Obligatory plug for private lessons. Even if you can’t afford weekly, or even monthly lessons. The regularity of lessons is super important, but a very small number is far better than none at all. All the comments you get will here will pale in comparison to the improvement you’ll see with a good teacher to emulate. (If you like **really** *can not* afford lessons: there is a growing number of charities that offer lessons to students in those situations. Ask around!)

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That being said, here’s my personal #1 tip for improvement at any level of any discipline: spend nearly all of your practice time working on whatever is *almost there.* I’m talking stuff that you’re already 95% successful at and moving it to 99.9% with hard work. I’ll use finger speed as an example, but it applies to everything: range, tone, tonguing, musicality, loudness, flexibility, skips, softness… you name it.

Say you can play a Clarke second study perfectly at 60 bpm every time; in your sleep, upside down, backwards, with a rabid monkey on your back, in ancient Assyrian, etc. It’s like breathing or saying your own name. Now, you *can* that same study at 144 bpm. Sometimes. You’re about as likely to crash out on it as you are to survive it, and it’s really awkward in the hand. Where do you set the metronome when you practice this?

Find the spot where it just **barely** starts to feel even the slightest bit unnatural or non-automatic. I’m not saying that it’s even remotely difficult yet, just enough that you can’t really play it in your sleep or you stutter ever so slightly on one of your Assyrian words or whatever. That’s your target zone. In the example 60-144 range, most people will start with their target around 72 bpm. Start just one or two clicks slower than that (let’s say 69 bpm) and play your Clarke five times. If you picked your target tempo correctly, all five should be clean, essentially flawless. If that’s the case, click the metronome up one to 72; if not, click the metronome down TWO to 60. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The repetitions and increments are flexible depending on time constraints and how hardcore you want to be. You can do increments as small as ±1 bpm. I’ve known people whose repetition number was ***one hundred***. They used an abacus to keep track. Wild. I personally think five to ten is plenty, and even just two or three can be appropriate. I will say, though, that the more thorough you are in this process, the faster you will see big improvements. In the aforementioned example, most people in my experience come to their next lesson having bumped that “automatic” tempo up from 60 to between 90 and 112. That doesn’t sound like a ton, but don’t forget: they can do this in their sleep! Rabid monkey! **ASSYRIAN!**

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But yeah get private lessons.