Practice Like a Pro part 5 – Performative Practice
kerryjk This is the final article in my series on holistic musical practice, set out in the framework I like to call MoPToP. We looked at mental practice, the in depth…
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Practice Like a Pro part 4: Technical Practice
Now we get to what most people think of when they think of practice, also the part you’re most likely to associate with unpleasant and uncreative chores. But this is…
Practice Like a Pro part 3: Physical Practice
Continuing the series of articles on holistic practice habits for musicians, last time we looked at mental practice – figuring out the kind of musician you want to be and…
Practice Like a Pro part 2: Mental Practice
Part two in a series of articles on personal musical practice, last time I gave an overview of my MoPToP framework describing what I see as the four main aspects…
Practice Like a Pro part 1: Overview
How often do you practice at your instrument? This is a dreaded question among musicians at all levels, conjuring as it does visions of stern authority figures standing over sweating…
Demystifying Staff Notation Part One: Pitch
To the uninitiated, classical music notation looks beautiful and terrifying, filled with bizarre looping symbols, black dots scattered around lines like footprints and numbers and fragments of text in strange…
Notes From The Total Perspective Vortex – Finding Your Way In The Big, Big World Of Music
”For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker,…
Among Musicians There Are No Divisions
This story concerns Roddy, a fantastic fiddler and folk musician hailing from Glasgow, Scotland, who I met on the Leeds music scene. To give a little backstory for those who…
Music’s Worst Motivational Techniques (that worked)
Musicians can be an unruly bunch, so producers, bandleaders and managers need some way of knocking them into a high performing unit. But what to do when an employee of…
The Colour Of Music – Finding Your Mood Niche
In the last article I looked into the finer points of finding genre niche as part of defining your identity as an artist (also why you should even bother when…