In a nutshell, here are some simple yet powerful practice tips.
(NOTE: This section is not complete, but I've chosen to post it as it evolves.
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If the time you devote to practice fails to help you improve, all the time in the world won't amount to much. As a music student, your job is to improve, master, and remember what you've accomplished. And, as much as possible, to relax and enjoy the process.

To learn a musical instrument you must learn to master many physical skills. The mastery of physical skills requires a real "physical education." An eloquently expressed description can be found in Mastery, an insightful book by George Leonard. I highly recommend that you read it.

1) They practice in a way that fails to produce improvement.

2) Although they practice carefully and produce improvements, they fail to practice in a way that ensures a lasting memory of what they've learned.

Even if you practice in a manner that fosters improvement, if your style of practice fails to create a strong, lasting memory, you'll reap little gain. And each day it will feel like you're starting over.

Following are some tips and music study skills that will help you improve.

Listening helps more than any other single activity. And it helps you learn music easily and quickly. This makes sense, but it's also a well documented fact. And the benefits are many.

It should be easy to schedule some listening into your day. You needn't drop everything, set aside a special time, or apply any special concentration. In other words, don't make a big deal out of it. Just listen to music a couple of times a day. Play it in the background. Listen when you're in the car. The music will sink in effortlessly as you attend to other activities. You just need to hear it.

Listen to each new piece for a few days before you start to practice it. You're ready to start working on it when you can hum or whistle the piece or you can hear it in your head.

If you are good at reading music, especially if you're good at reading rhythms, you may not need to listen. Still it will be quite helpful.

The biggest advantage in listening is that it keeps you from making rhythmic mistakes. And rhythmic mistakes are the hardest to fix. So, if you listen you'll avoid some of the worst pitfalls.

What If You Already Know How It Goes?

It's best to listen anyway. There are lots of different versions of a single piece of music. Listen to a recording of the version that plan to learn.

Daily practice is a cornerstone of steady progress. You'll get much more out of your practice if you practice every day. However, a day off each week won't hurt.

Many people under estimate the value of daily commitment, so they skip days without too much concern. They usually do so with the good intention of doubling-up the following day. If they skip a few days, they pledge to catch up with one or more marathon sessions on the weekend.

Unfortunately, these make-up sessions seldom materialize. And when they do, often they're counterproductive. Long marathon sessions can cause mental and physical fatigue which can initiate a downward spiral, leaving you frustrated — probably with little to show for your efforts.

A regular regime of marathon sessions may easily take the fun out of music, and lead to a bad attitude toward practice.

There are many other benefits to daily practice.

Daily practice helps to keep you toned and strengthened, limber and relaxed. Music practice places many demands on your body, so it's important to warm up and stretch. If you warm up and prepare yourself before you practice rigorously, your body will benefit from the exercise. If not, you run the risk of developing bad habits and physical tension.

If you have trouble practicing every day, try alternating days of light and heavy practice. That's what tri-athletes do.

There will come days when you really don't have time for a full practice session — there's only so many hours in the day! There will be times when something else comes up that you'll choose to do instead. And some days you'll honestly feel too tired to practice — or you just don't feel like doing it.

On days like these go easy on yourself, but don't skip your practice entirely. Simply shorten it! Put in five or ten minutes, give yourself a pat on the back, and then call it a day. This may leave you feeling disappointed that you didn't put in a significant effort. A few minutes of practice may not measure up to your idea of a rigorous practice session, but it goes a long way toward keeping you on track. It certainly maintains and strengthens your "daily commitment," and that counts for a lot. Surprisingly, it really makes a significant contribution toward your progress.

Remember that the "daily" aspect is more important than the amount of time; especially at first. Slow and steady wins the race — we all know about the tortoise the hare.

Pick up your instrument daily, even if you practice for just a few minutes. It's much better to shorten your practice than to skip days.

Hey, nobody's perfect.

Practically everybody wants to skip the warm-up. This is true for beginners, advanced students, young students and adults. The complaint is that the warm-up "keeps you from getting to the fun part." This is a short-sighted view. A good warm-up will heighten your skills, and will make it easier for you to play well during the rest of your practice.

Always start your practice with something easy, preferably something familiar.

Play some open string exercises or easy scales. Then play an easy piece or two. In doing so, you'll establish a baseline for the day - a preflight check, a list of what's working and what's not. Then continue your warm-up and try to improve on these points before working on new or challenging material.

If you skip the warm up and fail to establish a baseline at the start of your practice, you may proceed with unrealistic goals for the day, launching in unaware that certain skills are working, while others are temporarily dormant.

