Deliberate Practice

I found a website today.  It talked about practice, but not quantity like I said in my earlier post, but quality of practice. 

Here is the website:  http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/becoming-an-expert-deliberate-practice-part-2.html

This was relevant today to my clarinet lesson which I had in Evanston today.  My teacher's name is Dileep Gangolli.  He's a good teacher.  He's very nice, but he is very deliberate and painstaking during my lessons.  This is a good thing, because it helps me learn to be a better clarinetist.

Today we worked on E minor scales and etudes and Fergeson's Four Short Pieces.  He was unhappy with my tone.  He said my technical work was great, but my tone really needed some work.  I think he was right, but I still sulked for a few hours.  This week, I think I need to work more on listening to the sound of the music I play and improving on my tone and the quality of my sound and the connections between the notes.  Dileep said that the way to do this is to slow down and play them over and over again before moving the tempo up.  This called deliberate practice, which is what the website that I posted above is about.

Today, I only practiced clarinet for one hour, because I was tired.  I also practiced piano for 35 minutes.  The problem with one hour practices, though, is that if you play for one hour a day, five days a week, it will take 40 years to get those 10,000 hours in.  In forty years, I'll be 52 years old!  I want to get there LONG before then...at least 20 years before then.  Probably sooner than that.