If you’re practicing a melodic instrument, the circle of fifths (also called the cycle of fifths or circle/cycle of fourths) is a fantastic tool to help you navigate most musical waters. It’s a tool that helps to explain how music moves harmonically, and applies to almost all forms of tonal music. When you practice your scales or chord progressions, this guide can help you practice them in the way that you’ll find them in actual performed music. If you practice scales in this order, you’ll be doing double duty: not only will you be getting the scales/chords under your fingers, but you’ll be practicing the order in which you’ll find them and you’ll be getting the sound of how these move from one to the next into your consciousness.
Let Your Dim Light Shine
It’s hard to maintain a belief that you can get a lot of joy out of doing something at less-than-professional levels when you’re surrounded by a culture that tells you otherwise, but I would like to say that not only is it possible, but it’s the norm. If all musicians in the world took a survey on this issue, we’d find that there are many more happy amateur musicians out there than there are happy professionals. We should all let our lights shine and celebrate not the intensity of the light, but that it shines at all.
Practicing Tempo
I got bored with the old way – it came too easy. I worked until I could play chord changes at any tempo in any key, and then said ‘What else is there?’ Now I’m finding out. — Don Ellis, trumpeter, drummer, composer The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything…
Software Tools (and Toys) Part II
Some of these can make your musical life easier, some can help make it more fun, and some will even help you with practice. Whenever possible, I try to list the free, open-source stuff because that is the model that makes the most sense to me. Here you go. Enjoy!
Your Plastic Brain
A recent study looked at the growth of white matter in the brains of young adults learning to juggle. Yes, jugglers. After 6 weeks of training, and around 30 minutes of daily practice, their brains were significantly different from non-jugglers.
Software Practice Aids
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. —Robert X. Cringely The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim. —Edsgar W. Dijkstra ——–…
Book Review: “Effortless Mastery” by Kenny Werner
Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen,…
Deaf Musicians?
It amazes me what some people have gone through in order to play music, and it makes me realize (once again) that the passion and drive to have music in one’s life is more powerful than more paltry things like knowledge of how to practice. One researcher whose name slips me at the moment, calls…
A Key to Practicing Tunes in All Key Signatures
If you want to really learn a tune, you should learn it in every key. Start by learning it in all the regular keys, like Bb, C, D, etc. Basically, the regular keys are those with the least amount of accidentals. On a side note, learning tunes in all keys also includes, indirectly, learning scales…
Wind = Music
Most of us in the United States have resources beyond the wildest dreams of billions of other people less fortunate in the world. Our technology and relative wealth allow us the time to study music or other arts, to surf the Internet, to speak with friends and loved ones at the touch of a button….
Thoughts on Art and Hip Hop
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. –Oscar Wilde. I am for an art that takes its forms from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself. –Claes…
Forget Perfection (or, No Fear)
Flight is our usual response when we come up against these fears in practice. We skim over all we have to do because there is so much. We fly through routines and exercises and try to cram as much as possible in our half hour of practice (or whatever amount) because we’re running to keep up with our desire to get better as fast as possible. This is NOT the way to go about practice because what you do learn will be of a surface nature, will not stick with you, and will probably be riddled with mistakes.
A more proper response to this fear is to recognize it, and not fall back on the flight response, but tap into the fight response. Fight it by …
The Practice of Practice 