Originally Posted by: snojones

The telling part of practice was summed up by a violinist, that I heard on the radio, who stated... "If I don't practice for one day.... I can tell the diffrence. If I miss 2 days... My accompanist can tell the diffrence. If I miss 3 days... the audience can tell."

Granted this was somebody at the top of their game, but none the less it is an insightful discription of how important practice is. The good news is that it will come back if you can once again devote the time to practice.

I've heard this story and it's a good one. Even though I am decidedly NOT at that elite level, I have a feeling that someone like my wife, who can't always avoid hearing me practice, would not hear how much I have regressed as much as I hear and feel it. So I was about 1 year into the journey and got sidetracked for 3 months. That is a pretty minor detour in the scheme of things. It will come back. Even with the layoff I can certainly do a lot of things that I could not do when I started, so I'm not starting over from scratch.