Building A Master Piece

I was working with one of my students the other day on a challenging part in a piece of music she’d been having a hard time with.

After a few weeks of frustration and a bit of struggling the challenging part finally started coming together for her.

“Wow”, I exclaimed this is great! You really have a solid understanding of this, and your rhythmic execution is right on point.” “Whatever you did in your practice over the past week, keep it up.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “I thought I could just push my way though and make it happen at full tempo. But then I realized I needed to break it down to really understand the rhythm, go slower, and work with metronome like you suggested; or it wasn’t going to work.”

.“It’s still not fast,” she said a little discouraged. “That’s okay,” I replied. “Now you have the framework and understanding in place, getting it faster and cleaner will come more easily.”

After her lesson, I started thinking how analogous her comments were to life.

Often we (myself included) think we can just push through and force ourselves to get everything quickly and perfectly all at once.

But it’s not until we break it down, do the tedious unexciting work little bits at a time everyday, that we make a master piece :)

Photo: @stemsandforks