Tone, time, process, Swiss cheese.
More notes from the notebook.
To some extent I can feel good tone; or, maybe better, I can feel my hands moving in a way that I believe produce better tone than other movements do. The point is that I can approach tone by feel. (3/31/21)
There's not enough time to get to everything I want to do. OR IS IT: I want too much for the time I have allotted to practicing. (4/1/21)
I could fit 10 tasks into an hour by giving them 6 minutes each. But my conscious mind doesn't work that way. It seems to have a minimum portion size. Every division of my attention has to be at least that big. I can't just make them smaller so I can get more in. It does me no good to try to divide an hour up into ten 6 minute segments; they're just too small. By the end of the hour my attention will have been pulled from one subject to another too many times, and it will be worn out. I can treat a calendar hour or a clock hour that way. But I can't treat a mind hour that way.
A related issue: on the calendar, once something is over, it's over. In the brain, however, once task 1 is over, some portion of my attention is still dealing with it when I'm supposed to be working on task 2. I can't just forget what I was doing and change focus completely. Task 1 may get 100%, but task 2 gets 80%. Task 5?
The point is that for me, at least, there is a maximum number of tasks I can address in an hour of practicing, and it's pointless to exceed it. (4/2/21)
Some days the music works, and that feels good. Some days the motion works, and that also feels good. But some days, neither one works, and all I have is the process. Did I do what I said I was going to do? Did I bring my concentration back when I drifted off? Did I practice well? And that's still good. (4/3/21)
The reason I have the Swiss cheese technique I do is that I have not (before now) taken the time to make the details of my fundamental technique rock solid. (4/5/21)
