Suzuki said to only practice on the days you eat. It must have been his wry way to say: “Practice every day.” That is sound advice; and in reality, there is so much progress to be made by practicing every day. But life intervenes. We’ve been practicing for many many days now. But twice during that stretch, my daughter had to practice without an instrument because it was simply not safe to bring her instrument into the back-country where she was on a school trip.

In Part I of our series on deliberate practice, we introduced the concept. In Part II we began to apply the idea of mental representations as a key component of expert performance and one of the goals of deliberate practice.

This is the second article in a series on deliberate practice. The first in the series dealt with the concept of deliberate practice as a general principle and today we’ll dive into mental representations as an essential component of deliberate practice.

This week, I’m beginning a new series of articles on deliberate practice as it relates to the work of the Suzuki parent and student.

Confidence comes from knowing that your route will take you where you want to go. Whether it’s about the mastery of a certain piece of music or about the long road to become a confident player, it’s about trusting that the process will get you there.

Kids seldom need help playing fast. But they do need help playing fast well. Tempo ladders are one way to bring some organization to the process of going faster.

A perpetual search for novelty in practice revealed some cool ways to use real-time audio recording to enhance practice.

While the Suzuki method focuses on consistent, rather than rapid progress, it’s definitely more enjoyable to play better and to progress.

Her breaking point, it turned out, was Kreutzer #11.

Well, I can’t exactly guarantee frustration-free practice but we can try.