Musical retention and forward progress can be a challenge with an intermittent rehearsal schedule. Short daily personal practice can make the difference between continued growth and stagnation or repetition.
Weekly rehearsal with no practice in between is like going up the down escalator. You can get it done, but the retention loss from week to week is actively working against you.
Weekly rehearsal with personal practice stops the escalator. (As Mitch Hedberg famously said, “An escalator can never break. It can only become stairs.”) Progress is made, now much more quickly without the escalator working against you.
Daily rehearsal – that is, daily practice with constant feedback from a director – is riding up the up escalator. With little work on an individual singer’s part, progress is consistently made.
Daily rehearsal combined with individual deliberate practice – each singer working on their problem spots on their own – is when you start to climb up the up escalator. Suddenly progress feels like you’ve moved into warp speed.
What kind of escalator ride will you be taking?
(Thanks to my student Jack, who suggested this escalator metaphor. And thanks to escalators, which I remember from when I used to go places.)