Awesome Article on How to Practice

I just finished reading “Practice, Made Perfect?” in the sports section of this week’s TIME magazine.

Once again, something I’ve been doing in isolation by accident turns up in an article and goes from a specific success to a general principle.  It’s a good day 🙂

There was a time, not long ago, when it seemed like I was auditioning for everything all the time, and almost always winning.  The secret to my sudden and unexpected success was what I called “rotation”.  The idea was simple:  Set up every piece on the audition in a circle, and walk around the circle, playing each piece once.  When you get to 5 times around playing everything exactly how you want it, turn around and go the other direction.  When you get that, tear the whole thing down, set it up in a different order and do it again.  And again, and again, and again.

I usually took me about 100 hours to feel like I could nail an audition hanging upside down in my sleep underwater, which is what I was going for.  My specific ability to play the audition became a general ability to play anything in my active repertoire exactly like I wanted, on demand, over and over and over.

These days I’m not auditioning for things very often, but I’m using “rotation” to prepare chamber music, recitals, orchestra parts, and to develop my student’s practice habits, all to great effect.  I’ve never been so efficient with my time, or had such retention in my life.  I’m not anywhere near the article’s “10,000 hours” with this method, but I’m seeing results I never dreamed of even 5 years ago.