The Growth Model

The formula for improving at anything is pretty simple, but it is really easy to over complicate, so I want to spell it out for you to make your growth as a clarinetist more straight forward!

Learning a new skill, such as, playing the clarinet begins with a desire to learn it. The strength of our desire to learn/grow and our rekindling of that as we go is an important determination of how far we will progress on our clarinet playing journey. Without a desire to learn and improve your growth will be extremely slow or non-existent.

Once the desire is there, we enter a growth phase where we seek out information and put in the hard work practicing to implement that knowledge and improve.

After a while of practicing, we inevitably reach a plateau where the growth slows because we are happy with where we are and we have implemented the knowledge we gained during the growth phase as much as we can. Check out my video about Overcoming Plateaus on the QuickStart Clarinet YouTube Channel to learn more about this.

If the desire to learn/grow is still there the plateau will be followed with another seeking of information and growth phase, and the cycle continues as your skill grows towards the infinite skill ceiling that comes with playing an instrument.

So if you are looking to become a better clarinetist, use the passion from your desire to improve to seek out some new knowledge on how to play, or listen to players who are better than you for inspiration. Then get into the practice room and do the hard work to implement that knowledge into your playing!

Happy Practicing!
Josh

P.S. If you want more information about this, and how it comes up in my own clarinet journey, tune into this weekend's YouTube video coming out on Saturday morning. You can subscribe to the channel and press the bell icon to get notified when I upload new videos each Saturday morning!