Practice Must Evolve (Slowly) to Progress
/The best way to practice something is to do it repeatedly. The best way to get better at something is to change how you practice it each time.
When you're first starting to learn an instrument (or anything), the best advice is to begin by holding your instrument for 5 minutes a day. Of course, holding your instrument will most likely lead to playing it and before you know it, you're playing a song each day.
This practice will establish the habit of playing each day, but if you want to get better, you can't stop there.
In my most recent music lesson, I (re)learned that not only do I need to slow down when I begin learning a new song, but I also need to push myself to speed it up so I can practice playing it at the tempo in which it's recognizable.
I had gotten good at the habit of practicing something slow, measure-by-measure, but after so many repetitions of that it's only going to get me as far as being able to play it slow.
So my teacher instructed me to systematically speed up the tempo. Once I was barely comfortable at one tempo, he'd speed it up by 5%, then 5% again, and so on.
We need repetition to learn something but we also need the clarity of the ultimate goal and how to get there. Repetition only practices what is being repeated. Repetition needs to evolve incrementally closer to where the goal is to progress.
Sometimes we need to slow down so we can speed up.
I'd love to hear:
Is there something that you're trying to practice?
What are the incremental steps to get you to where you want to be?
