The sound of melodeons…

If you hadn’t already heard, [exciting news klaxon] this year I will be recording an album! Eeeeeeeek!

I am really scared.

I don’t feel 100% ready to do it, and I don’t feel good enough to do it. But I’m going to do it anyway.

I’m working hard to embrace my fears and do it anyway (Read more about my journey with anxiety here and here). I’ve already booked some studio time and spoken to a fantastic mandolin friend about coming to lay some tracks down with me (all will be revealed in good time!). But the worries I have about worthiness and “are my ideas valid and good enough to record?” are a little trickier to tackle I am finding.

Practice makes progress

I have been following friends and fellow musicians Vicky Swan & Jonny Dyer on Instagram for a while now. They’re super talented multi-instrumentalists and content creators and I am always enthused by their motivation to grab an opportunity to play more. They’ve both been running a #100daysofpractice project and posting daily videos to their Instagram and I thought “well now there’s a smart idea”. Go and check them out. I can promise high entertainment values, especially Jonny’s cow horn/dawn chorus collab (no, really!).

As a melodeon teacher, I spend a reasonable amount of my time talking to students about the importance of practice and making time for it in their busy lives. I must confess that for a long time I have not been practising what I’ve been preaching! *gulp*

There, I said it. It’s out in the open now, never to return. It makes me feel lousy and a phoney to admit that as a professional musician, but here we are, trying to change that.

I mean, I do practice, but rarely and only when I have an upcoming gig or solo performance and I need to revise the set list or arrangements for. But it always feels like a chore and always has a Big Reason behind it. Practice shouldn’t be all about practising for the sake of practising though. I’ve been running away from the overwhelming desire to be a better musician for a number of years now – you, know effort and not believing in myself and all that, BUT, in a positive move I have decided to take up the 100 days challenge myself. And I’m really looking forward to it.

Last night on my February #AskMelonBox Q&A, I launched the project and you can hear me talk more about it in this short introductory video:

Time management = success!

As I explain in my video, with Big Deadlines the fear of failure scares and overwhelms me and I try to do everything I can to avoid them. However, I’m learning to manage my time better by breaking down big deadlines into smaller tasks. With that in mind, I’ve decided to break the 100 days into 10 sets of 10. As an extra incentive I’ve decided to build in a reward system too. I’ll put £1 into a jar for every day that I practice and decide what to do with it at the end. I’ve never been able to save money so I’ll enjoy watching it build up and being able to treat myself at the end!

Fancy joining in my journey? Download this free 100 Days of Practice chart and cross off each day as you go, ticking each set of 10 when you complete it. Find a way to reward yourself, something you enjoy doing or saving to splash out at the end of the 100 days like me. Let’s get better together!

I hope you enjoy following my journey and I hope it inspires you. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the bell to receive notifications of new videos. You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram

[:]|| Mel ||[:]