The Fastest Way to Learn a Musical Instrument Guaranteed

Performing music has its own rewards.  It’s fun to play, especially when you’re performing with musicians you really like.  It feels good to communicate something of value to your audience.  It’s a thrill to be in front of a crowd of people who are there to see you play.  And, it’s wonderful to have the [...]

After writing about stage presence and music lessons in a post earlier this week, I started thinking about how clothing affects audiences’ reactions to musicians.
Musicians must be comfortable on stage, but they also must look the part. Audiences expect a symphony orchestra to be dressed formally, a country act to have a few musicians wearing [...]

Performing music involves much more than just playing well.  There are certain expectations for how musicians look and behave when they’re on stage.  But, where do musicians learn these skills?
Recently, I was looking over the description of a program for music students to earn a certificate for playing in front of an examiner.  These types of events are common [...]

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the importance of practicing distinct sections of music to aid learning and memorization. 
However, one element of music composition works against us as we prepare and learn music: repeated sections.  Most pieces contain musical material that keeps coming back throughout.  So, if we break up the music based on the sections as [...]

Like me, you’ve probably had a performance where the beginning of your piece sounded great, but the middle was just okay.  Most musicians have experienced this situation, and it can be a bit unsettling while you’re on stage.
There are many reasons this situation occurs, including always practicing from the beginning of a piece, not having [...]

Performing should be the goal for all musicians.  Though practicing and learning new music can be rewarding, there is little point in putting in all that hard work if you’re not going to play with other musicians–and hopefully in front of an audience.
 There is an easy-to-use 3-step process that will get you ready for any performance.  [...]

One area that’s often skipped in the time-consuming process of preparing music is the performance itself–that is, exactly what should happen on stage.
Beyond being able to play all the music you intend to perform, you’ve got to be ready to put yourself in front of an audience.
It’s time to think about your stage presence.
When you’re [...]

When many musicians practice, they go about it the same way they listen to music.  That is, they start working on a song at the beginning and run through the music until they get to the end.
Then, the entire process starts over.  The musician goes back to the beginning and plays through to the end, [...]

In a recent post, I mentioned some difficult performance situations that had a devastating effect on musicians.
Let’s discuss what you can do in the practice room to prepare yourself for these situations.
In a nutshell, you want to create some discomfort in your practice space.  You need to know that you can deal with a bad [...]

Although it’s important to have a specific practice space where you feel comfortable, it’s also important to be realistic about the demands of performance spaces.
All kinds of issues can come up during a performance, including bad lighting (including having a spotlight in your eyes), extremes of temperature, terrible acoustics, audience noise, and not being able [...]