There is something that tends to happen with young students which is that they don't stay within the limts of classical music which is the standard for music education, and they follow the energetic appeal of music such as rock, but there are some differences beyond just how to play this type of music and its instruments. Gear For starters, there is some essential gear that is...
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Students have asked me on multiple occasions what it means to listen analytically/critically. Students often equate this idea with comparing one’s ability to that of another. Have you ever watched a video of someone playing a piece on your program and thought that person played it better? That’s a comparison based on an emotional response to what you’ve heard. That is also a perfectly natural...
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Many musicians and people in general believe that music can express many things and thus it can even be considered a language. David Ludden from psychologytoday.com says: Like language, music has syntax—rules for ordering elements—such as notes, chords, and intervals—into complex structures. Yet none of these elements has meaning on its own. Rather, it’s the larger structure—the melody—that conveys emotional meaning. And it does that...
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When teaching, there is an obvious difference of students and teacher, and it defines the space in which each of them operates, this is, a predominance of speaker on the teacher's side, and a predominance of listeners on the student's side, but what to do when this dynamic changes, and what is the difference on it being caused by a good thing or a bad...
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Welcome everyone! In my last post I talked about the “Mental Game” of practice, positive mental strategies to develop efficient practice habits. If you didn’t read it, I encourage you to go back and look at it because not only is it important for all musicians, but it also ties into this post quite a bit. Today I’m talking about the negative psychological factors of which we are all probably guilty....
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