Memorize a piece of music by singing every part of it.

Sing melody, bass, and internal voices Singing internalizes it Other great artists have expressed similar sentiments. Violinist Nathan Milstein is said to have once asked his teacher Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing. Auer responded by saying Practice with your fingers and you need all day. Practice with your mind and you will do as much in 1 1/2 hours. When it comes to understanding expertise and expert performance, psychologist Dr. K. Anders Ericsson is perhaps the worlds leading authority. His research is the basis for the ten-year rule and 10,000-hour rule which suggest that it requires at least ten years and/or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve an expert level of performance in any given domain and in the case of musicians, often closer to 25 years in order to attain an elite international level. Note that the real key here is not the amount of practice required but the type of practice required to attain an expert level of performance. In other words, just practicing any old way doesnt cut it And heres the biggie. We tend to practice unconsciously, and then end up trying to perform consciously not a great formula for success. Violinist Paul Kantor once said that the practice room should be like a laboratory, where one can freely tinker with different ideas, both musical and technical, to see what combination of ingredients produces the result you are looking for. Deliberate practice is often slow, and involves repetition of small and very specific sections of your repertoire instead of just playing through (e.g. working on just the opening note of your solo to make sure that it speaks exactly the way you want, instead of playing the entire opening phrase). There is a great anecdote told by the famous classical guitarist Julian Bream. When he enrolled in the army he thought his musical career was over because he could only practice 15-20 minutes a day. He was completely astonished when he actually got much better. He evidently used those 15-20 minutes more efficiently than he ever had before.

He smiled and replied, "You'll have to play this instrument for several years before it opens up for you, so here's what you do. Place the instrument directly in front of one of your stereo system's speakers, with the sound hole just inches from the speaker. Put on a solo Violin record and play it as loudly as the neighbors can bear and do this for one hour every day. Continue

for several weeks and you should notice a huge improvement in the ring tones and clarity." Practicing is what I call a process whereby results occur on a long term basis and muscles are atoned accordingly. Scale work must be done slowly, with round tone and sufficient volume. Unless the resistance of the strings is felt, the fingers will not respond properly during certain passages in the literature. Believe it or not, the goal of practicing scales, for instance, is NOT to hear the notes of the scale, its to feel the fingers controlling the notes. Remember this concept, because it will carry you throughout my entire method.
Narciso Yepes, Alirio Diaz, Costas Cotsiolis, Leo Brouwer, Roland Dyens, Nikita Koshkin, Aniello Desiderio, Denis Azabagic, Goran Schlser, Judicael Perroy, Thomas Viloteau, Ana Vidovic, Marcyn Dylla, David Starobin, Xuefei Yang, Wang Yameng and Jorge Caballero, just to name a few.
at a glance and must look ahead deliberately in the score. He can appreciate the problem of deliberately looking ahead if he has someone else to keep covering each measure while it is being played. The sight reader must never think about what he is doing! He must always think about what he is going to do. To look ahead the sight reader will be doing two things at once- recording mentally what is coming while playing from memory what was previously recorded mentally. One does not play the notes at the same moment that the eyes see them!