Category: Music Advice & Tips

  • 9 Simple and Effective Tips to Get Your Child Practicing

    9 Simple and Effective Tips to Get Your Child Practicing

    Practicing music at home is something that every teacher encourages religiously. After all, it’s extremely important! Students just don’t make the same kind of progress when practice doesn’t happen and their motivation levels fade quickly. That said, students who otherwise might be excited to practice can easily come across many obstacles when they are at […]

  • The Value of Being All-In

    The Value of Being All-In

    Thirty-some years ago when I was in elementary school, I was what you might call overbooked. Let’s see, there was gymnastics, swim class, math club, cub scouts, church functions, school band, school orchestra, piano lessons, trumpet lessons, homework, and the list goes on. On one hand, I am surprised I had time to be a […]

  • How A British Soccer Coach’s Practice Advice Will Quickly Improve Your Music Playing

    How A British Soccer Coach’s Practice Advice Will Quickly Improve Your Music Playing

    You have heard it said, “practice makes perfect”. It’s a saying that holds a lot of weight and engages our compelling, yet ultimately insatiable desire to be perfect. More simply put: we want to be perfect, so we practice. However, there are two dangerous myths lurking within this statement that consistently hold us back. Time […]

  • Introducing My New Method for Motivating You to Become a Better Musician

    Photo by nosha on Flickr. When I began teaching, I taught music lessons without any sort of method for evaluating how my students were doing. I always wanted my students to enjoy music lessons as the “fun” extra-curricular activity that it had always been for me (and I still want that for you, by the […]