Hate music practice? How you can learn to love your instrument again in 100 days – Classical Music

The strange alchemy of #100daysofpractice is how things seem to get better all by themselves. If you play something through a few times carefully, focusing intently on the result – just noticing rather than negatively self-talking – and then leave it, coming back the next day and the next, the chances are it will be better. Consistency is everything. This is a lesson it’s taken me too long to learn. As a teenager I would not pick up my violin all week and then expect to catch up by practising three hours on a Friday night before my lesson at Junior Guildhall the next morning. Tears and tantrums ensued, not to mention frustrated teachers. Of course, it’s not that they didn’t explain this to me, but youth is indeed wasted on the young, and I wasn’t listening.