, Calextone and more. Ms. Blaker is the Festival Director of the Amherst Early Music Festival and during the pandemic has worked as co-director with Tish Berlin of the Amherst Early Music online weekend classes. Together with Tish Berlin she runs the popular Practice Challenges that occur at various times throughout the year. The next one will begin in October (information coming soon on tibiaduo.com). Frances and Tish were selected by the ARS Board for the ARS Distinguished Achivement Award in 2022. (See article here.)


Ms. Blaker is the author of The Recorder Player's Companion and Opening Measures (published by the ARS and available for purchase here). 

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