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Wynton Marsalis
​​As a boy growing up in New Orleans, I remember my father, Ellis, a pianist, and his friends talking about “sheddin’.” When they got together, theyʼd say, “Man, you need to go shed,” or “I’ve been sheddin’ hard.” When I was around 11, I realized that sheddin’ meant getting to the woodshed – practicing. By the age of 16, I understood what the shed was really about – hard, concentrated work. When my brother Branford and I auditioned for our high school band, the instructor, who knew my father, was excited about Ellisʼ sons coming to the band. But my audition was so pitiful he said, “Are you sure youʼre Ellis’ son?”
At the time, his comment didn’t bother me because I was more interested in basketball than band. Over the next several years, however, I began practicing seriously. Practice is essential to learning music – and anything else, for that matter. I like to say that the time spent practicing is the true sign of virtue in a musician. When you practice, it means you are willing to sacrifice to sound good.
Even if practice is so important, kids find it very hard to do because there are so many distractions. Thatʼs why I always encourage them to practice and explain how to do it. I’ve developed what I call “Wynton’s 12 Ways to Practice.” These will work for almost every activity – from music to schoolwork to sports.
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Wyntonʼs Twelve Ways to Practice: From Music to Schoolwork
Published in the Education Digest | Sept 1996

1. Seek out instruction: Find an experienced teacher who knows what you should be doing. A good teacher will help you understand the purpose of practicing and can teach you ways to make practicing easier and more productive.
2. Write out a schedule: A schedule helps you organize your time. Be sure to allow time to review the fundamentals because they are the foundation of all the complicated things that come later. If you are practicing basketball, for example, be sure to put time in your schedule to practice free throws.
3. Set goals: Like a schedule, goals help you organize your time and chart your progress. Goals also act as a challenge: something to strive for in a specific period of time. If a certain task turns out to be really difficult, relax your goals: practice doesnʼt have to be painful to achieve results.
4. Concentrate: You can do more in 10 minutes of focused practice than in an hour of sighing and moaning. This means no video games, no television, no radio, just sitting still and working. Start by concentrating for a few minutes at a time and work up to longer periods gradually. Concentrated effort takes practice too, especially for young people.
5. Relax and practice slowly: Take your time; donʼt rush through things. Whenever you set out to learn something new – practicing scales, multiplication tables, verb tenses in Spanish – you need to start slowly and build up speed.
6. Practice hard things longer: Donʼt be afraid of confronting your inadequacies; spend more time practicing what you canʼt do. Adjust your schedule to reflect your strengths and weaknesses. Donʼt spend too much time doing what comes easily. Successful practice means coming face to face with your shortcomings. Donʼt be discouraged; youʼll get it eventually.
7. Practice with expression: Every day you walk around making yourself into “you,” so do everything with the proper attitude. Put all of yourself into participating and try to do your best, no matter how insignificant the task may seem. Express your “style” through how you do what you do.
8. Learn from your mistakes: None of us are perfect, but donʼt be too hard on yourself. If you drop a touchdown pass, or strike out to end the game, itʼs not the end of the world. Pick yourself up, analyze what went wrong and keep going. Most people work in groups or as part of teams. If you focus on your contributions to the overall effort, your personal mistakes wonʼt seem so terrible.
9. Donʼt show off: Itʼs hard to resist showing off when you can do something well. In high school, I learned a breathing technique so I could play a continuous trumpet solo for 10 minutes without stopping for a breath. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, thatʼs all they get.” When you get caught up in doing the tricky stuff, youʼre just cheating yourself and your audience.
10. Think for yourself: Your success or failure at anything ultimately depends on your ability to solve problems, so donʼt become a robot. Think about Dick Fosbury, who invented the Fosbury Flop for the high jump. Everyone used to run up to the bar and jump over it forwards. Then Fosbury came along and jumped over the bar backwards, because he could go higher that way. Thinking for yourself helps develop your powers of judgment. Sometimes you may judge wrong and pay the price; but when you judge right you reap the rewards.
11. Be optimistic: How you feel about the world expresses who you are. When you are optimistic, things are either wonderful or becoming wonderful. Optimism helps you get over your mistakes and go on to do better. It also gives you endurance because having a positive attitude makes you feel that something great is always about to happen.
12. Look for connections: No matter what you practice, youʼll find that practicing itself relates to everything else. It takes practice to learn a language, cook good meals or get along well with people. If you develop the discipline it takes to become good at something, that discipline will help you in whatever else you do. Itʼs important to understand that kind of connection. The more you discover the relationships between things that at first seem different, the larger your world becomes. In other words, the woodshed can open up a whole world of possibilities.
A typical practice session for Mr. Quakenbush
A few years ago, students asked what I tried to focus on during my practice sessions. After some thought I produced this as an outline for student musicians. I can say with confidence that my time in practicing is very important and I can utilize my practice time efficiently. I believe an overall concern about “how much time” I practice is not what I believe is my drive but what I can accomplish during my sessions is more important for me than duration.

