This is my fourth day of practice, and I have been considering what the regime should be. I am ready to try various things, but what I’ve settled on so far is:
- 45 minutes a day. This is what I can commit to, with confidence that I will rarely miss.
- 1st 6 studies for now. This gives me a chance to feel the progress I am making. All 12 would be too much. I will alternate groups of 3, beginning with 1-3 and 4-6 on alternate days. In this way, each study gets a day’s rest between practices. I remember, and now have confirmed, the miracle of subconscious practice. This gives me a 15-minute block of time on each study. At the moment my approach is to spend the first half on the passages that I find most difficult, then to play a whole page at a time at a speed at which I can make no mistakes.
- Metronome. I will use a metronome, mainly to stop me speeding up too early, which I can remember as my worst practice habit.
- Fingering. I shall need to settle on a fingering and annotate the score, otherwise -I’ve already seen – I will not be consistent, and thought processes to do with execution will eventually interfere with musical intention.
- Strictness. I will not allow my practice, in total, or for work on individual studies, to run on beyond the allotted time. If I decide later that it would be a benefit to practise more, or less, I will change the allotted times.