Inaugural Post: Hope is not a strategy

Hope is not a strategy. This is a blog celebrating action. The kind of effective action that follows careful deliberation and reflection. Which may have been brought on after an unsuccessful, or discouraging experience in the practice room, stage, or gym. We are grownups after all. The time of fooling ourselves is necessarily over. Because, guess what? Time is almost up.

I'm looking forward to exploring this topic in some depth. Feel free to join in. But, now it is time for bed. Tomorrow I've two jams to attend. One as a drummer, one as pianist.
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Here is an interesting start to our explorations: Time management

Premise: Practice time is precious and very limited. It's limited by the limitations of our bodies, and demands on our time from life. Therefore wasting it with non-deliberate practice is counterproductive to our goal: playing as well as we can with the limitations we now have.

Step one: Taking stock. "How do we spend our time, when we are in the practice room? Do we carefully plan out the time, or do we jump willy nilly from one activity to another. It has been claimed that 90% music students play a piece through once, not even stopping to correct mistakes. ( http://www.escom.org/proceedings/ICMPC2000/Sun/McPherso.htm )

Tactic: At your next practice simply record yourself on your phone. Just put the recorder in the corner and forget about it. Later in the day listen back. Ask yourself this:

​1. How did you spent your time?
2. How focused were you really?
3. How do you really sound?
4. What did you really accomplish?
5. How did you really work on problems?


Cheers,
David Story
www.davidstory.ca

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