How to Structure a Productive Flute Practice Session

So you have set time aside to practice your flute, and you have musical goals you want to tackle. (If not, I highly recommend taking a look at the blog post “Making the Most of Your Flute Time: Practice & Play Scheduling” before continuing). But what exactly DO YOU DO when you practice? How do you organize your practice so that you are reaching your goals quickly and effectively? Here are some ways of how to structure a productive flute practice session.

Key Elements of Productive Sessions

While a lot of aspects of a music practice session will be dependent on time availability and personal learning preferences, there are certain key elements that are found in most productive practice sessions.

First of all, try to remove distractions such as putting your phone on silent or letting those around you who might potentially call your attention away know that you need uninterrupted time to focus. And have all of your materials ready to go so you are not looking around for a pencil or sheet music and wasting some of your practice time.

Therefore, you additionally need to make sure that you are coming to a session with goals in mind already. You can lose a lot of precious time trying to figure out what you want to do. And while you should prioritize goals which have an approaching deadline like an upcoming performance, you do not want to practice ONLY those pieces as a practice session should be well-rounded, just like the kind of musician you likely want to be. If you need help coming up with and organizing your goals, check out the free Flute Goals Chart.

Normal Strategy for Longer Practice Sessions

Typically, you want to be working on elements of sound, technique and theory, etudes/studies, and pieces. And a common practice pattern is to work on those aspects in that order. Sound exercises make good warmups and putting pieces at the end lets you make sure that you include fundamentals like technical exercises and studies in each session when you might just want to dive into the pieces immediately.

Normally to get through all of these aspects effectively takes some time, so this strategy is best reserved for longer practice sessions of at least a half hour bare minimum but will likely take an hour or more. But remember that if you are going to be playing your flute for a long duration to take a couple short breaks to get both mental and physical rest and to potentially change positions from seated to standing or vice versa as it is not always wise to be in one position for too long of a stretch.

Try Practicing in Multiple Shorter Practice Sessions

Sometimes it is very hard to find one uninterrupted hour or more to practice, and let’s face it, it is very hard to focus for that long of a time as well. So try breaking your practice up into multiple shorter sessions instead.

Pick just a couple of small goals that you can manage within a few minutes. For example, you can work on getting your Ab major scale with a metronome at 60 bpm, and you can practice measures 17 through 24 of your performance piece focusing on musicality and intonation. Those are small feasible goals, and you would be surprised how quickly you can reach loftier goals when they are broken down into manageable bite-sized pieces.

Then pick a couple more goals for your next practice session sometime later that day. Repeat the process for as many times as you would like to practice.

Interleave Your Practice

Another strategy is to interleave your practice where you alternate between different skills or aspects of playing. So instead of doing all your sound exercises then completely moving on to scales and not returning to sound, you could do descending long tones, then practice a couple scales, then do ascending long tones, then a couple more scales, etc. This is a good brain exercise. While it might be harder at first to keep refocusing, it helps your brain create new connections and enhances long-term memory of what you are working on.

However, if you still prefer to focus on one thing at a time, another practice technique variation you could try is to work on one topic but in different contexts. For example, if you wanted to really work on intonation for a while, you could practice just a couple long tones with a tuner and drone, then work on a scale then part of a piece using the same tools, rather than spending the whole time on only doing lots of long tones. Or if you wanted to practice double tonguing, try double tonguing a scale or two or do an etude working on that articulation before working on that hard double-tonguing passage in your music, adding variety rather than just looping those same measures over and over.

Go from Difficult to Easy

It is always fun to practice things we are already good at, but if we are good at them, then really we are just playing and not practicing, which should be focused on areas that need improvement. So do just a couple minutes of easy or fun things to warm up, then spend the rest of your practice working on the hardest things first then going to the easiest. That way you make sure you get to those bits you know you really need to practice (it’s funny how often we always seem to run out of time before that happens…), and you are still fresh and likely not to make as many mistakes from being tired if you wait until the end of your practice.

After getting through the difficult parts, then the easier things feel like a reward for all your effort! And remember, it is important to leave time to play (not just practice) music, and you will really be able to enjoy your play time by not having the harder parts of practice hanging over your head.

Include Time for Mental Practice

There is a lot that goes into learning your instrument and a piece of music, many of which you do not actually need your flute for in order to practice. Things like aural skills and listening to recordings, studying music theory and history, etc. So if you ever do not have a chance or the desire to get your flute out, try practicing mentally instead. While of course you have to play your flute to actually get better at it, you would be surprised just how much you can still accomplish without it.

For more information, please see the blog, “How to Practice Flute WITHOUT Your Instrument!”.

Document Your Practice

Try writing down what and how long you spent practicing and playing each day. That will keep you honest with yourself, and then you can experiment and see which strategies work best for you, as there is no one strategy that works best for all people or all situations. If you need something to help keep you organized, you can try the free Flute Practice & Play Log.