The 80/20 Rule in Practicing Music

From Wikipedia we have “The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle for more.)
Applied to learning music we get this, 80% of the benefit of a [...]

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The Gold Standard of Music Practice

If there is any musical instrument, or even vocal, practice tip universally recommended, it’s this.
Go over tough spots three times.
Suppose you are singing a new song and one spot just gives you some resistance. Maybe it’s the words, could be the intervals, or even the rhythm. But it doesn’t go smoothly.
Then, stop! Go over the [...]

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