Developing a love of music through childhood was the easy bit; how to pick it up again as an adult and continue to grow as a musician was the hard one. By the time I started university I was already an advanced pianist but, once in paid work, it got much harder and I barely touched the instrument. Add in marriage, motherhood and aging relatives, and the caring responsibilities that come with all three comfortably took over any free time.

I realised that music could play a vital part in resetting the balance back towards spending time on things that brought me joy. I wanted to carry on my piano development where I’d left off thirty years before. However, this would require time to practise and a skilled teacher to unpick any bad habits I had developed in the meantime.

Disturbing People

My piano is a lovely upright with a big, bright sound amplified by the wooden floorboards in our house, and the open nature of the building. My husband bought me an electric keyboard with weighted keys into which I could plug headphones. It was a lovely gesture, but there may have been an ulterior motive in that it can’t be nice to listen to the same bar being played over and over again, even if you love that person. In reality, the keyboard gave him peace, and me peace of mind knowing that I wouldn’t be disturbing people.

Squeezing in Practice Time

The next challenge was how to squeeze my practice into a busy work and home schedule. It was impossible to do it at the start of the day as there was the school bus drop-off before my early starts at work. At the other end of the day, by the time work, dinner preparation, school bus collection, feeding and clearing up were done, it would be around nine o’clock before I could call the time my own. I would sit down at the keyboard, slap on the headphones and get so lost in it that I would routinely miss the reminder on my phone that bedtime was approaching. While this felt good, I was going to bed late and becoming tired. I needed to make more progress in less time. This is where musical life went up a gear.

Curated Practice​

My teacher encouraged me to attend Holiday Music. Here, my solo piano world opened up to duets and chamber work, but it meant learning new pieces, including being familiar with the other parts, all to a deadline. In order to maximise my exposure to a piece, I would repeatedly listen to recordings on the way to and from work until I could easily distinguish between different artists, picking out sections and phrases that made the most sense to me musically and that I could apply.

My teacher would help me learn the music and we would highlight areas to practise for the next lesson. In the regular half hour I had at home I would warm up with Hanon exercises before moving onto the pieces and learning the bars with accurate fingering and a hefty dose of musicality. Soon the bars turned into phrases and the piece grew. It seemed almost impossible that I could learn music to a good standard with only half an hour a day, versus the five to six hours mantra I had as a teenager. However, there is consistency across many sources that regular short practice is more effective than an equivalent length of time spent in one dollop at the weekend.

So what was the outcome of all this quiet, regular, curated practice time? I learned a huge amount of increasingly challenging repertoire, and outside of these courses I secured my first performance diploma and have started on my next. The one factor I haven’t mentioned is human behaviour, partly because it’s a huge topic and probably worthy of a piece or two in its own right. Suffice to say it’s everyone’s combined attitude that has enabled me to come this far with so much enjoyment along the way.

– Rachel, Course Regular