practice

if i had to give a message to a student, a short message:

the kind of practice (that i care about) is not really so much memorization.

what you want to do is create a state in which your brain will build new structures that weren't there before. don't immediately panic when you see the black guy playing 40 notes a second - that's a structure that he took some time to build. don't expect to have that structure in your brain from the start.

and note that the brain is sort of building new organs, so it's going to take time. it's like a fetus growing - takes time. no way to force it really.