If you practice more than once a day, you may shorten or skip your warm-up in the later sessions.

It's rare that you pick up right where you left off the day before. This is especially true for beginners. It may take five to twenty minutes to get yourself warmed up and back in touch with yesterday's best.

With other types of tasks, such as building a stone path, you continue building on Wednesday right where you finished on Tuesday. But not with music.

There will come days when your most diligent efforts will fail to elevate you to the level of yesterday's accomplishments. Or perhaps you'll reach yesterday's level, but not until your practice is nearly over.

And it's OK. Don't let it get to you. Your achievements won't always follow a straight line, and your improvements won't always come at a steady rate.

So simply strive to improve from your starting point — from your baseline.

With so many musical details vying for your attention, you're likely to lose track of your technique (the details of how you control your instrument, including posture, hand positions, relaxation ....)

So, it's essential that you practice technique during your warm-up period, otherwise you may fail to improve or maintain technique at all.

But if you practice technique first, there's a good chance some of the accomplishments will carry through to the rest of your practice. When this occurs, your practice yields dividends on an exponential level.

It's an old idea. I put a positive spin on it, calling it Divide and Accomplish. Break tasks and obstacles into small, manageable pieces. This is ideal for learning music and physical skills.

There's plenty of brain research that shows that most people can only remember about seven items of new information at a time — plus or minus two. To learn large groups of information efficiently, you must study the material in small sections.For most people, that means just four to eight notes. Though this may seem like a ridiculously small amount, even four to eight notes can be too much. You have to see for yourself. If you can't accomplish your goal, try reducing the size of the section.

Work on any size piece you want, any amount that allows you to make decided progress, and that you do so quickly. If you fail to quickly learn the section you've chosen, divide the section in two parts, and practice those parts in loops.

Continue dividing until you reach a size where you can progress quickly. Indeed you may need to work on just two, three or four notes. And this can be the most intelligent and effective way to proceed.

When adopting this style of practice, you're face to face with delayed gratification. Playing from the start to the end feels like a lot more fun, but you may accomplish little by doing so. The big fun comes from learning a piece well, and reaping the many rewards that accompany that level of success.

Don't Obsess. Once you've chosen a practice section, practice it briefly in a loop, just for a minute or two. If there's no progress after about 20 seconds, work on half as much. Then go to the next section or even to another piece of music. There are advantages to working a few pieces at once:

-- it keeps practice interesting

-- it keeps confusion and frustration at bay

-- it allows your memory to absorb the experience subconsciously. This way you'll get the most out your of paractice time — much like studying and sleeping on it.

Alternate Between Learning and Reviewing. Start your practice with something familiar. Then try something new. Continue alternating between familiar and new. In other words, rest one part of your brain while a different part works.

You'll learn whatever you practice.There's the old saying, "Practice makes perfect." Actually practice makes permanent. So practice carefully. Don't practice music casually. Anything repeated becomes partially memorized. Don't memorized just anything! Be specific.

Keep it the Same. Your memory thrives on patterns and similarity. Exact repetition allows you to memorize quickly and efficiently. Once you've established a relaxed and well formed hand position, work on a small passage. Refine your movements with economy of motion in mind. ***

As you repeat make the movements the same every time you play a passage.

If you're playing well,

The passage of time works for and against.***

It naturally discard differnces. However difference can deluit. If you

play

This will help you to memorize it quickly. If you make different movements each time through, your memory will discard much of your practice as meaningless.

Occasionally try out one of the tips that you forgot or avoided. As you adopt good practice habits, you'll get more out of your practice.

There are many other practice techniques as well. Some are rather detailed and best explained by example in lessons.

Watch your own progress. Remember what larning techniques work for you. Remember to use them in the future. Soon enough you'll discover your own practice secrets.

*** Complete Your Practice with Review. Before you end your practice session, briefly review all the material you've practiced once again. In just a few tries see if you can revive each accomplishment to the best level that you achieved during this practice. Then just spend another minute with it.

In learning physical skills, understanding is essential. Nothing can be accomplished without it, howeverthe understanding in the world won't produce a physical skill -- it's merely to tool with which we set our sights. All

It takes lots of trial and error before your body can do what your mind clearly understands. That's how the work gets done, and how we influence and forge memories. Once a movement is correctly refined, sufficient repetition is required in order to establish the movement deeply in your memory. It takes still more repetition and review before you'll have a reliable type of reflex-level, long-term memory. This is often called kinesthetic memory, motor memory, or muscle memory. You must reach this level of control in order to play by heart in recitals, performances or rehearsals.

