Practice Junkie

COMMIT: Really good practice requires a commitment to the long game. Temporary solutions may help you to be a functional musician, but will not do as much as you want them to do in terms of investing in your musician growth path so you can fulfill your true potential.

​

NON-JUDGMENTAL CURIOSITY: Instead of constantly analyzing, diagnosing, and judging every practice move you make, give yourself multiple attempts and many practice sessions before deciding something is “not working.” Experiments and objective thinking, without instant gratification or frustration clogging up the works, allow more meaningful results to evolve over time.

​

EVER-EVOLVING: It is normal to approach challenges from a particular perspective or mindset when you begin. But as you practice and learn more, new perspectives can be revealed and will inform the next decisions you make. Your practice process can and should be ever-evolving because it grows as you grow.

​

PROCESS: Much like cooking, working out, and countless other examples outside the practice room, practicing is a process that you invest in each and every day. To become the best musician you can be, strive for gourmet, not fast food, endurance and strength, not quick fixes. Your practice process means much more than any individual practice session.

​

LOVE: If you enjoy your practice approach and the methods you use resonate with you as a musician and a person, they will be much more effective than simply following a prescribed process that you think you “should” be following. Do your best to incorporate your teacher’s advice and gain inspiration from advice you find in a variety of other ways. But ultimately, YOU have to connect with your practice in a way that makes you say, “I love it,” if you want to see meaningful results over time.

​

TRUST: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and that journey doesn’t have much of a chance if you judge the fact that you are not there yet every step of the way. If you were on a road trip to a destination hundreds of miles away, you would not look around in the middle of the trip and say, “I am so frustrated that I am not there yet. I will just turn around and go home.” The same way you keep driving toward your destination during a road trip, trusting your practice process means you keep going even when results are not instant.

​

MICROSTEPS: Sometimes it’s not just about the next step. It’s about the next microstep. It’s surprising how much can follow naturally once you turn on your metronome and begin your warm-up. Microsteps have ripple effects. Do the next easy, small action and allow momentum to accumulate naturally.

​

RIPPLE EFFECTS: Your growth as a musician is a result of many interconnected habits that accumulate results over time. Each time you invest in a positive practice habit, other positive effects ripple throughout that interconnected network, meaning every action you take has many more benefits than you may see in a particular moment.

​

MYELINATION: As you develop musical skills through repetition, you strengthen and insulate neural pathways, making your responses faster, more reliable, and more automatic. But you are not simply reinforcing musical skills. You are also reinforcing the mental, emotional, and physical patterns you bring to those repetitions. You are not only training your fingers. You are training yourself.

​

REPETITION: Repetition not only helps you gain familiarity and comfort, but also activates the myelination process. The thicker the myelin, the faster the connection. If you repeat something 10 times, think of the connection speed like old dial-up internet. At 100 repetitions, it’s more like decent Wi-Fi. At 1,000, you are building a lightning-fast connection in your brain. “Muscle memory,” like other forms of memory, originates in the brain. Understanding repetition and myelination can empower you to create more meaningful results in your practice sessions.

​

CUP: Filling your CUP helps you reach new levels through Commitment & Consistency, Uncharted Territory, and Presence.

• C: Commitment & Consistency: Transformative results require consistency. This doesn’t mean you can never take a day off. It means that practicing every day is your home base.

• U: Uncharted Territory: Your relationship with the unknown directly affects your growth. If you only try things you already understand, you reinforce your current level. Exploring uncharted territory creates possibilities for reaching new ones.

• P: Presence: Your mind, body, and heart need to be online in the present moment so you can truly listen. Sound only exists in the present. If you are worrying about the future or analyzing the past, you are not fully available to hear the sounds you are making.

​

ACE: ACE your practice by bringing your head, heart, and body fully into the process through Analysis, Connection, and Embodiment.

• A: Analysis (Head): Analysis is an essential part of practicing, but timing matters. Thoughtfully deciding what to do next helps you organize your practice effectively. What you don’t want is analysis paralysis or a busy brain while you are actually playing.

• C: Connection (Heart): Connection means being emotionally available to the music. Stress, worry, and unrelated emotions can interfere with that connection. You want to be clear and available so you can connect with the emotions in the music itself.

• E: Embodiment (Body): Embodiment means having comfort and access to your body from head to toe, so you and your instrument can become one fluid vessel for the music. Tension, poor playing position, and other physical blocks can interfere with that freedom.

​

BAM: A repeating process for building habits and investing in your next level. Once you move through Build, Acclimate, and Maintain, you begin again with the next upgrade. That is why it becomes BAM, BAM, BAM.

• B - Build a Baseline: Establish a foundation for the new habit or skill. Give yourself a clear starting point that you can consistently return to and build upon.

• A - Acclimate during the Awkward Phase: Expect a new habit or skill to feel awkward while you are getting the hang of it. It probably will not click into place immediately. Give yourself time and repetition to acclimate instead of interpreting awkwardness as failure.

• M - Maintain for the Moment: Enjoy the results of your new habit and continue investing in it long enough for it to become established. But maintenance is temporary. Before long, it will be time to upgrade again and begin the next BAM.

​

SPIRAL PROGRESS: Musical growth is not a straightforward, linear path. You continually circle back to the same fundamental concepts, each time exploring them at a higher level and with deeper understanding. Sometimes it may even feel like you’re going backwards, but returning and starting over are part of the process. The perspective of Spiral Progress helps you recognize that you can still be growing as you revisit, refine, polish and enhance what you already know.

​

If you would like to read a pedagogical fairy tale that explores Spiral Progress in a meaningful way, click HERE to order The Magic Metronome on Amazon.

​

PRACTICE SESSION: Each time you dedicate time to practicing your music and fundamentals in a meaningful way, you can call that a practice session. However, if you are rushing toward temporary solutions that simply help you feel minimally functional for a rehearsal, performance, or lesson, you are missing much of what a practice session can offer. A true practice session is a period of intentional, conscious investment in your growth path as a musician.

 

DATA COLLECTION: Instead of looking for instant gratification from every practice attempt, redirect that energy toward collecting data. Every time you practice, you learn something. As you engage in the myelination process and your perspective evolves, your data becomes richer. Over time, patterns emerge and solutions begin to reveal themselves. Data collection replaces binary thinking about whether something “worked” or “didn’t work” with curiosity about what you are learning.

​

AUTHENTIC MUSIC MAKING: Authentic music-making happens when you move beyond simply playing the notes correctly and allow your own voice, passion, emotions, and personal expression to come through the music. As you release fear and other limitations that block you, you become more available to play sincerely and create something that feels genuinely meaningful and beautiful.

​

PERSONAL SATISFACTION: Personal satisfaction comes from shifting your focus away from external validation and toward the rewards you can experience for yourself. Progress, growth, meaningful lessons, beauty, emotion, and personal expression can become their own kinds of winning. As you invest in your practice process, you can take pride in your growth and find satisfaction in making music that is genuinely yours, even when it isn’t perfect.