If you come from a classically trained background, or played in the school band or orchestra in your youth, the following pencil admonishing will have meaning for you. It's the teacher/conductor nightmare, trying to get students and performers to physically mark places in their music where there might be some special instructions, or in the case of private lessons, bracketing trouble spots that need intense wood shedding.

If you don't have a pencil, you're doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

Even if you learn your music aurally and never use staff or paper, there's immense merit in the notion of tagging the moments of consistent imperfection. Great players don't work on what they do well, they woodshed their mistakes. To perfection!

Driving the point home is this parody. Enjoy!

Video Link: Pencils for All Musicians

Good players practice until they get every note right...
Great players practice until they can't get it wrong.

Further:
Deliberate Practice
The Regressive Method (Learning it backwards...)
Drilling for tone
Keeping it honest: metronomes

Posted by Ted at August 28, 2014 9:23 AM