How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

College writing has deadlines, assignments and letter grades, all of which can contribute to stress. But it’s also a lot of writing, even for students without assigned papers. There are ways of practising that can be very helpful when learning to write more productively and efficiently, and these strategies are often employed by musicians who are better at maximising practice time. Music students spend years learning to sight read, or playing by ear, or just the discipline they employ while practising certain music. Many of these same techniques can also be applied to writing. Here are some ways that music practice can help you become a more efficient writer in college. If you ever feel overwhelmed, DoMyPaper.com offers a Do my paper service that assists students with essays, helping them meet deadlines and reduce stress by providing expert writing assistance.

1. Setting Clear Goals

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

Music presents a clear model for improving your writing practice: in a practice session, you never simply ‘practise’, you unpack a clear goal – I want to really feel this phrase, hum this segment, deal with those roulades and those glissandos. I want to get a clear sense of the metronome through the entire piece. Transfer this to writing, and come up with concrete and immediate goals: Today, I won’t write an essay, I’ll draft my introduction; or Today, I won’t write an essay, I’ll revise this paragraph.

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Because you know exactly what you’re working towards, and that can help you stay on task. If you set small, achievable goals – eg, playing a song through without hits, or writing 500 words, or revising a section of text – the writing process can seem a lot less daunting. A clear goal means that you can see when you’ve made progress. For larger academic tasks, it’s also useful to research the best case study writing services that can help manage difficult assignments efficiently.

Example of Goals:

  • Music: Learn the first eight bars of a song.
  • Writing: Write the first 200 words of an introduction.

2. Regular Practice Over Cramming

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

Musicians get better when they play their instrument every day. The same applies to writing. If you leave all your writing to the last minute before an exam, you are likely to get very stressed, and the quality of your work will suffer. So, write every day. Writing a little every day helps keep the momentum going, and ideas develop gradually.

Musical daily repetition is a necessary component for honing skills, whereas in the case of writing, it helps one build the ‘writing muscle’. After you write every day for a long enough period of time, you will get better at writing. You become more comfortable with putting ideas in words faster and more clearly. This slow approach means that, in the long run, your writing will become both more productive and higher quality.

3. Focus on Small Sections

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

If you’re practising a large piece of music, breaking it down into manageable chunks is helpful. For example, if you are learning Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, learning it note by note, and then page by page, and then movement by movement is a more powerful approach than attempting to learn and play the whole thing at once. The same goes for writing. Rather than approaching massive writing assignments that seem either convoluted or unconquerable, chunk it down into chewable bits.

Instead of trying to revise your essay as a holistic entity, chop it up. Write the introduction one day, the body paragraphs the next, and edit on another. That way, you’re less likely to burn out, and more likely to maintain your attention.

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Comparison Table: Music Practice vs. Writing Techniques

Music Practice

Writing Techniques

Repeating difficult sections

Rewriting unclear sentences

Practising scales to build speed

Writing daily to build fluency

Focusing on specific measures

Working on one paragraph at a time

Recording a session to reflect

Reading aloud to catch awkward phrasing

4. Slow Down to Speed Up

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

Musicians also practise most effectively slowly. If we try to play a piece of music too quickly, our technique becomes sloppy. Slow practice, on the other hand, allows for real control: we focus on getting things right. The same can be said for writing. Never hurry your first draft. Slow down. Get the ideas right.

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When you slow down and think through what you are saying, you make fewer mistakes, the results are better, your work is easier to edit, and the end product is better for it. Once that foundation is there, picking up speed in successive drafts is much easier. First drafts are idea-generating; revisions are where you can pick up speed.

5. Practice Reflection and Review

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

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Musicians record themselves practising so that they can listen to their performances and pick up on ways to improve. Writers can know that they are applying the edits if they can catch mistakes in the text through reading their words aloud or if they can go back and look at previous drafts. Revisiting your work means you will pick up on things you wouldn’t if you tried reading the work just once. Was there awkward phrasing somewhere? Is there a point you weren’t clear on? Is there something repeated that doesn’t need to be?

You can track this by periodically reviewing your writing but also because, like a musician who can hear growth, a writer can recognise becoming clearer and more deliberate with practice.

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6. Embrace Repetition

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

It is hard to overestimate the power of repetition in music. Musicians often spend a fair amount of time practising the same piece or scale over and over until they get it right. In fact, writing gains strength through repetition too. The more you write, the better you become in terms of structuring an argument or developing an idea, or simply getting your own voice to sound how you want it to sound.

Rewriting a sentence four, five, 10 or 20 times is not cheating; rewriting an essay draft many times is how you improve. No matter how good you might be, going back through a piece of writing to improve it is one of the most efficient ways to get better. As with performing a musical phrase, the more you revisit that part of your work the better it will become.

7. Managing Mental Energy

How Music Practice Techniques Boost College Writing Productivity

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A key trick for musicians is knowing when to stop and rest. After long periods of practice, diminishing returns kick in and you simply can’t give it your best anymore. Writing is similar in this respect. After I have spent enough time writing, my mental energy begins to diminish, and I feel my performance flagging. So I stopped. The trick is to know when.

Then take a break every 30-60 minutes. Stretch your legs. Take a quick walk or do something else for five minutes or so. Musicians take breaks to recharge their batteries, so writers should, too. When you come back, you’ll have more energy and new ideas for what to do next.

Conclusion

Musicians harness these practices to improve. Issues of focus, efficiency and improvement also resonate with writers as a means of sharpening that key habit: practising writing daily. Set goals: put down the words. Every day, find a seat with your laptop to write, and keep a record of your writing sessions. Practice purposefully: if the writing is not going well, stop. Rather than surrendering to frustration or mindlessly writing words that don’t move the narrative forward, it is better to take a break from activities, such as research or editing.

Take baby steps: write one sentence, and then the next. Whole chapters, articles or novels are not naturally flowing, and forcing them will exhaust your mental energy. Your brain might not be in the mood, but it is valuable to practise anyway. Start with writing one sentence if that is all you feel like, or even working on something else for a short period of time. At the end, you’ll feel better about having done something, no matter how small. Iterate: allow the mind to make revisions. Revision is an integral part of the writing process. Embrace it, rather than waiting until the end of your practice period.

Finally, like learning a musical instrument, writing takes time, effort and discipline – but with the right methods, the process can be easier to bear yet also more pleasurable.

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