Author: Jonathan Harnum

Hi, I'm Jon Harnum, author, publisher, teacher, musician, and scholar. If you'd like to learn more about music or how to publish books, come check out my web sites and online courses. Lots of freebies so you can try before you buy. See you online!

Your Brain on Music (fMRI)

Music doesn’t make you smarter, at least not generally smarter, but playing music does make you musically smarter. In fact, there have been many recent studies showing profound differences in the brains of people who have studied music. One is that the corpus callosum, the “conduit” between the left and right sides of the brain, is…

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Landfillharmonic: Instruments from Trash

Those with love and passion and curiosity will see everything as useful in some way. Some call it the “enchantment with everyday objects.”
The next time you think you have to have an expensive instrument to make music, remember this video. I got all choked up. Brilliant!

Understand Music: Sweet Animated Vid

Here‘s a beautifully animated vid that was shared by Xeni on BoingBoing: a creative studio based in Mainz, Germany, produced this beautiful animated video exploring what music is: Music is a good thing. But what we did not know until we started with the research for this piece: Music is also a pretty damn complex thing. This…

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7 Great Books for Musicians

Here are 8 great books for musicians on your gift list. Want to learn more about the best ways to practice? Get an e-mail with a discount code when The Practice of Practice is published (June, 2014). To learn more about the book, check out a sample from The Practice of Practice. ___________________________________________________ How Music Works, by…

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The Importance of Play in Practice

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.  –Plato _________________________________________ One of the most productive practice times in my life happened on a surf beach in Baja, Los Cerritos, while on a 2-year road trip with my two best friends (one of whom I had…

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Take Your Listening Skills to the Next Level

Listening skills for a musician are crucial. A lot of training to be found online involves simple interval identification and chord-type identification. This is great, but the musical contexts in which these musical events happen are also (perhaps even more) important. Want to learn more about the best ways to practice? Get an e-mail with a…

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Basic Practice Skills

It can be hard to know where to start with your practice, so here are a few quick, easy tips to keep it simple. Want to learn more about the best ways to practice? Get an e-mail with a discount code when The Practice of Practice is published (June, 2014). To learn more about the…

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Practice for Beginners

Beginning any instrument can be a challenge and a joy. At times, it can also get frustrating. Here are a couple quick tips to get you started on the right foot: short bursts of practice (5-10 minutes) throughout the day are better than 1 long session short practice every day is much, much, much better…

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Learn While You Sleep

There are some really interesting research projects coming out of the neuroscience lab at Northwestern University. A couple years ago, I wrote a blog post about a
study that shows we continue to learn after a study session if the stimulus continues while we’re doing something else. Pretty cool, right? But maybe you prefer to catch up on your sleep and continue learning.