A student asked me during a recent office hours session, “How to play with others?”

 

How much time should I devote to learning a new tune and how much to reviewing what I already know?

John from South Charleston Ohio asked, “I try to practice an hour a day. How much of that time should I devote to learning a new tune and how much to reviewing what I already know? So much to do and so little time! Sometimes I get overwhelmed with everything.”

  • An hour a day is good!
  • There’s no one formula that works for everyone.
  • Decide what your focus is…
    • Learning a new technique
    • Learning a new tune
    • Review
  • A good basic routine: 20/20/20
    • 20 minutes for technique
    • 20 minutes for review
    • 20 minutes for a new tune
  • Interleaving
    • Rather than doing one thing for a big block of time, break it up and practice it a few times throughout a single session. For instance, if you’re learning and practicing vibrato, practice it for five minutes, then play a new tune, then play a scale, and then return to practicing vibrato.

Further learning and practice

{ADD LESSON LINK}


This micro-lesson is an excerpt from an office hours webinar I gave on June 17, 2020. View the entire live-stream with indexed questions here.


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