1,000 Days of Music - Day 17: The Power of Practice

One of the best things about setting a goal to learn the entire Suzuki piano repertoire in a thousand days is that it forces me to practice daily. Not only do I practice daily, I have an objective on which to focus.

Ordinarily, I base my daily practice on rotating out repertoire. I learn a piece, polish it, and then let it rest while I learn something new. It’s the circle of life—birth, maturity, death, decay, rebirth. It’s the reason that thirty years later I can only play a few bars from the pieces I learned as a high school senior. 

Suzuki students maintain their repertoire by constantly reviewing it, and I must do the same. I am a better musician now than I was seventeen days ago. This goal has given me a target at which I can aim. Practice is magical. Focused practice is miraculous.