Q: Daily Practice, Depth or Breadth?

I have about one hour to practice everyday. I'm wondering if it's more effective to focus on only one or two things in each session, or it's better to spread it across more areas, say, spending 10-15mins each.

My current short term goal is to to able to play (pop rock songs) with better accuracy/consistency in the 140-160bpm region because I'm not happy with my timekeeping when I listened back to my recorded practices and many songs I need to play at church fall in this category. But then I have a long list of medium term goals... At the moment, I have the tendency to drill on one single thing. (e.g. try to play a groove accurately at this tempo rnage.) I'm not sure it's a good thing...

Any thought is welcome.

I say short exercises repeated every day. Spending ages on one thing is inefficient IMO. My drum teacher always got me doing regular short sessions, 10-15 min. In this time you will focus a lot more. After a while you just switch of with most things. If you really want to to focus on one thing, you need variations on a theme. With your example, try 10 min 160bpm, 10min 80bpm with the same exercise at the same tempo (so in other words, just have the metronome every half note), then try 40bpm. If you're feeling brave try 20, then 10, 5 etc. Once your going this slow, you have to stay focused and you will start to develop internal timing rather than falling on the crutch of the metronome.

My 2 cents...

I would have to agree... And it's a lot less frustrating than working on one technique not to mention losing attention to the detail and technique of one skill over an hour.

I agree with shorter sessions. I try to remember to take short breaks. Just a few minutes standing up, maybe getting some water, then continuing works wonders for me. Unfortunately, sometimes I just plow and then wonder "why" I'm so frustrated. Setting a certain amount of time for each exercise is efficient for workouts and building stamina, but for learning new things, I think of what Jojo says on his SWMD dvd - it's more important to focus on results, not time spent. Ten minutes or two days, it doesn't matter, just go for the results. In order to do that, I set very short term goals.

Good luck with it.