Practice time, structure, goals .....

[jamesmartin]

does age make a difference if some ones learning.
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India Tour | Canada Immigration

Originally Posted by jamesmartin

does age make a difference if some ones learning.

Yes, most certainly. It affects both the learning style and the likely rate of progress.

[robailey]

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

Jeff said exactly what I was about to say. I would only add that you're going to need a specific target before you start aiming the rifle. Post those goals and we'll try and help. Jeff's a fine jazz player and loves to help the folks here on the AGF out whenever he can.

Lately, I've been picking challenging songs that have lots of technique and theory I can analyze then incorporate it to songs I do with my band. Toby, your version of Hideaway looks like my next project!

[MarkVonShief]

Man, last night I entered in a whole response here to everyone and the internet ate it. Dangit!

I'll try to rewrite, though it felt really good the first time I wrote it.

What I've taken away from this thread (and others that I've been reading) are some things that I can do (and have already started)

• Plan practice, write down beforehand what I'm going to do, leave some flex time at the end just for fun

• Put some limited time into every practice to do some reading or some work from books.

• I talked my wife into being my vocalist, she sings well (sang in choruses and in college). This is not her genre, but she agrees to listen and try. I'll rip her some classics from Songza.

• Rip CDs of everything that I'm learning to play. Make recordings of me trying to play them
  Use a metronome more

• If I have to write stuff down, keep that practice time for playing. Writing stuff down and working through chord charts are different, necessary maybe, but they're not practice

• Take breaks when I need them, but come back to the plan.

• Write down what my instructor says and be clear on the points of emphasis

What I find (over the past two days) is that I'm bad at planning. Even though the concept is easy, the plans for the past couple have some holes. I'm pretty sure that this will get better, I just need to keep doing it.

Thanks to all for the discussion and the ideas

I'll bump this up in a month or so to update how its working. Not that its necessarily important to anybody here, but there may be more behind me.

[jamesmartin]

yo! keep the strings buzzing