A few of my beliefs about music making.

You are totally in control of how you sound. If you are struggling to produce proper sounds or you are unsure what a good sound is, ask you band director and they will be able to steer you to resources that may help.

I must be prepared. My involvement in making music means that I have duties and responsibilities to be prepared and not be a weak part of the overall session.
  • If I have questions, I ask!
  • My instrument must work properly.
  • I must be a good section leader or section member. Accepting and giving instruction is a part of the process. Be a good role model even if you have different ideas about how something should be played. That is how you grow as well
Live music is an art form. I have sat in concerts that have been life changing and some that have been disappointing, to say the least. The opportunity to experience live music either by performing of by listening is a gift. That is why music is closely tied to emotions.

Prepare your space-less distractions the better. Organize your time into stages or progressions toward your goal. Get your electronics ready if needed: Tuner, metronome, (Spotify or YouTube-for recording references- though, this can be used to prepare for the sessions as well).

Self-regulation is your key focus (your ability to control your productivity with getting desires done while being efficient in the time and within the environments i.e. distraction, that effect it all). I am often struck by poor sound production from students. This is an individual responsibility to play with your best sounds always! If it begins sounding bad, self-evaluate and find what the concern may be. Take the time to monitor your habits and you may be able to fix something in your playing that will be beneficial in other aspects of your playing.

Time should be “semi-planned” out for aspects that will benefit you in preparing for the following musical event; be it a concert or band class. If extra time needs to be spent on a certain aspect of you playing, do it! Maybe put another aspect off to another day but be you best player by looking at all aspects of your playing. Be humble and acknowledge weaknesses.
  1. Get music and space ready and have a “game plan” in place BEFORE you start this part of the session. It has been proven that without an organized plan, students are less motivated and likely to be distracted while guessing about what is needed.
  2. Breathing. Take a few moments and get the body prepared for the tasks. This gets the body prepared for the tasks of producing the required airflow for producing good sounds.
  3. Reed or Mouthpiece Buzzing (this gets the blood flowing and muscles in the embouchure “awake” to begin practicing) or making sure the reed is saturated so it will function properly.
  4. Mid-range Long tones at differing dynamics with focus of crescendos and decrescendos at different duration. Notes used should be those that are easy to produce without strain or undo tension. Work for consistent and beautiful sounds with the least amount of tension present.
  5. Slurs and scale patterns. These get air moving; embouchure and oral cavity lose and get the fingers moving. Concentrate on producing your best sounds across all octaves and phrase lengths. Care should be use to also listen to intervallic spacing and not perform these out of tune or with poor sounds. There are so many opportunities online to find scales in differing patterns and modes. Don’t tire yourself out on these too much. Gage your progress by feel; if you feel like you are working too hard or too much, it might be a day to focus on these fundamentals and not go too far or too fast and begin playing poorly.
Again, beautiful sounds!
  1. Rest. This allows blood to flow to the embouchure and to begin thinking about the next task. Going to get a drink of water or to turn on tuners or metronomes are a bit of a break to focus on the new tasks.
  2. Articulations with dynamic variants can be included here. (Legato, Staccato, Accents, slurring and/with articulations pairing) Any articulation practice can be augmented with the use of a metronome. Remember that articulation is tied to not only beginning sounds but also length AND clarity of ALL sounds produced.  This included the ends of the notes as well. Make sure you listen to the whole sound being produced.
  3. Music practice. This time to begin playing selected musical choices that can be played well and some needs to be worked on. The combination of music you can play well and music that needs work, can be easily heard, and felt, flow between these two classifications of music is important in understanding building musical phrases, working out fingerings, and breathing strategies.
  4. Do not forget to mark your music.
    I am struck by how many students work on music but neglect to mark it properly, or at all. Use your music like a worksheet in marking anything that will help you succeed. No one cares what you write on your music to be successful; that is until you don’t play your part!
  5. Scan and build sections of music proficiency. As you go, add to your practice so that you will build ability and likewise endurance.
  6. Sight-read. Different styles with different requirements. Work on tempo control and don’t be afraid to do the same reading many times, each time better than the other.  

​Studies have shown that students that practice small amounts of time but for days that are more continuous will do just as well as the student that crams for an exam. However, the student that practiced at programmed intervals will remember the material weeks after the tests. Therefore, in the hope to develop long-term memory the student can use recall and stored memory to help developing skills that are more inter-connected. This is the proper useful definition of thinking.

Hope this helps!