Bosse School of Music

Teaching music, and understanding its many individual inflections, is a personal thing: everyone learns things differently. The main thing I would want any student to take away from my teaching is consistency. New actions, like learning a new piece or rhythm or a new technique, need to be done many times. By doing these actions over and over the muscles build resistance and strength and the body has a chance to learn the new movements through muscle memory. I feel that the key to overall music health is to allow as much time as one needs to have the body learn new skills. Forcing prolonged practice can lead to learning bad habits and injury. It's important to listen to your body and recognize when you need a break or to call it quits. I'm a firm advocate in taking breaks to allow both the mind and body to have a breather. 
For me, the easiest way to approach practice is to always have a goal in mind. Even if you just end up working on one line to get your left hand technique down you've accomplished something that is applicable to the rest of your playing. Making music on any instrument isn't a matter of reading a book and then doing it; you have to work at it so that the music is in your fingers, and practice good habits so that they're automatic. When the good habits are automatic, you can concentrate on interpreting the music, not the mechanics of making the music.