Musical skill training is physical skill training, just like learning a sport. Imagine the practice routine of an Olympic diver: the hundreds of repetitions of every aspect of the dive -- learning flips and twists indendently, learning to combine them -- and eventually, finally practicing the finished combination thousands of times.

Most people fail to fully understand how to train the body. Quick minded people frequently have little patience for the required repetition. They feel frustrated, limited by their bodies, like they're stuck trying to teach someone who just doen't get it. They think understanding should suffice to successfully guide their body, and may feel discouraged at the pace naturally required. Most wish that somehow they could get their body to learn faster.

If you feel this type of impatience you'll need to learn to accept the pace and rhythm of your body. It's important to realize that ultimately, the body's ability to memorize movement and music far surpasses what can be accomplished through conscious, mental attention alone.

Furthermore, kinesthetic memory is very durable, remaining accessible and reliable even in the presence of mental distractions — thus providing a significant advantage in performance.

Though for some it may be frustrating to practice at an appropriate pace — at a speed that educates the body — there are many benefits in doing so. (Incidentally, "appropriate speed" varies. A slow speed is not always the best speed. Much more on this later.)

To elevate your playing skills, you must free your mental attention from the role of directing movements. Then you can use it to observe the sounds that you create and refine various details of movement. When you use your kinesthetic memory to play, your mental attention remains free for such tasks.

Many people naturally enjoy the repetition inherent in learning music. Some enjoy the physical sensation of moving through the steps. Some find it soothing to perform a familiar task. They like getting absorbed in it, possibly because it draws their attention away from the cares of the day.

Others learn to enjoy the repetition. They cultivate ***

Many people suffer from a different source of frustration. They have an inner voice that runs rampant within their stream of thoughts — a voice that constantly belittles them.

We all have an inner critic. But with some people the critic is overactive, and it becomes particularly vocal in certain circumstances like social settings and learning environments.

One of the hallmarks of maturity is the ability to consciously hear the inner critic. It's when you fail to notice the critic's presence and message that it has its strongest influence — nearly complete control — and it causes the most turmoil. Once you've become aware of this voice and readily notice the messages that it sends, you have the option of responding appropriately.

The mature response is simple. When you hear a message from your inner critic, evaluate its credibility. If it is a pointless message of self doubt or judgment, dismiss it, possibly replacing it with a thought that's more accurate. Or, reframe any truth within it with a positive tone, and continue on your way toward your goals.

Sensitive people make great musicians. Unfortunately they frequently have overbearing inner critics. To successfully study and perform music, they need to learn to put the critic at bay.

This takes lots of practice. Learning to notice is the most important and challenging step.

Frustration is the tip off. If you feel frustrated when practicing, stop and review your recent thoughts ofthe previous minute or two. At first, people usually draw a blank. It takes some practice to successfully peer behind the veil. But you can learn to do so.

If you start to feel frustrated when practicing, try to remember your recent thoughts. Write them down. Any thoughts: good or bad. In the process you may notice a trend of positive or negative thoughts. You'll have created a log of what the critic says to you. You're list may contain judgmental statements like:

    "You should know this by now."
    "You're never going to learn this."
    "Everyone else can do this already.
    "You're so slow!"

People say things to themselves that they'd never say to anyone else. They tolerate introjected critism that they would never tolerate from another person. And when these message are spoken, heard and believed unconciously, they weild the most power.

You can learn to speak positively to yourself, *** guide yourself, like a parent calming a hysterical child. People do this all the time. After reading the last sentence perhaps you experienced a wave of disbelief, and said something to yourself like, "Right. Me calm myself? I'd never learn to do that!" If so, ask yourself, "Is that your true opinion, or was it just a message of doubt, courtesy of your inner critic?" Even if you think you can't, maybe you can.

Dismiss the Critic

Sometimes we just need to ignore the critic. You can easily do so if you become thoroughly involved in the task. Or by directing your attention toward physical awareness, and away from thinking. ***

Consciously Challenge the Critic.

The critic often makes exaggerated statements, or excessive and inappropriate demands, like "You need to practice more. You'll never improve unless you practice at least an hour a day!"

Perhaps you should challenge this. Ask yourself, "Is this true?" Maybe at present the opposite is true. Perhaps you'll cause more damage than good by attempting to practice more than you want to! Maybe you have good cause to steer clear of practice. When your practice improves and you start having more fun, you'll automatically want to practice more.

We often feel frustrated when we try to do something but can't. So when you try to do the impossible and bite off more than you can chew, frustration will follow.

You may encounter plenty of frustration even when you're working effectively. So don't create more by going against the grain with poor practice habits.

Learn good habits and the head banging will cease.