Tired of losing practice battles? Wage a practice campaign
There’s an old brainteaser about a frog stuck at the bottom of a well. The well is thirty feet deep, but the poor frog can only jump five feet high. There’s good news: he sticks to the wall at the end of his jump. But there’s bad news too: he can only muster the energy for one jump a day, and while he sleeps at night, he slips four feet back down the wall. How many days will it take him to get out of the well?
You can check your solution at the end of the post…
Do you practice like the frog? Do you make progress one day, only to come back the next feeling as though you’ve slipped all the way back to the beginning? This kind of one-dimensional thinking (all ups and downs) is terribly limiting. Let’s add another dimension and put your practice campaign on the map!
Before you leave today, make sure to download my free practice campaign worksheet so that you can map out your strategy just like I do. Just enter your info below to get the worksheet:
The theater of war, violin version
Let’s be clear: even though war is the least desirable solution to real-life problems, it’s a brilliant model for problem-solving. That’s because a military campaign needs to have a clear objective. And so should your practice. In fact, a lack of objective or goal is one of the 8 Practice Mistakes that I talk about in my free guide. If you don’t have that, grab it below:
Military objectives usually involve land: someone else has it, and you want it. Think about the last war movie you saw. There was probably a scene with a bunch of generals smoking cigars and unrolling giant maps, right? Land is a clear objective because it’s easy to define. You can see on a map just how much you have in your grasp.

Most musicians would be better off defining their objectives just as clearly. It’s admirable to want to make a better sound, or to learn to phrase more naturally. But in my experience, you achieve these qualities during the pursuit of a more concrete goal: learning a piece, preparing an audition, or entering a competition, for example.
Ironically, when you define an objective specifically, you free yourself to pursue it via different paths simultaneously. Imagine those cigar-smoking generals tracing several curving lines toward a key fortification. They might stall on one path while making fast progress on another.
Just think: in the practice room, you rank above the generals. You’re the commander-in-chief! And as long as you keep your main objective in mind, you will find a way there.
Campaigns, battles, and tactics
In order to achieve your campaign goal, you’ll need to plan smaller goals along the way. Some will take just a day to conquer, while others will require a bit more time. I call these smaller goals battles. Therefore your daily practice is made up of various tactics that will allow you to win your battles, and ultimately your campaign.
Since we’re really talking about goal-setting, here are the three goal types with their military terms in parentheses:
- Long-term (campaign)
- Short-term (battles)
- Daily (tactics)
Tying these three together is your overall campaign strategy. Your campaign goal is fixed, but your strategy may shift according to circumstances. That’s to be expected, especially for your first few campaigns. As you gain experience and become a seasoned campaigner, you’ll be able to identify your goal and lay out a strategy as naturally as you would tell a story to a friend.
Campaigns
The most important part of conducting a practice campaign is defining it. You have to know what you want to achieve, so keep it simple and well-defined. I suggest something along the lines of a concerto, an audition list, or a competition program. Projects like these typically take several months to complete, which is about as long as most of us can sustain our enthusiasm.
It is possible to look farther into the future. You might say, for example, “I want to learn all six Bach Sonatas and Partitas in the next two years.” But the further away you focus, the hazier your vision. It’s too easy to get derailed from such open-ended projects, and that’s why I prefer to break them down into campaigns of more limited scope.

Battles
Battles, like campaigns, can be easily defined and written down in advance. They’re checkpoints that should, if all goes well, lead you to your campaign goal. For an audition campaign, one crucial battle is to put together the audition book. Such a checkpoint doesn’t rely on luck or even skill, but it’s something you have to do in order to advance. Another series of battles would consist of learning each excerpt for the first time. Then, once you’ve gotten all the excerpts under your fingers, your list of battles might run in this way:
- playing through half the audition list each day
- getting the Schumann scherzo up to quarter=126
- playing a mock audition for friends
It’s important to remember that battles should directly support your campaign. As the saying goes, you must “pick your battles” in order to conserve your physical and mental energy. You don’t need to solve every one of your problems in order to succeed in your campaign. If you discover technical weaknesses that truly stand in your way, you may add them to your list of battles.
Don’t forget about instrument maintenance while you’re planning battles! Unless you schedule time to take care of any outstanding issues with your equipment, such as bow rehairs, string changes, or actual repairs, you will likely let them slide until it’s too late. As the Pharaoh says in The Ten Commandments, “So let it be written… so let it be done!”
Tactics
Finally, once all the planning is in the books, battles are won or lost based on moment-to-moment tactics or maneuvers. Your daily practice is made up of hundreds if not thousands of these actions. In fact, every time you put the bow to the string, you are making a decision as to which direction your campaign is going to go! You might run through a section, record yourself, practice under tempo or without vibrato, or employ note grouping. But whatever tactics you select, they must support a battle.
