This is a brief outline of points that will be discussed during your lessons in more detail. My thanks to Howard Roberts for many of these ideas.
Make sure you are clear about the value of the materials and its relevance to you. If your not sure ask.
Concentrate on mastering a small amount of material at one time.
Work within short time-frames and take frequent rest-breaks, especially with mental learning.
Don't be overwhelmed by a dense page of notes: take them one at a time.
Strive to make no mistake more than once.
Diagnose your playing problems carefully. Don't blame your mind for motor problems and vise-versa.
Remember that the mind is like a camera: one focused shot is better than a hundred blurry ones.
Pay attention to your practice environment. Eliminate distractions.
Don't exceed your natural attention span: avoid overload at all costs.
Work with your nervous-system, not against it.
Remember the two kinds of memory.
Motor memory (trained by correct repetition) and Data memory, (memorization of conceptual data, like scale construction, finger patterns etc.)
These are two completely different aspects to gaining musical control of the instrument: Learning by mental rehearsal and visualization then recalling it from memory, and second, Motor skill training through repetition. Don't fall into the trap of confusing the two different types of learning and spending hours working without concentration trying to acquire conceptual data. And, conversely , don't be fooled into thinking that there is a short cut to acquiring motor skills.
