Keeping a practice journal: why musicians progress faster with it

What is a practice journal, actually?

A practice journal is essentially a record of your practice.

You note down what you practiced, how long you practiced and what you are currently working on. Depending on the system, goals, difficulties, recordings or short notes can be added too.

It can look very simple:

Piano – 30 minutes

Bach, bars 17–32: 15 min.
Left hand separately: 5 min.
With metronome up to 72 BPM: 10 min.

Problem: the transition at bar 28 is still unclean.

To begin with, that is all it needs.

The decisive point comes later: when you return to the instrument the next day, you do not have to wonder where you left off yesterday.

You can pick up right where you stopped.

Why writing things down helps learning

Musicians constantly have to make decisions while practicing.

What do I practice today?

Which passage is the biggest problem right now?

Should I play the whole piece or just four bars?

Has it really improved, or does it just feel that way?

This kind of planning, monitoring and reflection is described in research as self-regulated learning. Studies with musicians show that a practice journal can support these processes. In one study with piano students, for example, a self-directed practice journal was used that prompted reflection before, during and after practice.

At first, this sounds a little theoretical.

In practice, though, it is quite practical.

You no longer approach the instrument just with the thought “I still have to practice today”.

You approach it with a concrete question:

What do I want to be better at today than yesterday?

That is a big difference.

A practice journal turns practice time into real practice time

Let us take two musicians.

Both have 30 minutes.

The first plays the piece through several times. It gets unclean at the difficult spots, so he keeps playing and tries again on the next run-through.

The second first looks at his notes from the previous day.

He knows: bar 28 was the problem.

So he starts there. Slowly. With the metronome. First the right hand, then both hands. Afterwards he plays the passage in context.

After 20 minutes the passage works noticeably better.

Who learned more?

Not necessarily the one who played longer.

That is exactly what the practice journal is about.

It helps you avoid confusing practice time with learning progress.

How much faster do you learn with it?

Here you should be careful.

A serious figure such as “20% faster” or “twice as fast” cannot be derived from the research. A practice journal is not a training program whose effect can be stated in blanket percentages.

What can be well supported, however, is this: structured practice aimed at specific tasks is linked to musical performance. A meta-analysis of 13 studies with a total of 788 people found a clear connection between task-specific practice and musical performance.

This is exactly where the practice journal helps.

It makes you link your practice time to concrete goals more often, observe your mistakes and derive the next session from what actually happened.

A simple calculation example

Imagine you practice five times a week for 30 minutes each.

That is 150 minutes per week.

If better planning means you no longer spend just 10% of your practice time on aimless repetition or unnecessary detours, that is 15 minutes per week.

Over a year, that adds up to around 13 hours of additional focused practice time – without sitting at the instrument a single minute longer.

The 10% is just a calculation example, not a scientifically measured effect of a practice journal.

But the interesting thought lies right here:

Learning faster does not have to mean practicing more. It can also mean losing less time.

A practice journal helps you spot mistakes earlier

While practicing, you quickly get used to certain routines.

You play a difficult passage the same way again and again. You notice it does not work, but you change nothing about it.

After ten repetitions you are not better – you have simply run into the same difficulty ten times.

A short note can make this visible:

“Bar 43 works at 80 BPM, from 90 BPM I lose the evenness.”

That gives you information to work with at your next practice session.

Maybe you will not practice the whole piece again.

Maybe you will work only on this transition.

That saves time.

And above all, it prevents you from going round in circles while practicing.

You remember more than just what you practiced

A good practice journal documents more than minutes.

It documents decisions.

For example:

• What was my goal today?
• What worked?
• Where did I have difficulties?
• Which practice strategy helped?
• What should I repeat tomorrow?

The last point in particular is important.

Because it means the next practice session does not start from zero again.

You can build on what you figured out yesterday.

This is one of the reasons why practice journals are interesting in professional musical settings too. Research on self-regulated practice in music students shows how important planning, monitoring and subsequent reflection are for shaping one’s own practice process.

