| Re: How to practice?
Like you David, I sometimes have trouble fitting in everything I want to do into my daily practice schedule. Here are a few ideas for you to either try or disregard at your discretion.
Journal Practice sessions - helps me keep track of what I have been practicing and omitting, my metronome speeds, and generally organize my practice.
Rotate daily exercises - Continue your daily exercises but shorten time devoted to it each day and rotate which ones you do on which days freeing up more time to practice music (repertoire) while still regularly practicing everything.
Integrate daily routines into learning repertoire - Often times I kill 2 birds with one stone by practing scale patterns, tounging, slurring, long tones, etc. over the changes of a song. Aebersold Vol1 has 20 examples of exercises that can be played over changes to learn changes. I use these exercises and modify them as neccesary to work on daily exercises over chord changes. Helps to learn changes, helps to learn patterns to use over changes, and helps my technique just as a daily exercise would. (you can also use many other exercises such as Clarke or Vizzutti and modify them to fit over changes.) |