About Molto Music

Molto Music creates high quality tools to help musicians master their instruments the fast and easy way. The company was founded in 1999 by husband/wife team David Motto and Stephanie Railsback, two professional musicians and music educators in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The company is best known for its best-selling book Musician’s Practice Planner.  This book is used worldwide by private lesson teachers, schools, universities, Suzuki programs, and performers of classical, jazz, and popular music.

We welcome your comments. Let us know if you have suggestions for improving our books or for making available additional titles. Also, tell us how we can improve this website and our service to you, our customers. E-mail us at info@moltomusic.com.

Stephanie Railsback

Stephanie Railsback is a violist and violin/viola teacher with twenty-five years of teaching experience. She was head of the Suzuki program at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago and currently teaches at Patten Academy in Oakland. Throughout her teaching career she has kept an active private teaching studio. Her students have ranged in age from 3 to 63!

Stephanie is a busy classical musician, performing both modern and period baroque orchestral and chamber music. She has performed and/or recorded with the San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque, the Sacramento Symphony, the Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra, the Women’s Philharmonic, and the Oakland East Bay Symphony.

Also active in the world of pop music, Stephanie toured the U.S. with Eric Clapton in 1998.  She has performed with Kenny G, Bruce Hornsby, the Moody Blues, Dianne Reeves, Keiko Matsui, and Ray Charles and once played an outdoor concert for over 100,000 fans on Copacabana Beach with Brazilian superstars Daniela Mercury, Leila Pinheiro, and Nana Caymmi.

David Motto

Electric bassist David Motto was a member of the music faculty at San Francisco State University for 12 years and has had a private teaching studio since 1985.

In addition to co-authoring the Musician’s Practice Planner, he is the author of the critically-acclaimed 3-volume Essential Sightreading Studies for Electric Bass and has written for Bass Player, Musical Merchandise Review, and School Band & Orchestra magazines.

He has appeared on over twenty commercially released recordings and has been a bassist, rehearsal director, and arranger with countless groups in virtually every genre of music.

As an expert on practicing music, he has appeared as a clinician at music conferences and universities throughout the U.S.  He writes both the blog posts and the Practice Tip of the Week newsletter for Molto Music, and he authored the Top Ten Practice Tips of All Time eBook available on this website.

David is listed in Who’s Who in America and is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences—which gives him the privilege of voting for the Grammy Awards.