Lieven has some great ideas in there, and if it’s ok I would like to expand based on my own new practice schedule.
I have been raving about this book and this person for the last few months. Molly Gebrium, a schollar and viola player, who studied neuroscience and the art of practicing specifically for musicians.
While the full extent of her knowledge can’t be passed down in a single post, here is a summary of stuff that she recommends.
Probably one of the most important and hardest to start, set goals for your practice, and keep a journal, the journal will help you set goals, because you know what you did and didn’t do well in the practice.
Goals - if you have a new lick to learn your goal could be - Hit the bend first time, 5 out of 5 times.
Then once you do the practice you notice “my wrist doesn’t seem to rotate, I am using my fingers more” Your next goal when you come back to this item to practice "Focus on wrist/elbow rotation, not fingers.
That is what I am doing and it is amazing the progress you make on these things.
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Interleaved practice - the basics… Practice many things, rather than the same thing.
So if you are learning a new lick, practice this 3 times a day, with at least 20 minutes between each session, so if you have 2 hours a day, if possible break it up into 3 or 4 sessions. This was you are going to let your brain work on the new stuff during the break.
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micro breaks - if you are going to go for example 2 hours straight, or 2 x 1 hr sessions, break those sessions up into 3rds, so you do the same things 3 times with micro breaks in between. Then when you feel like you have gotten good at that item, slow the practice down to once a day, then once every 3 days, this helps to just continue to condition the item in your brain and not forget it.
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Be technical in your own analysis. This is the golden nugget that you will accelerate your
learning.
instead of saying ‘that lick sucked, it sounded like crap’, analyse why it was, and reframe the wording "Ok that didn’t sound right, why? so my fingers were not scrunching up the strings properly how do I fix that? also i saw no movement in my wrist, how do I fix that? "
By using this kind of analysis, you focus on the little techniques that will serve you for all of your other items you are learning.
The caveat is that this feels like of knowledge heavy, and you have so many things that you want to practice, that you have to write them all down, which is what I was thinking. ie. vocal lessons, guitar and piano, all have their own many many branches of things I want to learn.
The way I combatted this was sit down and practice a thing, then once the timer goes off for that thing anaylise it. I noticed that while analyziing other things I wanted to practice/do popped into my head, which helped me develop my routines.
I am in BLIM 2, and I have just blues practice routines, fundamentals which are like chunka chunka rhythm, perfect bend practice (my ring finger is weak, that’s the example I gave above" the standards chord progressions, and others. Then I"ll have Unit 1routine, which could be finger stretching to help fretting hand, and some lick stuff, min pent framework, hybrid framework etc.
Then I"ll have another routine which is 1-12 lick practice.
Once you get your head around it, it is so powerful to just have a dozen routines set, choose what you want to do, record how you did so you can set your goals for the next session.
