The Fastest Way to Learn a Musical Instrument Guaranteed

In your Musician’s Practice Planner, in addition to the weekly practice plan, it’s important for music students to write down their reward and their risk for meeting the practice goals for the week.  This is an excellent way to create motivation and forward momentum in achieving goals for music lessons and performances. Here’s how it [...]

Today is the summer solstice, the first official day of summer.   It’s a good time to put your summer music goals in place. Here’s an easy way to set up your summer music goals: First, make a big list of all the music you’d like to learn this summer and all the new techniques [...]

Music students often set themselves up for feelings of failure when they tackle a new task.  They think the task will be easy, and, when they find out that it’s actually quite challenging, they question their own abilities rather than rationally looking at the difficulty of the task itself. Here’s a perfect example: transcribing.  For anyone unfamiliar [...]

Every day, musicians face a fork in the road: Do I practice or do I skip it today?  Each day, as you face this question, you are determining your future. One path leads to the ability to face challenges and meet them head on.  It is the path of success–whether in music or in any other [...]

Most musicians have goals they want to achieve.  From being able to play well to landing a great gig, these goals keep many musicians practicing, rehearsing, and performing. One interesting aspect of achieving goals is that the path to success is often full of failures.  If you expect the road to be bumpy, it’s easier to [...]

Are master musicians born with their skills intact?  Some musicians say it was inevitable that Mozart or Stevie Wonder would rise to the top of their professions.  Others believe musical skills are only acquired through a singular dedication to daily work. Being born with a certain genetic predisposition toward something (Nature) does seem necessary for [...]

I’m a big advocate of efficient practicing for all musicians.  If you want to learn a musical instrument, it’s best to practice slowly, work on muscle memory, break your music into small sections, and stay intensely focused while you’re practicing. Unfortunately, quality of practice alone won’t make you a master musician.  You need quantity too.  When all [...]

Many musicians give themselves rewards for meeting and achieving goals.  Getting a reward is a wonderful incentive for achieving your goals. What do you do if you DON’T meet your goal?  Is there any consequence?  Without a consequence, many musicians don’t have enough of an incentive to truly do what it takes to achieve their [...]

Today is the perfect day to set your musical goals for 2010.  It’s important to think about everything you can get accomplished over the next year as you improve your playing, technique, and musicianship. It’s also important that you make real goals, not just New Year’s resolutions.  As we all know, resolutions (like rules) are [...]

  In a recent post, I wrote about the SMART Goals system and how musicians can use this system to achieve their musical goals. One of the five points in this system is to have Attainable Goals.  When your goals are clearly achievable, forward momentum rushes into your life, pushing you to achieve more and more.  [...]