Tag: music practice

Where You Practice Matters: Ogle Hans Zimmer’s Lair

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. Hans Zimmer is an award-winning film composer and music producer. You can seem more pics…

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Learning to Practice

I’d like to share this old video with you that documents Gypsy guitarist (and fiddler! I hand no idea) Dorado Schmitt teaching his son, Samson, who looks to be around 10 in this video. They’re playing one of Django’s solos over his tune Minor Swing, no small feat. It’s a great example of teaching and learning for many reasons.

Few musicians I’ve talked to have ever been taught how to practice. We’ve all been pretty much on our own. When teachers do influence us, it’s by making reasonable and very specific demands that make it clear exactly what is to be practiced if not exactly how to go about it.

Mr. Bean’s Imaginary Drum Set, or, Mental Practice

Here’s Rowan Atkinson with a pretty funny skit. It’s like he’s mentally practicing drums, and we get to hear what he’s hearing inside his head to hilarious results. Enjoy, and use this to remind you to inject mental practice into your own practice routine.

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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Drone Your Way to Excellence

Several months ago I spoke with the fantastic jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen about practice. She mentioned that one thing she liked to do was practice with drones, using an Indian instrument called a tanpura (also tampura). She said that playing against a drone was a great way to train your ear/horn coordination. Practicing with a drone allows you to really feel how it sounds to play every note against the tonic, throughout your range. It’s meditative.

Ingrid Jensen
When I hear a great practice idea, I try it, and I’ve been using this one for a while and absolutely love it. I almost immediately noticed a greater ability to match pitch (my fellow musicians mentioned it in rehearsal), and a deeper awareness of sound in general. Part of the reason for this is that playing with the drone makes me aware of where the horn is naturally out of tune, whether because of the way a horn is made or because of the quirks of the harmonic series.

OK-GO for the Win

What do you get when you mashup Blue Man Group with Inspector Gadget and Nascar? Probably something like OK-GO’s new romp of a video for their tune Needing/Getting.
What I love about this video is taking the idea of the size of an instrument to an absurd and wonderful extreme. It’s also a great way to visualize the form of a piece of music, since you can actually see instead of “just” hear where the form repeats. And the question I have is: how the heck do you practice that instrument?

Resolutions, Goals, and Music Practice

In astronomy, we’re searching for other planets that might be earth-like in what’s known as the Goldilocks Zone: not too hot, not too cold, but just right. There may even be a galactic Goldilocks zone. As far as short-term, immediate goals go, the Goldilocks Zone is a goal that will make you work, make you think, make you strive a bit beyond your current abilities, but which you can achieve in the time you’ve got. If you’ve got 15 minutes, pick one easily-achieved short-term goal and pursue it. All this abstraction isn’t all that helpful, so let me give you a real-world example.

The 300 Pound Gorilla in the Practice Room: Inattention

Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing – I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail. ~Frank Sinatra  Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the…

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Ethan Bensdorf: NY Philharmonic Trumpeter on Practice

It might go without saying that Ethan Bensdorf is a fantastic classical trumpet player, but I’ll say it anyway: Ethan is a fantastic trumpet player. We talked over the phone and he told me the story of how he landed the gig with the New York Philharmonic, playing with principal trumpet legend Mr. Phillip Smith, including a week spent getting his chops together on the rotary valve trumpet before heading back to New York for another round of final auditions. Ethan also shared his thoughts about practice and had a lot of great things to say. Hope you enjoy.

Colin Oldberg: Principal Trumpet, Hong Kong Phil.

Colin Oldberg is an excellent player who has played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and earned a spot on the first YouTube Orchestra and has played Carnegie hall twice. He’s also part of a fantastic brass quintet, Axiom Brass. There’s a link to the full length mp3 of the excerpt from the beginning of the show. Colin talks about practice.

Chad McCullough: Jazz Trumpeter on Practice

Check out the interview with Seattle-based jazz and classical trumpeterChad McCullough. Last year at the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival, Chad and I met and after a quick chat he agreed to talk with me about practice. Not only is Chad an excellent trumpet player, he’s also got piano chops, and this influences his trumpet playing. Listen to the podcast to learn his thoughts about trumpet playing and practice. McCullough just returned to Seattle after a tour of Belgium and release party for his latest album, Imaginary Sketches (out 2-15-11), from Origin Records in the states, and De Werf in Europe. He’s a busy guy and has some other great stuff out, too, including an excellent album from The Kora Band, and he was generous enough to let me use a tune from their latest album to open the podcast. The clip that opens the interview is Over-caffeinated and Under-fed. The Kora is a West-African stringed instrument that has a great sound. It sounds a bit like a Celtic harp, but with a different attitude and more rhythm. Oh, and a giant gourd. Here’s a video clip of Kora master Toumani Diabaté in action. Chad has interesting things to share about practice and how he thinks about music that I found both interesting and useful. Hope you enjoy the interview. Have fun and good luck with your practice.