Tag: practice

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Upgrade to Digital Music Reading: New Stand!

So I’ve really been enjoying using my tablet as a digital music reader. It’s certainly been an adjustment (I’ve written about some of those here), but overall I really have been enjoying it. One recent upgrade that I made was for a relatively small and compact stand/tablet holder setup to fit in the car and…
How Important Is Intonation? It Depends.

Intonation. Almost everyone who has played any instrument with flexible intonation has been told that they are out-of-tune. In some of the middle and high school bands I work with, the director will go up and down the rows with a tuner, telling students that they are flat or sharp, or simply telling students to…
The gate is open. Don’t wait to be chosen

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 removed the big gatekeepers from…
Yo-Yo Ma and Doug Yeo on Changes and Choices

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 a great example of different…
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…
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…
A Single Habit Now Can Save You Lots of Stress Later

Although it seems like the school year just started a few weeks ago, this a pretty crucial time for the rest of your semester (and year). To me, it seems, that these next few weeks determine how the rest of your school year will go. For students here in Kentucky and Indiana, this is the…
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…