Too many music books, can’t find time to play them

[Anonymous]

Get two In-Trays and two Out-Trays and a note pad.
Dump all the music books in the 1st In-Tray and all the loose music sheets in the 2nd In-Tray.

Once a week, take a music book from the top of the pile in the 1st In-Tray, and play through all the songs. Write down the songs in the note pad, that you enjoyed and WILL want to play again from that music book. Stick the music book in the 1st Out-Tray. If you didn’t like any of the songs in the music book, then donate the music book to charity (waste of space, if you never play them).

Also once a week, take 7 music sheets from the top of the 2nd In-Tray, play through all of them, make a note in the note pad of the music sheets you enjoyed and WILL want to play again, and put them in the 2nd Out-Tray. Any music sheets you know you wont ever play again, stick them in the bin (copy right reasons).

Obviously, if you play music in public, or teach music, keep all the music books and music sheets. You never know when you will be called on to play them. Otherwise get rid, they only gather dust, turn yellow and stink the place out.

When the In-Trays are empty, go throught the note book, and sort all the music books and loose music sheets into priority order of the songs you most likely want to play or practice first. Shove the sorted music books and sorted music sheets back in the In-Trays.

Now every week, you can work through both In-Trays, and using a brand new note pad, write down each song you played, date you played them, and give each song a rating of 1 out of 10 (enjoyed playing rating), put extra comments in of any problem bars, alternative sax keys used in bars etc, any comments that are useful when you pick the song up at a later date, which can include the time taken to learn them (reminds you of how difficult they were to learn). Comments can include what sort of venue they might be useful to play in.

have fun, and declutter your sax life.

[john]

good one, but I need to apply a similar tactic to several other parts of my life!

[Author]

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