What sets tactics apart from campaigns and battles is that they must succeed. You should expect setbacks in your campaign, and you should be prepared for some battles to take longer than others. But each individual tactic you choose should give you a positive result. If a certain tactic doesn’t bring gains, switch to another. If nothing seems to work for a particular passage, then leave the passage for another day. Nothing will sap your focus more quickly than repeatedly failing at the same task in the same way. Never rehearse failure in the heat of battle!

The power of two dimensions
If your progress in one battle is slow, you’ll surely win another battle more quickly. And that is the key to long-term success: refusing to get distracted just because one fight drags on. You have to trust your campaign strategy to see you through the daily ups and downs.
Of course, some battles must happen sequentially. You can’t practice your audition excerpts until you have an audition book. And you can’t play a piece in tempo before you can play it at two-thirds tempo. But oftentimes we impose limitations on ourselves without realizing it. What if a piece contains spiccato, and yours is not up to par? Do you have to suspend all work on the piece until you fix your stroke? Of course not! You can get the notes up to speed with a simple detaché, while adding another battle to run concurrently: “spiccato boot camp”!
Your weaknesses are only part of the picture
Speaking of technical weaknesses, it’s standard practice to focus on them in order to get better. Otherwise they’ll never turn into strengths, right? But it is possible to take this to the extreme: to focus on weakness at the expense of strength.
I’ve worked with many violinists, for example, who convinced themselves that they had a small sound. The successful ones learned how to pull more volume out of their instruments when necessary, and left it at that. But a few unhappy players couldn’t rest until they had “conquered” their puny sounds. They concentrated on big tone to the exclusion of everything else, and ended up with a pressed sound on top of stale musical ideas! Only after opening their ears to their other qualities could they regain their balance.
That’s why I love the “campaign” analogy: you can give a technical weakness its proper place among other battles. You can employ tactics to combat the weakness, such as scale and etude work. Your progress there supports the other battles in your campaign.
Conquer, then consolidate
In war, once an army conquers a certain amount of territory, it’s dangerous to keep grabbing for more. Supply lines get stretched, and forces fatigued. At that point, it’s time to consolidate gains: to rebuild infrastructure and install at least rudimentary control over the new area.
The same is true for your development as a musician. Once you score a “win” by learning a new technique, or memorizing a new section, you are setting yourself up for disappointment if you expect to simply move on to the next conquest. You’ll likely need time to get comfortable with your new skills, as you learn how they fit with the music you’re playing.
Here again, scales and etudes are an enormous help. One of my favorite tactics is to use unfamiliar material (pick a dusty etude book and open to a random page!) in order to consolidate a new technique. Have you just improved your spiccato? Congratulations! Now play Kreutzer #2 off the string. Then Dont #3. Then an F-Major scale. When you return to spiccato in your repertoire, you won’t even have to think about the stroke.
Need to know which etudes help which techniques? Check out the Guide to Survival Repertoire!
Putting it all together: a sample campaign
Let’s take an example campaign and map it out. Start by downloading my practice campaign worksheet so that you can map right along with me:
I wrote the following back in 2018:
I’m going to perform the Beethoven violin concerto this fall with the Azusa Pacific University Symphony. I’m on faculty there, and I know the conductor well, so it should be a great experience. But although I studied the Beethoven in school and have accompanied major soloists countless times, I’ve never performed the solo part.
I like to be specific with my campaigns, so I have two supplementary details: I will play from memory; and I will play Fritz Kreisler’s cadenza since I didn’t learn it when I studied the piece previously. So, this will be the campaign I record in my practice journal:
Perform the Beethoven concerto with Kreisler cadenza, from memory, with the APU Symphony.
With more than six months to go, I’m not quite ready to start this campaign. I’m still focusing on the music for the rest of the LA Philharmonic season! But in June, it will be time to lay out my battles for the Beethoven campaign. I’ll actually write them down. I imagine them running in this way:
- Get full score
- Choose preliminary fingerings and bowings
- Learn Kreisler cadenza
- Map out first movement and work on memorization
- Ditto for third movement
- Ditto for second movement
- Begin recording sections
- Play sections for Akiko
- Play through with piano and record
- Rehearse with orchestra and record
For my very first week of work, I’ll likely want to accomplish the first three goals on my list. Getting the score and marking my part should take only a day: I’ll be able to change my mind as I go along. The rest of the week will be devoted to the Kreisler cadenza, since that will be completely new to my fingers.
