the practice period. One hour of concentrated
thinking is worth weeks of thoughtless practice. It is safe to say that
years are being wasted by students in this country who fail to get the
most out of their practice because they do not know how to concentrate.
A famous thinker has said: 'The evidence of superior genius is the power
of intellectual concentration.'

"2. Divide your practice time into periods of not more than two hours.
You will find it impossible to concentrate properly if you attempt to
practice more than two hours at a time. Do not have an arbitrary program
of practice work, for this course is liable to make your work
monotonous. For one who practices four hours (and that is enough for
almost any student), one hour for purely technical work, one hour for
Bach, and two hours for pieces is to be recommended.

"3. In commencing your practice, play over your piece once or twice
before beginning to memorize. Then, after working through the entire
composition, pick out the more difficult passages for special attention
and reiteration.

"4. Always practice slowly at first. This is simply another way of
telling the pupil to concentrate. Even after you have played your piece
at the required speed and with reasonable confidence that it is correct,
never fail to go back now and then and play it at the speed at which you
learned it. This is a practice which many virtuosos follow. Pieces that
they have played time and time again before enthusiastic audiences are
re-studied by playing them very slowly. This is the only real way to
undo mistakes that are bound to creep into one's performance when pieces
are constantly played in a rapid tempo.

"5. Do not attempt to practice your whole piece at first. Take a small
section or even a phrase. If you take a longer section than say sixteen
bars, you will find it difficult to avoid mistakes. Of course, when the
piece is mastered you should have all these sections so unified that you
can play the entire composition smoothly and without a break.

"6. First memorize _mentally_ the section you have selected for study,
and then practice it. If you do not know it well enough to practice it
from memory, you have not grasped its musical content, but are playing
mechanically.

"7. Occasionally memorize backwards, that is, take the last few measures
and learn them thoroughly, then take the preceding measures and
continue in this way until the whole is mastered. Even after you ha