This widget tracks your weekly practice hours and helps you distribute your effort across different areas of musical study. The idea is that not only will it encourage balance in your skill development, but also give you a clear picture of whether or not you are achieving your weekly targets.
Use your computer keyboard if you prefer a fast workflow, or simply your mouse/trackpad to interact with it. First, choose what day of the week you’d like to log by clicking one of the day buttons (top row) in the right-hand panel. This will highlight the day that you’re logging and show that it is selected. The widget defaults to today’s day of the week but if you skipped an earlier session during this week you’ll be able to back up and choose whichever day you missed. Alternatively, you can use your keyboard’s arrow keys to move around between days, no need to click.
How to Use the Practice Tracker
Below that is a drop down menu which list Weekly Topics (the title of each week’s work), and this is where you select the topic you’re focusing on in practice today. These topics are: Technique, Repertoire, Ear training, Improvisation or Writing. You should categorise how you spend your time. This lets you look back later to see if there is an aspect of your musical development you’ve been putting off. If you select the category first when banking your time it will reflect more accurately what you were working on.
To add time to the record, there are two main methods: manually click one of the Bank focused 15 minutes or Bank a 30 minute block buttons (for focus and selected day), or use the live session clock by first clicking the Begin focused session button. This will begin running the clock, which will automatically count up the time when you finish the session and click the Finish and bank session. This is handy if you have a practice session that you want to account for to the second but don’t feel like crunching the numbers.
The balance cue feature lets you know which areas you should spend more time on. Simply click Cue the neglected practice lane, and it will choose the day where you logged the fewest minutes and the focus area you practiced the least. That’s one way not to fall into a trap of just practicing things you like doing most without focusing on fundamentals. It’s a nice way to keep your week balanced out.
On the left side panel, there’s a slider where you set your weekly goal (the default is 300 minutes per week). You can bump this up or down depending on what works with your schedule and your own goals. Then you’ll track how close you’re coming to that goal as you log time which fills up the circle. If you have days when you don’t get around to logging any time, it’s all about building habits here, after all!
The bar chart at the bottom of the right-hand panel show you at a glance where your minutes were logged throughout the week. The undo button takes away the last entry and wipes away that time so it doesn’t count toward your overall goal. It also changes the focus selector back and day back to what it was before.
The rewind button clears the logged time and resets everything in the charts so you can begin again with a clean slate for next week. At the end of the week this comes in handy as you’re ready to zero out the counters and try again.
There’s also a how to play button in the widget that will expand out a panel of more detailed instructions. This panel is toggled so that you can turn it on/off when desired.
The fullscreen button then expands the widget to take up the whole screen, which helps to make seeing what you’re doing easier if you’re running the widget in a split-screen setup or other smaller device.
You’ll find yourself getting the most out of this tracker if you incorporate it into your final practice block of the week. That way you can target the lightest days or your weakest areas first so you’re not closing out the week with any holes in your game. And again, you can toggle between using a mouse and keyboard controls based off what comes naturaly to you (the arrow keys are especially useful for quick day-to-day navigation without picking up the mouse).
First, choose which day of the week you’ll practice and set an achievable weekly goal. Use the widget to record whether you logged a long improvised practice session, or a fast 15 minute technique drill. You’ll soon begin seeing patterns emerge with your practice habits and can adjust accordingly to continue progressing over time. Try it out today, save your first few minutes, and watch the gauge fill up.