First week’s tactics
Here’s where things will get interesting! In the beginning, my tactics will be open-ended. I’ll play through the cadenza, sensing what the difficulties are going to be. When I encounter one, I’ll mark it and move on. Once I see which spots will require the most work, I’ll dive in with tactics appropriate to each one. I’ll change tactics as soon as one stops getting results. Then at the end of the day, I’ll make some notes in my practice journal. Mainly, I’ll record the progress I made in various battles (marking the part, learning the cadenza) and what still remains to be done.
At the end of the week, I’ll sit down with my journal and take stock. I’ll look at how much time I have left in my campaign, and how many battles I still have to face. I’ll evaluate whether the ones I have planned will point me toward my campaign goal. Then I’ll add, subtract, or change battles as needed. For example, once I begin my work on the first movement of the Beethoven, I’m going to run smack into those ascending broken octaves! If they aren’t feeling comfortable after a tactic or two, I’ll insert a “strengthen octaves” battle into my campaign.
Finally, I’ll take a hard look at the tactics I used during the past week. Which ones helped me win my battles the fastest? I’ll use those tactics again the next week. Which tactics seemed to lead toward dead ends? That’s more painful to admit, but just as important to note. If I spent a great deal of time isolating shifts for intonation, yet those shifts are still out of tune, then I’m going to need a new shifting tactic. I might look back through my journal entries from a different campaign, seek help from a colleague, or look at YouTube for inspiration.
Talking strategy with my generals
I’ll repeat this “conference” at the end of every week to make sure my campaign is on track. Each time I’ll be sure to consider those two pitfalls we outlined earlier: exaggerating weaknesses and failing to consolidate. If the same battle keeps showing up on the list, week after week, I’ll have to ask myself: is this truly a battle worth fighting, or am I making a mountain out of a molehill? And if I’ve learned or improved a skill, I’ll remind myself to consolidate: to get comfortable with the new technique in some etudes or other repertoire. Only then should I expect to easily integrate it into the Beethoven.
Plan your first campaign and track your results
What are you waiting for? Download my practice campaign worksheet and try it for yourself!
With the campaign approach to practice, you’ll never think one-dimensionally again. You’ll see setbacks for what they are: detours to your eventual destination. You’ll realize, too, that on these detours you’ll pick up intelligence that you might have missed had you been stuck in a cycle of frustration and recrimination. I look forward to hearing about your campaigns, and how you see them through to the finish!

Solution for the frog in the well:
At the end of the first day, the frog’s high point was 5 feet and he finished at 1 foot. At the end of the second day, his numbers were 6 and 2. Therefore at the end of the twenty-fifth day, his numbers were 29 and 25. On the twenty-sixth day, his jump took him to 30 feet and thus out of the well!
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19 thoughts on “Tired of losing practice battles? Wage a practice campaign”
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Scales: The Road
to Repertoire
Even if you’ve never played a scale before, violinist Nathan Cole of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will guide you through scale routines that meet you where you are, and build progressively alongside your playing.



Free Guide: 8 Most Common Practice Mistakes
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Another excellent post, Nate!
You mentioned a practice journal. Perhaps you could elaborate on the format and usage of a practice journal in a future post.
Thanks,
Jason
Good idea! It can really take any form, but part of my reason for making the practice campaign “worksheet” was to really lay out the information I would record on a weekly basis. So if you already have a journal, you could write that info in the journal instead. Otherwise, you could make a separate binder for each campaign and keep your worksheets in there.
The most important thing with a journal in general is just to get it written down, so that you can refer back over the course of the following days, weeks and months. After that, it’s a nice souvenir of course, and usually a good reminder that you used to struggle with things that you now find easy!
Is the Schumann Scherzo really supposed to be 126? I’ve always thought it was supposed to be 136…
Well as you know, the tempo printed in most parts is 144, but that’s too fast for most players and, in my opinion, for most listeners as well! 136 sounds like a nice performance tempo. 126 was just a number taken at random to show how you might set that as a “battle”: a checkpoint on the way to your campaign goal.
By the way, just today I discovered a tool for organizing anything! It’s called airtable. Airtable.com
Could be useful for the ultra-nerd in all of us. Would be a great way to chart progress.
Will have to check it out!
Great post, Nathan! In fact, this is a great metaphor for anything we do. Thank you very much and good luck with the Beethoven!
Márcio
Very interesting. Could be used by me work too,. I’m not an experienced player but you are always so positive and encouraging that I can feel the benefits. Thank you
Hi Nate.
I enjoy very much you blog. I am a guitarist, not a violinist, but no matter, you have taught me a lot.
On campaigns, battles, and tactics, I am preparing a recital of eight pieces. Is each piece a battle or a campaign in itself?
I tried making the recital the campaign and the eight pieces battles, but that was too much. I think I will make the recital something like “Ruling the Universe” and each piece a campaign to that end.
Thanks.
