Seth Godin’s blogs and podcasts have been a relatively frequent topic on this blog (and they’ll probably continue to be in the future), but his Akimbo podcast episode from October 10, 2018 really stuck with me. Entitled “You’re It”, this episode has the overarching theme of how the internet has […]
horn practice
Yo-Yo Ma is one of the most iconic classical musicians of the last 30-plus years. His recordings of the Bach Cello Suites (made in the early 1980’s, the late 1990’s, and in 2017) have shown an incredible ability to capture the musical essence of Bach, and they also serve as […]
Yo-Yo Ma and Doug Yeo on Changes and Choices
The is an old “rule” that’s commonly used in business, but I think that it has some great application in the music world too. The 80/20 Principle: In Brief The basic idea of the 80/20 Principle (also called the Pareto Principle) is that in most cases, 80% (or so) of […]
Do More in Less Time: 80/20 Your Practice Next Year
I’ve put up a new article in my French Horn Bootcamp series! This time the topic is everyone’s favorite – lip trills! Whether you’ve been playing for a year or a decade, learning the technique(s) involved in a good lip trill is an important technique. Even if you never use them in public, […]
New Bootcamp Article: Lip Trills
Here in Kentucky, it’s time for All-County and All-District auditions, and coming up next month is All-State. One of the things I hear quite a bit from more advanced students are questions about how to plan out your day (or days) when you have an important performance or audition. While […]
Performance Day Preparation Template
For musicians, some anxiety just before and during performances is an all-too-familiar problem. Some musicians feel twinges of excitement, while others can suffer almost-crippling sensations. Getting nerves during a performance seems to be especially common for classical musicians, and while nerves can be distracting in any context, they can be […]
3 Quick Tips to Reduce Nerves in Performance and Auditions
An interesting blog post over on BulletProofMusician.com takes a look at the difference in levels of performance anxiety between traditionally-trained classical musicians and musicians in other genres. The blog article looks at two different studies. One study by British researchers used 244 musicians, of which about half were classical musicians […]
Performance Anxiety: Classical vs. Pop Musicians
Every year the University of Louisville puts on a clinic to help high school players around the state with the All-State etudes. Each instrument has its own instructor (usually the University professor for that instrument), but this week the UofL brass faculty are doing a tour of Japan, so I […]