Breaks and practice intervals play a role too

A practice journal can make something else visible that is easily underestimated: how you distribute your practice time.

A study with musicians examined how different intervals between practice sessions affect the learning of a motor sequence. In a group whose practice sessions were 24 hours apart, accuracy improved noticeably by the second session.

That is no proof that every musician should leave exactly 24 hours between practice sessions.

But it does show something important:

Several short, sensibly spaced practice sessions can achieve something different from a single long session.

If you document your practice, you can even recognise such patterns in yourself to begin with.

Perhaps you find that you practice more focused in the morning.

Or that 20 minutes daily do more for a certain piece than an hour twice a week.

Without records, this usually stays just a feeling.

The benefits of a practice journal

You approach the instrument with a clear goal

Instead of “I still have to practice”, it says:

“Today I want to play the transition at bar 28 cleanly at 80 BPM.”

That makes the task manageable.

You lose less time to repetitions

When you know where your problem is, you can work on it more directly.

You recognise your progress

Progress does not always feel like progress.

After four weeks, an old recording can suddenly show that a passage now sounds noticeably better.

You get to know yourself better as a musician

When do you practice most focused?

Which methods work for you?

Which problems keep coming back?

A practice journal can make such patterns visible.

You can work better with your teacher

If your teacher knows what you actually worked on, they can tailor the next lesson better.

It works the other way round too: as a teacher, you get an insight into what happens between lessons.

When you share recordings, notes and progress data with your teacher, the article GDPR in online music lessons is also worth reading.

But a practice journal also has downsides

It would be wrong to pretend that a practice journal is automatically the perfect solution for everyone.

The biggest downside is probably very simple:

It can get annoying.

If you want to document every single minute, every scale and every mistake, practice quickly turns into paperwork.

That is not the point.

Another point should be considered too: a practice journal can encourage misplaced ambition. Anyone who looks at their minutes every day might eventually try to reach the longest possible practice time instead of practicing sensibly.

And numbers do not tell the whole story.

45 minutes of focused work on a difficult passage can be musically more valuable than two hours of simply playing through the whole programme.

That is why a practice journal should support your practice and not become a competition with yourself.

What should a good practice journal contain?

You do not really need much.

To begin with, five points are enough:

1. What did I practice?
Piece, étude, technique, song, improvisation, etc.

2. What was my goal?
What should be better by the end of the session?

3. How long did I practice?
Not as proof of performance, but as orientation.

4. What worked or did not work?
A short note is enough.

5. What will I do next time?
So you can dive straight in at your next practice session.

Optionally, recordings, sheet music, videos or other materials can be added.

It does not have to be more than that.

And that is exactly why a practice journal does not have to be complicated

It used to be a notebook next to the instrument.

That still works, of course.

Today it can also be digital.

The advantage: your entries do not disappear between old sheet music at some point. You can refer back to earlier entries, add recordings and – if you work with a teacher – share information more easily.

That is exactly what we developed MUSIRIS for.

You can document your practice in it, record goals, collect practice times and notes, and follow your musical progress over longer periods.

It is not about turning music into a spreadsheet.

It is about not starting from zero again at your next practice session.

You can start today

You need neither a perfect system nor a new practice strategy for this.

Take five minutes at your next practice session today.

Write down:

What do I want to improve?

Then you practice.

Afterwards, note down briefly:

What worked? What is still open?

And tomorrow you look at this note again.

After one week you already have something that was not there before: an overview of your own practice.

After a month it becomes a history.

And at some point you can look back and actually see how you have developed.

This is perhaps the biggest benefit of a practice journal:

You do not just practice. You also learn how to practice better.

If you want to start today, you can set up your digital practice journal directly in MUSIRIS.

Register for free with MUSIRIS – and simply document your next practice session.

You do not have to wait until Monday. Start at your next practice session.