If it is to be...

What should you be doing right now to help improve your playing? What aren’t you doing that you need to in order to develop further? What is holding you back, either in the practice room or on stage?

There is only one person responsible for your ongoing development, and that person is YOU! So think about the obstacles in your way, and devise some possible solutions.

Don’t have enough time to practice? Use visualisation to make your practice sessions more productive and efficient.

Struggling with a particular technical issue? Vary your practice and approach it from as many different angles you can think of – slow practice, change the rhythm/articulation/dynamic etc., play it backwards, sing it (for instrumentalists). Be creative and invent your own exercises to tackle the problem.

Find yourself becoming flustered or overwhelmed during concerts? Check out some of my previous posts, and keep following Performance Under Pressure for more tips, tools and strategies to become a mentally stronger and more confident performer! Or shoot me a message and I can help you directly!

Sometimes finding solutions to your playing issues can be as simple as coming up with a few appropriate ways of tackling each problem and writing them down. So devise your plan of attack before you step into the practice room or on stage. This can give you more clarity, confidence, and certainty to take the issues head-on, rather than hoping that everything will just get better over time.

And even if some of the solution ideas don’t quite work as well as you thought they would, just keep trying out other options until you find what works best for you. Enjoy the journey of discovery!

It’s all up to YOU, and you can do it!