Thought for the moment:

I've taught lots of different things in my life, from precision rifle and small unit tactics to algorithm design to cooking. They don't have much in common, but there's one useful way to think about learning that applies to just about everything.

All learning happens through feedback loops. You do something, get a result, examine the result, then revise the way you do the next repetition. So your goal in learning something is to create a good feedback loop pattern that actually helps you learn.

Break it up into three stages:

1. Education.
2. Practice.
3. Stress Training.

EDUCATION is where you don't do anything, you learn information by listening or reading. The goal here is to gain knowledge. What is the mirage supposed to look like under a five mile an hour left wind? How do you clear a center-fed room? How do you externalize the execution stack? How do you pass someone's guard?

Education teaches you what a practice rep is supposed to look like. Without it, all the practice in the world is a waste of time, because you don't know what a mistake looks like, or how to fix one once you've spotted it.

PRACTICE is the process of running a feedback loop... execute a rep, look at the results, change how you execute the next rep. Are your shots grouping tightly? Are they stringing high-left to low-right? Are you pitching flyers two or three minutes low on every third shot?

Practice turns knowledge into capability. Without it, you might have expert knowledge on something, but you won't be able to actually do it.

The most important thing about feedback loops is that they be tight. Check your result the instant you do something, not five minutes later, not five seconds later, but right away. The sooner feedback reaches you, the better it corrects the fine details of what you did. Do NOT impose pressure on your practice reps... the goal is not to do things hard, fast, or strong, but to achieve the perfect rep.

Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect. Take your time and don't be sloppy.

STRESS TRAINING is where you impose the conditions that you will need to perform under. Shoot against the clock, shoot on the move, shoot in high winds. Lift a heavy weight. Perform in front of an audience. Do your handsprings without a spotter.

Your goal is to execute the perfect process that you nailed down in practice without being thrown off by the stressor, whether it's time pressure, ranked competition, someone shooting marker rounds back at you, or whatever.

Without it, you may be able to perform perfectly when in classroom, but your skill will fall apart when it matters.

Stress training may not be relevant to certain skills, because they aren't supposed to be performed under pressure. You wouldn't write a story or a computer program with a ten-minute time limit and a yelling crowd, but you better be able to shoot when someone's shooting back, or there's no point.

All three of these steps are interleaved, of course, but always get some education before practice, or your practice will be pointless, always get a lot of practice before stress testing, or your execution will fall apart.

And always know which one of these things you are doing at any given moment.

@Desaint

Okay, this is in a little more of a style that I can comment on.

Your musical performance skills are somewhat closer to "professional", than "my cousin messes around with a keyboard in the garage". In fact, until you start singing, it sounds way more studio than garage.

Lyrics.... well, you're under 30 and trying to write poetry, so it needs work. Keep at it. But it's not totally awful. You have some potential. Writing poetry is harder than writing prose, because you have to evoke the same emotional response with less words. Write and throw away, write and throw away, and write and throw away again. The work you throw away isn't wasted. It trains you.

The weakest part is your singing. Your voice isn't bad, just clearly untrained, and the moment you open your mouth, the impression goes from "studio band" back to "garage band".

Get some voice lessons from someone classically trained, ideally operatically trained. Or pair up with specialized singer.

Your compositional skills are your strongest point, right now. The opening is especially catchy.

Overall verdict.... you're not ready to set the world on fire yet. But neither are you one of those guys that makes us say "he'll never make it".

There's something here worth developing. Right now, you should be making music to hone your skills, not making music that you expect to break out with. But this IS a step on the path.