My longest hiatus from music

“If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.”

— Ignacy Jan Paderewski

I need to be practising my current set of pieces regularly to be able to keep them at a public performance standard—especially if they are new. However, I’ve noticed that when I want to play pieces that I’ve done before but have not for some time, it doesn’t take that long to bring them up to the boil again. The mind has a way of recognising and recalling patterns that we’ve encountered before. I believe this doesn’t just apply to music. The same would apply to say a tennis player who took time off then returned to their career. The relearning process isn’t as arduous as starting again as a beginner. Heck, we can even relate Bitcoin to this! When the prices rises rapidly, we can expect the new baseline to be much higher than it previously was.

What happens if you miss four days of practice? What about four years of practice? I know, because four years was my biggest hiatus from music. Ngl, it wasn’t easy starting up again but I knew I could do it. Why? Because I knew I had already done it before.

What’s the longest time you’ve taken off from music?