Tag: practice
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App Review: TonalEnergy
While it’s been awhile since I’ve done a tuner/metronome app review, I’ve been wanting to do a write-up of TonalEnergy for a while. It is an incredibly popular app for all levels of musicians, and it may be most commonly known as the app that has a smiley face when you play a note in…
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Make Practice More Enjoyable in One Simple Step
If you’re like most music students, the activity of practice doesn’t thrill you. While it’s great fun to get better on your instrument and be able to perform more challenging repertoire at a higher level, the actual day-in-and-day-out practice regime isn’t exactly exciting or glamorous. One Solution From The World Of Fitness A relatively recent…
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Fix Your Focus, Improve Your Playing
Focus, especially when playing a piece with many challenging sections, can often make the difference between a successful performance and a not-quite-successful performance. However according to a recent study on golf, where you should focus matters just as much as if you focus. The Golf Study According to this blog post on the Bulletproof Musician, a study…
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New Metronome Practice Idea: No Instrument Necessary!
“Have you practiced this with a metronome?” Just about every music student has heard this from their teacher at least once. There’s a very good reason for this – being able to maintain a steady tempo is very important. If you can’t stay in time, you won’t play well with others! Protip: If your teacher…
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Quick Feedback From Teachers May Slow Progress
As a horn teacher, I often say to my students that my ultimate goal is to put myself out of a job. That is, I want them to have a strong knowledge of their own strengths and weaknesses so they are able to practice and improve without my constant nagging…err..feedback. My Method… One of my favorite ways to try…
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VerMeulen Video: Six Quick Fixes to Horn Playing
This year the International Horn Society (yes, that’s a real thing!) is holding their International Horn Symposium at Ithica College in Ithica, New York from June 13-18. Horn workshops happen around the world. There are at least four regional workshops that happen every year in the US: the Northeast, Southest, Mid-South and Mid-North horn workshops…
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Increasing Productivity in Practice
For most students, practice recommendations are often given in minutes, since that is by far the easiest way to quantify practice (especially if you are teaching a large ensemble!), but one thing that is often overlooked by beginning and intermediate students is their practice productivity – making the minutes count, instead of counting the minutes!…
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App Review: Tunable
The second app in my series of musical app reviews is Tunable, by Affinity Blue. This is a much more well-rounded app than ClearTune, featuring a tuner, metronome, and a recorder. Tunable is available on both , , and even the (for Amazon Fire tablets) for $2.99. Like before, my screenshots and my thoughts come…
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App Review: ClearTune
Tuners are an incredibly important tool for all musicians, and it’s important that students have quick and easy access to a good tuner. Since there are so many tuner and metronome apps on the market (and I’m sick of students saying “I don’t know which one to get!”) I’m going to start reviewing them, to help…