Tag: practice

Cookie Monster: Life Coach

If you can’t afford a “real” life coach to help you with your practice, I offer you Cookie Monster.

Singing Is Learned, Not a Natural Ability: More Evidence

Glad the issue of learning over “natural talent” is getting more attention, and not just from researchers like Steven Demorest and Peter Pfordresher (et al.), who just published a research paper on the subject. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Chicago Tribune article. <snip> Singing is more of a learned skill than a natural talent, said…

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How Important Is It To Play On a Fine Instrument?

An upright bass player I used to play with told me that his teacher owned a $40,000 bow. A bow!

When sound quality is your top priority (and you have money), no amount seems too high a price. See Neil Pert’s new drum set in the video below for an example of a fine (and expensive!) instrument.

One of the Most Powerful Tools for Your Practice

The amazing Dr. Carol Dweck explains how your belief about intelligence profoundly impacts your motivation to learn, the depth of your learning, and your persistence in the face of failure. In music, Dr. Bret Smith discovered similar findings. Lots more in Chapter 6 of The Practice of Practice (free shipping in the US).

From Rock to Bach: THE Book for Any Musician On Your List

Until The Practice of Practice, there hasn’t been a book on practice written for musicians who aren’t interested in the school musics (band, choir, and orchestra). The good news is that this book is also valuable for those folks, too. It’s useful whether you’re into Bach, Rock, or any other kind of music.

How Does Posture Affect Your Sound?

Posture is vital not only to a good sound, but will also help you avoid injury. Jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen gives a superb lesson about posture, why it matters, and how to do it. Listen and learn from Ingrid in the video below:

How to Manipulate Your Audience and Make Them Love It

Jazz and popular music of today owes a huge debt to Africa where the driving steady rhythm, swing, and accenting beats 2 and 4 come from. Most audiences in the US don’t know this, and don’t feel that kind of beat. Because of this, audiences frequently end up clapping on beats 1 and 3, as they’re doing in the clip below. Harry Connick Jr. knows better, and he also knows how to turn the beat around so he can help the audience clap on 2 and 4 (that happens around the :39 mark in the video below). His drummer is happy about it and gives a double-fist pump right after Connick makes the switch. Notice how much more hip the sound is!

The Fractal Nature of Goals and Music Practice

Setting goals is one of the most powerful things you can do to get better at music or anything else. Some people write them down, some just have a vague idea of what they are, but we all have goals for nearly everything we do. Goals are covered in more detail in The Practice of Practice, but here’s a quick run-down. Goals are like the cool animated GIF of a Sierpinsky fractal above: there are goals within goals within goals. It’s goals all the way down. The usual advice is to break goals down into long-term, mid-term, and short-term goals, but you can and should dive deeper, and consider smaller goals.

Adopt a Drum: Practicing Rhythm

Rhythm is one of the most fundamental musical elements, in my opinion, one of the most important and most powerful. Unless we’re a drummer, our focus on rhythm often is overshadowed by other demands of the instrument or voice: tone production, fingering, intonation, and more. Here are three kinds of rhythmic activity you can add to your practice.

Motivation to Practice: Go With the Flow

There’s a lot to like about the video of pianist Glenn Gould below. I’ve highlighted three things that happen in the video (see clips below).

As the great Robert Krulwich (of Radiolab and NPR) pointed out in a recent post, Gould appears to be deep in a Flow state, practicing Bach’s Partita #2.