Have you ever kept a practice log? Using one can be a great way to keep yourself accountable in your practice. To us, there are two big reasons to keep a practice log for your cello practice: time and substance. We’ll explain what we mean by each of these and then at the end of this post, you’ll find a free printable cello practice log.
Time
Not only can you record how much you’ve practiced, but you can also look for patterns. Do you consistently practice Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but never the other days? Maybe you can start by adding just one extra day. Or maybe you notice that you practice better in the mornings than the evenings. And of course just recording the amount you’ve practiced is a good way to keep yourself accountable and motivate yourself to practice more. Try challenging yourself to add more time each week, even if it’s only 5 or 10 minutes per week.
Substance
You can see on our practice log that there’s a place to list both the piece or exercise name as well as the “focus.” The idea here is to, well, focus your practice on a couple key concepts for each activity. It could be one concept or it could be a few. It could be a technical issue, a musical issue, whatever. For example, maybe you’re practicing a two-octave C Scale and you have two points of focus:
1. Keep your left elbow up.
2. Remember the key signature correctly so you play second versus third fingers in the correct places.
Of course since there’s not a huge amount of space on the practice log, abbreviate in a way that makes sense to you, but having a quick couple of phrases to remind you why you’re practicing these things in the first place can really help to make your practice more effective.
Click on the image below to get the practice log, or you can click here.
