There is a price to pay for everything. Success too has its own price – Hard work

Prepare by taking gradually increasing steps. Swim half a lap first, and then move on to a full lap. Your skills will progress each time and you will soon beat your own lap records every time you enter swimming pool.

It might take days, weeks or years to prepare for “race”, depending on what your goals are. The main thing is to enter race feeling confident in your own success and having all skills that would allow you to win.

Taking steps one at a time and keeping your plan realistic gives you two important benefits. The order and precision of a plan brings confidence. You don’t feel like you are reengaging each new issue on a day-to-day basis. Organizing your strategy reduces chances of making wrong moves or taking less efficient decisions.

Secondly, having a sound plan has many psychological benefits and your subconscious mind worries less. This gives you more energy to concentrate on what’s important. You are creating a pattern in your awareness that accepts success and integrates it in your plan.

When both you conscious and your subconscious mind believe in your chances of reaching a goal you benefit from a power of concentration and focus that eliminate outside interference and let you follow shortest path to success.

Even though chance may still play an important role in your quest to reach your ideal, having a realistic plan lets you change “unlikely” into “possible”.

Wish you success.

2. When you are taking a solo and not "comping" (accompanying) for another soloist you should play your chord voicings in your left hand, so that right hand can be free to improvise, do fills, double left hand, add extensions, etc.

3. The range of your voicings is also very important. A good rule of thumb to remember when voicing your chords, is to always try to voice your chords around middle C. Keeping your voicings around middle C will sound full and clear. Limits of approximately an octave above or below will assure best results by preventing voicing from assuming a quality of thinness or muddiness.