Hi John, with few exceptions you can only handle one “campaign” at a time. So I’ve always thought about one project, whether it’s an audition list or a recital, as the campaign. The battles will probably be smaller than entire pieces. They need to be things that I can accomplish in a few days’ time. In the beginning that may be a small section of a piece, or it may be the task of getting one piece up to a certain tempo. Later it might be running three pieces in the same day.
The only times I think of someone running more than one campaign at once are the cases of busy soloists: they may be preparing one concerto for 10 performances three months away, while at the same time prepping a recital program for a tour next month. They might keep two separate campaigns, making sure to divide their time between them each day.
For me, the most important aspect of this is the weekly sit-down: am I where I need to be, and if not, how can I get there in the time remaining? I like the “ruling the universe” idea!
Hello Nate,
I checked the AZUSA Symphony website. Looks like your concert is next week Friday. Good luck with it!
Will we be able to see it on Youtube perhaps?!! I’m sure I’m not alone among your followers around the world who would love to watch it.
Stefan.
PS.: When I was a little boy, 4 or 5 years old, two records from my parents’ collection became my favourites: Mozart’s clarinet quintet (with Quartetto Italiano) and Beethoven’s violin concerto (a Menuhin recording with the Joachim cadenzas). I heard them so often that I was quickly able to whistle the entire pieces. These two recordings actually got me started on classical music. So I knew the Beethoven in and out before even starting to study violin myself (@10). This was in the 60ies! A couple of years ago, I heard Leonidas Kavakos play it with the Berlin Philharmonic (under Zubin Mehta). Amazing! It was a concert experience as if I discovered the piece anew. Kavakos has such a unique style and approach. Stunning!
Btw, this concert can be watched on Digital Concert Hall (https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/de/concerts/soloist_leonidas%20kavakos/composer_ludwig%20van%20beethoven)
Hi Stefan, yes, I’m busy working hard for the concert! I don’t know about video for this concert but I’ll find out. Great story about your favorite recordings. And how great that you were in the hall for that Berlin Phil concert with Kavakos! I’m actually a subscriber to the Digital Concert Hall, something I wish the LA Philharmonic would do. So I’ve watched that Kavakos performance already several times. What a stunning concert! Thanks for including the link so that others can appreciate it. For me that subscription is easily worth the money for the high quality audio and video going back so many years.
Stefan (4 years later), I grew up with the same recording of Menuhin! It was heavenly. My parents were not musicians, but they loved classical music, and my mom particularly loved the sound of the violin, so I also heard Heifetz playing Brahms, Zukerman playing Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky…
I had those concertos memorized early on, too. Kind of like the Suzuki method by default.
Dear Nate,
Your blogs have been a huge help in my journey in becoming a violinist. Do u have any blogs or tips on stage fright and overcoming it to produce enjoyable performances. It seems to me that every audition I go through ends in me falling down on my face.
Glad you’ve already gotten a ways along in your journey! Do you feel like it’s just general performance nerves that are getting in your way? In other words, as soon as you get to the performance/audition situation, everything feels unfamiliar and bad? Or is it more specific, as in you get more nervous for certain pieces as opposed to others, or really quiet playing, or just off-string playing, etc?
If it’s more general, then visualization is the biggest technique I’ve used to help make that situation more familiar. Noa Kageyama of the Bulletproof Musician really specializes in this whole area. Have you checked him out?
I have taken time to look at Noa Kageyama’s blog post which do provide insight to performance anxiety. It’s just that once I reach the stand, everything just feels bad and unfamiliar. My brain starts panicking and my playing starts to become sloppy.
That’s so common, even if people won’t admit it even to themselves. It’s happened to me to a greater or lesser degree so many times. There is certainly a lot you can get from Noa’s posts, but his real value is in working with him one on one. So many of my colleagues have done that and they’re really happy they did. He’ll give you “homework”, specific assignments that you can practice to combat that feeling you’re talking about. Many people think, “If I pay more attention to this, or think about it, it will only get worse,” but actually the opposite is more likely the truth. You’ve already done great by acknowledging this very common issue, so if you really want to get better then I’d suggest at least contacting Noa about it.
Hi, Nate. Thank you for these helpful ideas.
May I add to your generous suggestion for Lam N that they work with Noa Kageyama? They might also find NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) helpful. It’s a rapid intervention technique based on the principle that we all and each of us build our map of reality based on language and physiology, and that we can *significantly* influence our own map (and that of others) through the language and physiology that we use.
My performance art is Argentine tango. I created Practice Planner Notecards http://tangotribe.com/practice-notecards/ based on an article by Rebecca Brightly in Dance World Takeover. I recently completed a performance where I could have also used the broader perspective of your Practice Campaign.
Great resource, thanks! I’ll have to read more about NLP but it sounds like exactly what happens to shape our approach going into pressure situations.