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…
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…
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…
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…
Free Printable Blank Music Staff Paper: All Kinds
More posts coming soon! Hope everyone is having a great start to the school year! Here’s an excellent resource for printing any kind of staff paper: http://www.blanksheetmusic.net/ 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…
Learn to Improvise Like You Leaned to Speak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UQU9MFSmzk&feature=g-vrec
A great video from NY trumpeter Charlie Porter on how to approach learning to improvise. Music is a language and learning to “speak” music, take the same approach you used when you learned to speak your language.
Improving With Improv
To me, improvising is like speaking a language spontaneously, whereas only reading music and re-creating the music others (or yourself) have written is like reading a book or a story out loud. The reading is scripted, whereas the spontaneous use of language flows where it will, especially if it’s in conversation with another. If you’re new to improvising, it’s a simple thing to do.
Pythagorus and the Vietnamese Dan Bau
Practicing on other instruments can be a nice break from always struggling with the same sound-making device day after day, and I find that making sound with a variety of instruments gives me a more well-rounded understanding of music in general. The Dan Bau is a good example. Want to learn more about the best…
A Pentastic Practice Tool
This is the most awesome lesson tool. Truly. With it you can record exactly what your teacher says and demonstrates as you go through your lesson so that if you’re stuck or need a review mid-week, it’s just a click away. But it’s even cooler than that. You can post these notes online and share them with whoever you want, or make them totally private so only you can see or hear them! There is a piano function for which, if you draw a piano, you’ll hear the notes plink away when you touch the piano key. It can translate simple phrases in several languages, too.
From the Top, With Feeling: Expressive Music Practice
Feeling is everything in music. Or very nearly so. No matter what kind of music we listen to, we know it when we hear it. It’s so important that most listeners can perceive the emotional content in just a 1 second slice of sound! What is it that makes a piece of music expressive? It’s the musician herself that does, of course. But how does one go about learning how to do that? How do you convey feeling through sound? It’s the same answer as just about anything having to do with musical skill: you practice! But what does that mean? How do musicians practice the expressive aspects of music? Well, it turns out there is a piece of 2009 research that chronicles how 18 classical musicians do it
RIP Abbey Lincoln
I’m off in Alaska visiting friends and family and re-stocking my freezer with salmon and halibut, hence the lack of posts in the last 3 weeks. Here’s a great video by the incomparable Max Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln who passed away recently. Rest in peace, Abbey… she sings @ 2:40… Want to learn more…
The Practice of Practice 