So I’ve just gotten back from Las Vegas(a popular destination apparently), which also means that I have not had access to any of instruments for about a week. So that kind of puts a hinder on practicing. But never fear, there are ways that you can practice your instruments, even when you’re on vacation.
The first thing you can do is to improve, and maintain your technique. Essentially, practice the basics of how to play your instrument. This can mean super simple, sometimes monotonous exercises that may seem boring, but are crucial to practicing. For wind players, if you can’t bring your instrument with you, try to at least bring your mouthpiece, so that you can practice your embouchure, and (for brass players), buzzing. For piano players, your part is easy. There are various hand and finger exercises that you don’t need anything to do which help improve your playing. For string players, what I did is I brought this tall pencil with me and I used it to improve my bow conduct. With the pencil, you can practice exaggerated bow turns, dramatic wrist motions, etc. Percussion is a little trickier, as I don’t play any percussion instruments, but I would suggest any arm or wrist exercises, or even just miming your part, but exaggerated.
Also, you can always practice your fingerings. This applies to all instruments, because it doesn’t require anything special, and it’s super easy. You can practice fingering to scales, studies, pieces, it really doesn’t matter.
Something else that’s super helpful is to familiarize yourself with your pieces. First, you can download, and listen to recordings of your pieces. Of course, if you have super obscure pieces, this is hard to do (for example, for my orchestra audition, I’m playing a piece by some guy named Drdla), but if you can already play the piece, record yourself. If you have a more popular piece, download a bunch of different versions, (fast, slow, solo, orchestral, etc), and learn the piece and all the different styles its been performed in. Disclaimer: This probably isn’t the greatest idea if you haven’t learned your piece to a certain degree beforehand. While on vacation, I listened to some recordings of my Bach a min concerto, including this great performance by Hilary Hahn. Unfortunately, I hadn’t actually played the piece, so when I got home and tried to practice this piece that I had only heard Hilary Hahn play before, it sounded like a dying cow. So yes. Be warned.
Another way to familiarize yourself with a piece is to study, and analyse your sheet music. This can include figuring out fingerings, observing dynamics, and taking a more in-depth look at your music, looking at things like key-changes, accidentals, chord progressions, and do more harmonic analysis, etc. Understanding your piece will help you learn it so much more comprehensively, play it so much better, and memorization will also become so much easier. In fact, famous concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein learned Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain by reading the score on trains and he was able to play the first rehearsal from memory. Of course, you still have to practice, but knowing your sheet music is incredibly useful.
Something else you can try is mental practice. I’m still trying to learn this one, but what it is, is essentially imagining, and visualizing yourself practicing, but extremely vividly. Famous musicians such as Vladimir Horowitz and Walter Gieseking have said that they frequently used mental practice. (source). Here is a video regarding mental practice if you want to learn more.
Finally, the last way that you can practice while on vacation is to simply take a break. Although practice is important, resting is also important, and can actually be beneficial. For example, last year, when I was starting out on violin, my fingers were super tense and my bow hold was super awkward and rigid, but then I took a week off from practicing to go to Hawaii, and when I came back, everything became so much more relaxed, and my sound got so much better. So if all else fails, just relax, and take a break.
