1. Study pages 9 – 11:
How to spend an hour playing 16 notes and
The cruel master – the metronome. Spend some time in the coming week integrating these ideas into your practice routine. Open your MMC book and re-read this section each day, and make a plan for incorporating ideas from this section into your practice schedule.
Then, do it!
2. Work with the metronome every day. If you are new to this, or if you have trouble using a metronome, or if you simply hate the metronome, then it is
doubly or
triply important for you to follow through with this lesson. The metronome will help you develop better timing, and in the end, you will be glad you did this. If you can’t stand the metronome, use it until it becomes your friend.
3. The
big secret isn’t such a big secret after all: When you read the text, you see that it has to do with
self-discipline and
self-analysis. And the list of things that Brad gives us to think about
is not exhaustive. There are many things to analyze and work on that have not been mentioned, for example, under the heading of
Tone, are your upstrokes as strong and clear as your downstrokes? And this is only one more example, there will be many others for you to determine what you need to work on. The real secret is that some players will get this and do the work, whereas others will have no part in it.
4. Listen to the podcast titled,
Practice vs. Playing:
http://www.bradleylaird.com/podcast/...how-notes.html Learn to draw a distinction between your woodshed sessions (practice) vs. playing, and be sure to do plenty of both!
5. Study pages 47 – 49 in the Music Theory section, then take the self-test #3. Discuss what you’ve learned about music theory, and any questions you might have, by posting to this thread below.