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Introduction:  What we are doing, and suggestions for ways to go through all of the areas in your practice over time.

Deliberate Practice: The central process in learning that permeates all of our work, or doesn’t, and we can learn to use it at will. Effortful activity generating feedback that guides the refinement of that activity.

Mindset: Researcher Carol Dweck and her four decades plus of work that addresses why, to put it simply, most of us can’t get out of our own way when it comes to learning. These things are self-imposed roadblocks to introducing effective learning techniques.

Contextual Interference: Once a difficult section is learned where do we go from there? The answer is in contextual interference. By applying specific changes to what we are learning we create re-learning, and we improve all over again, instantly!

Contextual Interference Supplement: Additional strategic changes to apply to your music for continuous improvement.

Spacing: Musicians are used to being told to do repetitions to increase skill in things that are hard to play well. However, research shows each repetition is less and less effective for improvement, and quickly lose almost all value. The secret to building technical skill, on any instrument or voice, is strategically placed single repetitions that strengthen our ability to retrieve the skill we've learned lightning fast (from our long term memory) in any moment. It is easy to try, and produces significant results after 10 or so strategic reps!

Building Practice Time: There is a hidden element to building practice time that, when addressed, makes building practice time painless and enjoyable. The element is called orienting selective attention, and it can be taught like anything else - one small thing at a time.

​Interleaving: Traditional wisdom says we should focus on single things for long periods of time in our practice. Once again, the science has found differently. Massed practice, or doing one thing for extended periods of time, creates something called the illusion of knowing. Breaking up our individual work into strategic areas within practice increases our learning, and makes it stronger over the long term, such as when we perform.