Pick a number from 3-7. That many items go on your music stand. Play the passage - if correct, one item moves to the other side of the stand. Play it again - if correct, move another. If incorrect, ALL of the items move back to 'start'. When they've all moved to the other side of the stand, you win. This should NOT be used with any passage more than a few measures long, or you will get very frustrated!

Variation: If you're feeling wimpy, when you have an incorrect playthrough you could just move one item back instead of all of them, but I think you can handle the real version of the game!

This one got its name because when I started using it with students I always used M&Ms, and of course the winner ate them at the end! You can use any reasonable items, but certain choices should of course not be eaten.

Find a partner (you can play without one, but it's more fun with them). Draw a tic tac toe board and play your passage. Perfect playthrough? Your turn for the tic tac toe board! Made a single, teeny mistake? Your partner's turn! If you win the game, you're done practicing for the day. If you lose, take a few minutes to work on problem spots and try again until you can beat them.

Choose an opponent - it could be anyone! (Seriously. I once had a student make their opponent be "God")

Your name goes on one side, theirs on the other. Roll an imaginary die in your head. The number you roll is the number of points you're playing for. Play the passage. Perfect playthrough? You get the points. One tiny mistake? Your opponent gets the points. First person to 30 points wins!

Variations:

-Use a real die, or two dice if you're in a hurry

-Change the point value you're playing to - maybe 20 points if you're in a hurry? Never go below 15, though!

I've also heard this called "lightning practice", and I'm sure it has other names as well!

Set your music to your target tempo and play through it in 1-inch overlapping chunks with a gap between each one. An inch is often around a measure, so here's how you might play this:

Play the first measure plus the next note with the metronome going, then breathe calmly while the metronome ticks out another measure, then play measure two plus the first note of measure three, then a measure break, then measure three plus the first note of measure four and so on, without stopping the session. During the measure breaks your eyes should be moving ahead (it's a good habit to always have your eyes a bit ahead of where you are playing anyway!).

If you mess up (but you will be surprised how little you do), quickly run that passage through the M&M game or something similar. If you make it through the entire passage with no mistakes with this method, go back and double the length of your chunks. Then double again, and so forth, until you can do the entire thing. Chunking is beautiful - it gets your fingers playing in tempo right away instead of starting slow and speeding up, so they learn what you actually want them to do and you can spot problem spots early on. A finger that worked well at 60bpm might completely fall apart as you approach a performance tempo of 140bpm.

Patricia George has a lot to say about chunking and the science behind it - feel free to look her up!

Change the rhythms in the passage, always pairing a new rhythm with its opposite. I've included an example here. You would take the even rhythm and practice it with an uneven one (long-short) and then its opposite (short-long). Use a metronome for this whenever possible.

The rhythmic variation possibilities are far too many to list here! I have a set of rhythms for 8 notes and a set of rhythms for 6 notes on flashcards that I cycle through when I use this technique.

Mess with what's on the page. If it's legato, play it staccato. If the accent is on the beat, change it to between the beat. Slur in varying groups - by two notes, then three, four, etc. - and be sure to do each one starting on different notes.

Close your eyes and imagine performing this passage in great detail. You should be able to see every finger move, hear every note played perfectly, even imagine the feel of your instrument in your hands. If it's not memorized, you can do this while reading the music.

Very like tic-tac-toe! Have a partner do a regular hangman game with you, but in order to guess a letter you must play your passage perfectly first.

Or, you guess a letter and they put it on, but then you play your passage. Any mistakes? You get a body part anyway.

The possibilities are endless - use your imagination! Any deck of cards will work here.

Here's a favorite - a variation on War:

Draw two cards (or whatever number you choose depending how ambitious you are) and set them in the 'target' pile.

Total the amount. If you have a 10 and a 5, the total target points are 15.

Draw another card (let's say it's a 7) and play the passage.

Perfect? Put it in your pile. You now have 7 points.

Made one teeny mistake? Put it in the target pile. Your target is now 22 (15+7).

The game is over (and you can stop practicing the passage) when your points are higher than the target pile's.

Turn the lights down. Take a deep breath (or several). Maybe lay on the ground and feel yourself sinking in, or consciously release the tension out your fingertips and toes. When you are certain you are relaxed, look at the tricky spot in your music and convince yourself that you need to be relaxed when you get there. Maybe mark it in your music. Start a little before the passage, and feel yourself relaxing the closer you get to the passage. If you practice this way regularly, you will be teaching your body to relax in the difficult spots, when your brain wants your body to tense up instead. A more relaxed body means your muscles can better navigate those fiddly bits.

What is the REAL problem with that tricky bit? Sometimes we get so focused on drilling it that we don't stop to analyze what is holding us back. Maybe there is just one note in that run that is the true stumbling block. Identify the culprit, and then aim for just that note during the run. Be thinking about going to that note and then coming away from it.

This is really more about structuring your session but deserves a mention here.

Don't let yourself get comfortable! Instead of working on one passage for 10 minutes straight, work on a tricky passage from it for two minutes, move to something else for a bit, come back to that tricky passage for another minute, do a couple of other things, come back to it again, etc. Your brain will thank you by storing that passage in long-term memory much faster!

Play the last two notes, then the last three notes, until you can do the entire thing without a mistake.

Or just play it literally backward - last note, second to last, etc.