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Blogroll

I'm not planning to have much of a blogroll here, since I primarily go through Bloglines from my other blog. I have, however, added a few blogs to the sidebar that I think are particularly relevant for the type of person who would be interested in this blog--i.e., amateur musicians.

If you know of other "practice blogs" or have one that you'd like to see included here (hey, it might just move you up in the TTLB ecosystem!), let me know, and I'll be happy to add it here.

Enough fiddling with the template. Time to go practice!

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Rethinking Bare Necessities

Today's breakthrough moment (there are actually two of them) focuses on "Bare Necessities." As you'll remember, I discovered Jonny May's arrangement back in early March and immediately decided to learn it. I printed out the music, started the course, and proceeded to learn the stride section, posting a few videos of my progress. Ha. I bet those videos make it look like I was making progress. I guess I was ... but not really. And I realized something this weekend that I hadn't before: Because I was thinking of "Bare Necessities" as a "fun" piece, I wasn't practicing it seriously or diligently. I wasn't treating it as something I wanted to master. This mindset might work with an easier piece, but this arrangement isn't easy. The result: despite a little progress at the outset, I wasn't moving forward. I was stalled. Breakthrough #1 The first breakthrough was realizing that if I truly want to learn this piece and play it well,

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