Tag: horn teaching

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Do More in Less Time: 80/20 Your Practice Next Year

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 results come from 20% (or…
2018 Music Notation Software Options

Since I’ve started this website, I’ve been slowly (very slowly) trying to write down exercises and other materials for my students and other horn players to use. While I was doing this I quickly realized that trying to do it by hand wasn’t going to work – my handwriting is not great, and so writing…
Performance Day Preparation Template

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 you should (hopefully) be ready…
3 Quick Tips to Reduce Nerves in Performance and Auditions

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 especially destructive during auditions. Rob…
Performance Anxiety: Classical vs. Pop Musicians

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 and the other half a…
Practice Roadblocks? 2 Quick Fixes to Try First!

This time of year, most students (or at least most of my students) are beginning to work more diligently on their All-State music. While July and August are taken up with marching band camps and some intense after-school rehearsals, by the end of September most schools are doing at least some concert band work, and…
3 Famous Tuba Players Talk Audition Preparation

A doctoral dissertation by tubist Golden Lund from the University of Nebraska takes a look at one of the biggest challenges facing any perspective orchestral player – audition preparation. In his document, he examines how different (successful) teachers prepare their students for auditions – looking for similarities and differences that may account for their success…
Be Your Own Motor

It’s been about a month since my last blog post mentioning Seth Godin, so it’s about time to bring him up again. This blog post from August 1 of this year sums up one of the biggest casualties from our increasingly reactive environment: self-motivation. Many things we do now put us squarely in the passenger…
Another [Great] Julie Landsman Interview!

It looks like Julie Landsman is making the rounds to all sorts of different musical blogs, and her insights continue to be both interesting and energizing! A few weeks ago I posted about several different interviews that Julie Landsman has done – two different Horn Hangouts with Sarah Willis, an interview at BrassChicks.com, and her…
Book Review: The War of Art by Steve Pressfield

Since I’ve become a bit of a productivity nut, one new thing I’m going to try out over the next few months is adding some reviews of some of the best books that I read that I find insightful, inspiring, or just plain useful. I’m going to start this off with Steven Pressfield’s . Overview…