• Start a practice journal: Track your daily practice routine and write what needs improving every single day. Every week, read back through the previous week’s entries and see what needs improving and what your progress has been. This will help you to realize some recurring problems you go through with performance everyday and make you more self-aware. It will also make you realize how much you’re progressing (which is usually more than you think!)

• Download an Ear Training App such as Perfect Ear. This app has a range of theory, rhythm and ear training exercises. Try to do 10 minutes of ear training exercises a day to continue training your ears even while you may not be having music lessons.

• Listen to different musicians play the pieces that you are practising on Youtube and try to write down the differences in interpretation/techniques used for each one. Write what you liked/disliked for each one.

• Try to memorize all the key signatures, if you haven’t already done so: you can use the cycle of fifths for this, and try to memorize 5 new key signatures a week, then once you finish one set such as Major (sharps), review all of them to see if you still remember all of them, then move on.

• Try to learn a simple pop song you like every week: find a modern/pop/rock etc song that you like and try to break it down. Try to figure out the chords by ear, and then figure out the melody on top. Then combine them together (if you can on your instrument). You can also record yourself playing the chords/root notes and then play the melody over it.

• Practice improvising over simple chord progressions such as I-V-vi-IV or I-IV-V-I. I suggest downloading the app iReal Pro for this. It’s 15 euros but well worth the backing tracks on there and very helpful for any instrument, especially instruments which usually play the solo (such as violin, saxophone, singers, etc) NB. This exercise can also be combined with the exercise above.

• Try to listen to as much new music as you can during your time at home, Spotify is especially great for this since it finds music that you may like based on what you already listen to. Keep an open mind and get used to the unusual just a bit more!

The video shows an example of a practice journal.