The Big Picture
But while practicing, don’t get so focused on the physical aspects of playing that you forget about your mind and heart. Baldwin suggests that you spend some practice time analyzing the music’s chord structure, writing in enharmonic equivalents, analyzing bow placement and distributions, memorizing, even playing a passage backward to keep your brain working.

And in terms of your emotions and those in the music, vary the mood of a section, vary the dynamics, vary your practice environment, vary the time of day you practice, do mock performances for a tape recorder, and do real performances for anybody nearby, even your dog.

At all times, keep your mind in motion, right from the beginning of your practice session. Baldwin is especially fond of a line from Robert Gerle’s The Art of Practising the Violin: “Think what you need to accomplish specifically during the day’s practice: three minutes spent thinking about your practicing before you start are worth three hours spent in aimless repetition, during which you only learn the bad better.”