This is a picture of the moment I finally played Bach’s first two part invention without messing up. It took me 6 months with about 15 minutes a day. I am not much of a music reader yet so I would practice about two measures over and over until it became comfortable. First the right hand slowly.. then the left hand…. then very slowly and awkwardly joining the two hands together…its like rubbing you tummy and patting your head times a million. But slowly and constantly, note by note the piece started to sound like music. Sometimes it was frustrating, I felt like a 1st grader trying to write the letter A a hundred times and it still looked crappy. Then 2 weeks would go by and I could make 8 measures sound good. Ok…..deep breath…you can do this! My son was born right around the time I started working on this piece. And on the day I finally played this all the way through I could here him in the other room practicing. He was babbling little syllables “da da da da”. Right then it hit me. It had taken him 6 months to develop the muscles, awareness and control to even practice making consonants that he probably didn’t even know the full meaning of. It may take him another 6-12 months to even use that word or develop another syllable. And thats ok… And so I practice a little each day (as consistently as possible) knowing that small steps of growth is still growth. So for whatever instrument (or any skill) you may want to develop, know that it will be really slow and awkward at first… you will probably look and feel like a babbling baby…and thats ok. Just don’t start crying an whining!!! Music is a language we learn, so you might as well enjoy the process of discovering it.