Continuity, continuity, and more continuity

Do you know what’s the most important thing for your development as a musician?

Answer: Continuity.

Yes; it’s continuity, continuity, and more continuity.

Continuity doesn’t have to mean spending 5 hours a day practicing. This is great at some point in our lives, but if we’re balancing a job, family, and yes, even a professional music schedule, it’s impractical and unsustainable.

Instead, view continuity as “whatever it takes to stay in music for the long haul.” This can be listening to music, practicing, playing gigs, or teaching music. Anything that we can return to each day, whether it’s for 5 minutes or 5 hours.

The great thing about continuity is that it leads to all the other aspects of music as well. You’re creative enough that if you sit down at the piano for 10 minutes every day for a full year, you’ll come up with new things to learn. And even during those busy periods when you don’t have enough practice time, by staying “in the game” you’ll be keeping yourself in enough musical shape to jump back in when you can practice for longer sessions again.

The flip side is true as well. If you find that you’re not motivated enough to return to music every day on your own, find some external motivation to provide continuity for you. Piano lesson are great for this exact reason. If you can’t find the right local teacher for you, I’d love to help you via Skype, or you may enjoy learning from my video course:

KeyboardImprov: Get Started
https://keyboardimprov.com/get-started/videocourse/

By the way, if you want to give a KeyboardImprov subscription as a present for a piano-playing friend, please email me directly instead of signing up at the above link. This way we can keep it a secret until the day you’d like to give your friend the gift. (A lot of people have given friends a quarterly membership, and then left it up to the friend whether they’d like to continue on their own after the initial three months.)

However you do it, make “continuity” the primary goal for your piano playing. Nothing will happen without it, and everything blossoms once you’ve found it for yourself.

Thanks for being here, enjoy the journey, and “let the music flow!”

Ron

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