Practice log

A practice log turns hours at the instrument into progress that can be seen. Most practice time is lost to two habits: playing through pieces from the top instead of working on the hard spots, and starting each session without knowing what the last one achieved. A log fixes both. It names the passage (by measure numbers, not "the middle bit"), the tempo it is clean at, what was going wrong, and what fixed it, so the next session starts where this one ended.

Tempo is the most useful number in it. "Measures 33-40 clean at 96, target 132" is a fact that can be built on. Over weeks, the BPM column shows real progress on days when it does not feel like any.

When to use it