Keep a Daily Practice Journal

Improving on your instrument and learning to make music includes a lot of subtle discoveries. It’s amazing how easy it is to forget the fine points of the previous days discoveries, the details of that practice and the approach or technique involved. Keeping a daily practice journal can be quite helpful in managing ones practice and making its as productive as possible. All of your AH! moments should be noted as well as the material involved and the approach or techniques used. Write down any thought, idea or question that you have. Reviewing the previous days notes will remind you of those things that need special attention both technical and musical.  Over time you will see that you become more efficient at keeping a journal and of course you will see better results from your practice efforts. Its important to remember that we can often learn more from a moment’s reflection than we can from just blowing another bunch of notes.