Coming back to music again after a long absence can be hard. Your coordination isn’t there anymore. You have trouble with endurance. You lips hurt after 10 minutes of repeated practice. It is incredibly frustrating that the abilities you used to have just don’t work like they anymore. I’ve been through all of this recently. What I’ve learned is that you can’t force your way back to where you were. You have to start by relearning the basics, being patient with the slow crawl of progress, and making the absolute most of whatever time you have.
Slow Things Down to Start
Take it Slow. Progress absolutely will come but you need to pace yourself and properly practice to relearn what you’ve missed over the years. My playing history has been spotty since 2006. It’s really only since December or 2025 that I’ve seriously pushed to get back into playing the Saxophone. Over the years I would play a few days in a row then get busy and set the horn aside for a bit. Then time would get away from me and then it was months before I would touch it again. Sometimes I would get frustrated that I wasn’t doing better. Afterall I was better several years before why can’t I just do it now? You can’t expect to pick a skill up again after a long break and just start where you left off. Skills don’t work that way.
It’s not that my brain forgot stuff over the long breaks. It’s that my brain and my fingers, my embouchure, and everything else that goes with playing were no longer in sync with each other. My coordination was off. The basics were still functioning but all in pieces and not as coordinated as I needed them to be.
My embouchure needed time to get stronger. It needed practice to work on better tone and intonation. It needed time on the horn to attune.
My fingers could fly on the saxophone but didn’t coordinate with my head which led to blips in the fingers. My scales were always a strong point for me but now they were bloopy and irregular.
I slowed things down. I broke them down into smaller bits and pieces. I practice long tones and smoothed out scales. Everything was slowed down so I could properly integrate and refine my skills. If you build the right foundation to start from learning everything else later comes exponentially faster. I’m still in the process of improvement and in truth I probably always will be but I’ve learned to appreciate the moments of skill building in my practice; the “ah ha’s” when something clicks.
In other words: Be patient, do things the right way with discipline and dedication and you will get where you want to go.
Do What You Can with the Time You Have
Do what you can do. I know it sounds cliche but you can only do so much with the time you have. Maybe you only have 20 minutes, or maybe not even that, but no matter the length of time you have, try to fit some practice in.
It’s so tempting to think I only have 5 minutes I probably shouldn’t even bother. What can I do in 5 minutes? Fit in some long tones, play a short passage in a piece you are working on, or practice a few scales. Repeated and regular practice sessions are extremely important.
Suppose you only have a few minutes each day on the weekend you have more time. You are far better off continuing to fit in short pratice sessions each day than trying to cram all of your practice on one or two days over the weekend. If you only practice when you have a big block of time you spend a lot of time playing catch up. Your abilities atrophy when you take too long of a break. So don’t let them! Give it 5 or 10 minutes even when you think it isn’t worth it…because it is!
My advice is to tell yourself at the end of each practice session that you got somewhere, that even if it was just a little bit, you made progress. Slow progress builds. Think of drops of water on a mountainside; they accumulate and build into a stream, then a river, and finally the ocean. Your progress is exactly like this. The tiny steps you take each day to find your way back to music will absolutely grow and build into something beautiful.