Ned,
--- On Sun, 11/7/10, Edward Mast <[email protected]> wrote:
> As long as I sense any progress at all -
> and that may not be daily, but rather like a plateau
> learning process where a week can go by with no noticeable
> improvement and then suddenly you notice that a passage in a
> piece that didn't come out before now does - I'm encouraged
> to continue.
A week!?!? Good God, I would be thrilled to be able to measure progress on a
weekly basis - that would be lightening fast! Daily is out of the question.
If I notice any improvement of some issue - and it might be one thing like
string accuracy, chord balance, cleanliness of slurs, etc. - over several
months I feel like I'm making good, solid progress. You do (very) rarely have
those breakthrough "ah-ha!" moments, but usually I expect things to change only
over years. I know people at Eastman who are running the competition circuit
and have been practicing the same exact program for five years.
Keep at it. If you want you really want to improve, focus on what you DON'T do
well. Then spend a lot of time doing that, paying really close attention to
how you do it. Mark Twain said, "The only way to keep your health is to eat
what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."
That's true in music: practice the stuff that's not fun and suddenly playing
the stuff you want gets a lot more fun because you're doing it better. Then,
be sure reward yourself by eating, drinking or doing something you rather would.
Chris
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