Music Lessons, Little Rock
Practice Journal - stardate 3.42.1.
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Most of my students would tell you they've heard the "drop in the bucket" analogy from me enough times to last a lifetime
While I certainly believe in that saying, it has been a while since I've actually thought about that with regard to my own playing.
If you've been reading the blog, you will recall I had the concentration/focus issue a few weeks ago. Well, today was one of those days. My walking, jumping jacks, getting water, etc, just wasn't doing the trick with regard to bringing my mind back to practicing. I was just losing focus while working on the Steve Vai exercise I mentioned in the weekly goals.
Then it hit me ... "Jason, this is your drop in the bucket moment. Give me your best effort over the next few minutes and when you're done, you will be a better player" That was almost exactly what I thought before I started the exercise. When I was finished, I had played it at tempo for nearly 2 minutes with no mistakes (remember - this is after about 10 minutes of start/stop playing due to lack of focus).
So there you go ... with the realization that this was my chance to improve, I decided I wanted to make my "drop in the bucket" a big drop so that the bucket would fill up more quickly LOL. I now have the exercise under my fingers and at tempo. My next step will be to up the tempo and tweak the pattern to make it more difficult.
The moral here is to alway looks at practicing not so much as a "must do" or a chore, but as an opportunity to get you closer to where you want to be as a player.
Most of my students would tell you they've heard the "drop in the bucket" analogy from me enough times to last a lifetime
While I certainly believe in that saying, it has been a while since I've actually thought about that with regard to my own playing.
If you've been reading the blog, you will recall I had the concentration/focus issue a few weeks ago. Well, today was one of those days. My walking, jumping jacks, getting water, etc, just wasn't doing the trick with regard to bringing my mind back to practicing. I was just losing focus while working on the Steve Vai exercise I mentioned in the weekly goals.
Then it hit me ... "Jason, this is your drop in the bucket moment. Give me your best effort over the next few minutes and when you're done, you will be a better player" That was almost exactly what I thought before I started the exercise. When I was finished, I had played it at tempo for nearly 2 minutes with no mistakes (remember - this is after about 10 minutes of start/stop playing due to lack of focus).
So there you go ... with the realization that this was my chance to improve, I decided I wanted to make my "drop in the bucket" a big drop so that the bucket would fill up more quickly LOL. I now have the exercise under my fingers and at tempo. My next step will be to up the tempo and tweak the pattern to make it more difficult.
The moral here is to alway looks at practicing not so much as a "must do" or a chore, but as an opportunity to get you closer to where you want to be as a player.
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