The Practice of Practice

Andrew Hitz is a former Boston Brass tuba-ist. His blog is worth subscribing to. This quote is from Doug Yeo, the former bass trombonist for the Boston Symphony. Thing is, it works for ANY music and any musician. Great advice. If you practice, you get better. If you get better, you play with better players….

Learn by ear. Play what you know. Have fun. Exhibit #748:

Some of the best practice I’ve ever had, and some of the most fun, has come from using loops. Here are two example: Joe St. George of Owleater kills it on percussion:   Bonus points for Leah’s keyboard percussion and the Paul McCartney-style bass. The BOSS loop station (one pedal, two pedals, three pedals) is…

In The Practice of Practice, Erin McKeown talks about how she used songwriting as her practice. Not only did songwriting with ap 4-track recorder give her some serious feedback, resulting in serious chops, her process resulted in some excellent albums, too. There are lots of resources online to learn songwriting. Here’s one:

There are so many careers in music, many more than “just” performing, and they all take practice of one kind or another. Here’s one music career that sounds fascinating.

Read this article.

Music and the freedom to create it is a basic human right. https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/womens-orchestra-in-kabul