In our previous post we defined some rather tenuous, fuzzy goals. That is a technical term, I believe.

Now, at this stage I believe I made a mistake, which we will look at in later posts.

We have a couple of choices of plan here, I think. We can either take the slow and steady approach, or the shotgun approach where we attack everything at once. I now think that it is better to be a rather slow-moving tortoise than a shotgun-wielding rabbit on crack (or even a speedy hare to be true to the metaphor), but here we hark back to my propensity to want to know and do everything at once.

As should be clear by now I have already taken a few steps along this journey that we are taking but am now beginning again and dragging you all along for company. I need that support.

My initial approach was to follow a varied, all encompassing, plan.

Here is an example of what each day looked like in the beginning – or the false beginning as I now refer to it.

• One lesson from an online basic music theory course
• One lesson from an online basic music composition course
• One lesson from an online basic counterpoint course
• One lesson from an online scoring software course
• Read some of a book on composers
• Spend some time with a note-speller book
• Read some of a music theory book
• Play some guitar
• Some online ear training
• Some practical examples from online lessons
• Probably a few other things too

This is just an example, but each day consisted of this kind of extreme variety with the impression of structure masking the truth, the complete lack of structure.
In the next post I will expand upon why I think this approach failed.