The one thing, perhaps more than anything else, that I have learned from taking these Berklee Online courses is that they are not the “end all be all”. Meaning, it’s not “take this class and afterwards you’ll be able to do all this cool stuff, just like the pros.” It’s more like “here’s this area of interest/study and this is how to start learning how to do it.” It then is up to each of us to continue on our own once the course is over.

That is the part that I am struggling with. How do I create a sustainable practice routine that is easy to do in terms of time and effort, reinforces and develops the areas that are important to me and can be maintained regardless of what else is going on in my life.

I’ve written about the value of doing something 5-10 minutes a day, and have had some success continually doing something regularly over the span of a few months. Yet, the number of things I try to focus on for 5-10 minutes expands into multiple subjects and ends up taking 1-2 hours to get through. This is often where it ends. Other parts of my life start to require more of my energy and attention in terms of time, these daily routines drop off, get neglected and are soon forgotten.

I think if I can develop a dead simple plan and say “this is it, this is the only thing that I will commit to doing on a daily basis for x amount of time, no matter what” then I might have a chance.

If my Ear Training for Live Performance instructor Allan Chase can still be doing the same ear training exercises he started doing in 1978 then I can do something on a daily basis, too!