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Like anything, you’ll have to aim for a balance and not necessarily for “perfect,” because otherwise, yes, you could spend forever on one passage. It varies from person to person, but I think Rob aims for something like 8 over-learning repetitions beyond the point where you successfully add the next note to the chain. And if it takes more than 12-15 repetitions to get to the first successful repetition where the new note fits into the sequence, then it might be better to try a different approach. Meaning, either it’s a problem that instincts alone can’t solve, or you might be aiming for a higher level of excellence/perfection than can be accomplished at that point of the learning process.
Regarding the issue playing notes 1-3, when you record slow-motion video of yourself playing, do you see anything different when it works vs. when it doesn’t? As in, when you play 2-3 successfully, and compare it with what changes when you add 1 to 2-3, can you see anything you’re doing differently? Or, if you were to deliberately recreate the issue that happens in 2-3, what are you doing differently when you get it “wrong” in exactly the same way on purpose?
Regarding the problem-solving, any chance you could figure out why your thumb and ring finger are moving more slowly, or doing the thing they’re supposed to do a fraction too late? Is it that there is tension somewhere that causes this, or is it a matter of initiating the movement earlier, or something regarding your instrument or posture, etc. that is leading to this? Eventually you’ll totally want to have more of an external cue to access the correct movement, and focus more on sound and a general feel of things working smoothly in that moment, but for now, I think it’s actually ok to think internally and in really concrete ways about what might be happening in terms of the mechanics. This may not necessarily reveal what exactly is causing this, but what happens if you do this a few times via visualization, where you imagine how you’d like to sound/feel when playing, and maybe even allow yourself to move a little bit (dynamic visualization), before trying it on the instrument for real. If this ends up helping you to play that interval, it might be interesting to look at video and see what you do differently when it works.
