practice. some people want nothing to do with it. some tolerate it to an extent. others might want to but find they don't know where to start or what to work on. all valid.
i get it, practice for most people probably is a chore. something viewed as having to get through or that one "should" do it, like taxes or basic hygiene. and sometimes it is a chore. a lot of music, especially technique, rhythm, time, etc., take a long time to develop... and through repetitive and often slow, very deliberate exercises. not fun. or can it be?
i think it is, absolutely. i enjoy the zen quality of playing one particular rhythm over and over for 10 minutes straight and just focusing on one particular subdivision. i enjoy going to transcribe a part and realizing it's easily 40 BPM faster than i can manage so i dial the metronome way down and slowly working my way up to speed, even if it takes weeks. i like when i go to learn a riff and my fingers stumble over themselves because i have stupid fingers because now i have something to work on. terrific.
so that's all great and such, but when it comes time to practice... what do i practice? how do i practice? this took a while to figure out. some trial and error, some reading books about learning and time management, and some just common sense. in no small part was it also being receptive and perceptive enough to see my faults. this can sometimes seem obvious in retrospect but at the time may be hiding in plain sight. after identifying a fault the tasks are, 1) deciding to address them, 2) figuring out how to address them, and 3) how to continually address them until they are no longer a fault. great.
it's that last part i want to talk about... how to continually address practice points. for the past 5 years i've been keeping notebooks in which i log every single practice session i do... and i mean that quite literally. every. single. one. sometimes i write out a page or more of thoughts, discoveries, charts, etc. other times it's a simple one liner like, "worked on this song". this has been a great resource for looking back at where i've been but also for figuring out what i want, or need, to work on in the future. but it's not terribly efficient at planning daily routines. it just shows what i have worked on, not what i will work on. so i made a weekly practice planner that i can use to either plan out a whole week of practice in advance or at least for the next day. that way when i sit down i can quickly look at it and know what i'm going to be doing. i can see the pages in a book, the bars of a chart, the BPMs of the last session, etc. i can get into it quickly and stay on task.
i don't always use this planner... i wish i used it more, to be honest. when i do use it, though, i can get massive gains pretty quickly because i can stay focused on the goal rather than diluting practice time with unfocused meandering. i know i've done more of that than i'd care to admit, but it's true.
when i've filled up a weekly planner i file it away in a binder. will i ever look back on them? doubtful, but it is a nice feeling every time i submit another completed planner to the archive. also, i use Cooper Black because practice is fun and not serious like Times New Roman. there, i said it.
