“If a musician wants to become a fine artist, he must first become a finer person”
Have you ever been practicing and rehearsing something perfectly at home but then blown it during a performance? Is your practice room playing always stronger than in front of your teacher?
This happens to every performer. The good news is- there are solutions!
Read MoreFranz Liszt was the greatest sight reader who ever lived.
So what? I’m not Liszt.
Yes, but while Liszt was one of a kind, he wasn’t born a great sight reader. He practiced, and that’s something you can do!
Read MoreSight reading seems to be one of those challenges that either a beginning musician loves or has recurring nightmares about. For those of us in the latter category, we’ve consulted with music educators who specialize in the important skill of sight reading music to make it less scary and (maybe even) a little enjoyable!
Read MoreMost of us focus so much on battling this uncomfortable feeling that we forget why we are performing in the first place. We hear ‘performance anxiety’ and shy away from it. We try to find remedies to suppress this uncomfortable feeling in hopes that we can perform better. While this does make logical sense, I’d like to suggest a different approach to dealing with performance anxiety.
Don't fight it, use it to your advantage.
Focus on the long game. Stop worrying about whether you can learn a piece by next week. Who cares if someone gets it faster than you. Mastery is a lifelong commitment. It will take how long it takes. All we need to do is to hold onto the vision of where we want to end up, and take one step at a time.
Read MoreRecently, however, I’ve come to understand a key distinction that would help me drastically improve the effectiveness of my slow practice, and that is: to practice slowly with the anticipation of playing faster later.
Read MoreYou must eliminate the need to rely on external resources to make yourself practice – and to eliminate the need, you must create discipline.
Motivation doesn’t create results, discipline does.
Read MoreHe revealed that one of the keys to his success (and building confidence as well) is super slow practice. A process of practicing in slow motion – while being fully mindful, highly engaged, and thinking deeply in real-time about what he is doing.
Incidentally, this is not a painful torturous process, but often an engrossing and gratifying one. A way in which to open up the door to many satisfying micro-discoveries that could ultimately be the key to getting a phrase to sound just so, and communicating exactly what it is that you intend.
Read MoreDeliberate practice is often slow, and involves repetition of small and very specific sections of your repertoire instead of just playing through (e.g. working on just the opening note of your solo to make sure that it “speaks” exactly the way you want, instead of playing the entire opening phrase).
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