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Hi, thank you very much! It's very interesting...

I practiced the bad way new peices for years when I started to play the violin. It worked sure... I played 5 hours a day in high school. But so much of this time was somehow wasted.

Now with limited practice time and a bit more experience, I learned by myself how to practice a new peice more efficiently and it's very similar to your principles!

I am a big fan of the metronome to fix/discipline stuburn fingers in the tricky part and I take the tempo up gradually. I am also a big fan of slow practice to avoid automatic finger starts and work on intonation. (these are perhaps my favorite exercices in what you would probably call "make yourself exercices"...) I am also a big fan of listening to recordings with score and pencil in hand. I find these exercises are easy, fun and no brainer when I'm already exhausted by a school day or whatever. Yet, they work well so... :)

One must think a lot... not just play. It is so hard to understand this when we start.

Anyway, thanks for putting words and concepts on a very valuable method! Much better than parrot repeating I agree!!!
Anne-Marie

Thanks, Anne-Marie! :)