TonalEnergy Tuner is the best app I’ve seen in a decade. So many features. Just go get it. Then watch these tutorials and reviews. While I researched The Practice of Practice, tuba virtuoso Rex Martin showed me the program he used, Spectre, that did some of these functions. Although that program is, IMO, more powerful, this…
Musical training could improve executive function – Music Education Works
The results of a new study in the USA suggests that musical training can improve a person’s ability to solve problems and think in an abstract way. Source: Musical training could improve executive function – Music Education Works
Yep:
Play more, stress less: http://www.sol-ut.com
Practice Hacks
Learn more at Sol Ut Press get the high-resolution printable PDF
Free Poster for Your Practice Room (corrected)
Below is a link to the free printable poster that sums up how your belief in whether talent is “natural” or a result of effort impacts your practice. A typo in the original has been corrected. (thanks, Bruce). This comes from chapter 6 in The Practice of Practice. (high-rez printable PDF)
Ideas In Cars, Honking (and Tom Waits)
Tom [Waits], for most of his life, he was pretty much the embodiment of the tormented contemporary modern artist, trying to control and manage and dominate these sort of uncontrollable creative impulses that were totally internalized. But then he got older, he got calmer, and one day he was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles, and this is when it…
10 Exercises Every Jazz Musician Should Know
Great stuff, but I’d say these are more exercises than warm-ups (at least speaking as a brass player). Warming up with so much would bust my chops before the gig started. You can buy the sheet music for these here.
You Are Playing Your Scales Wrong (The Map Technique)
I’d only add that learning all 12 (of anything: licks, scales, whatev) is a waste of time, especially if you aren’t a guitar player, because they can so easily shift keys with the same patterns. Hit the scale and/or lick really hard in the key it’s in, maybe transpose it into some nearby keys in the…
