Deliberate practice.
http://lifehacker.com/5939374/a-better-way-to-practice
If there’s one thing I try to get across to my students as often as possible, it’s the concept of deep practice. Every one of you has worked this way in lessons with me. We pick out a passage, maybe it’s two lines long, maybe a bar, maybe it’s only three notes long but regardless, we slow it down, pluck it out on the keyboard, listen carefully, and play. Then we speed up- only a little bit- and play. We keep listening.
The end result is deep practice. You’ve trained your muscles to respond to what you hear by only telling them what something should sound like, and not how to do it. Ultimately you’ve got two lines or a bar or three notes of music that you’ll never forget how to play, and you’ll always play correctly, because you programmed in the right coordinates.
I want all my students to be accomplished, but more so than that I want your accomplishments to sound effortless despite the hours of work put into each passage. Because with deliberate practice, the end result is pure performance.
Lauren Husting, trombone 