The Musician's Way Blog

Let’s say that you’re about to practice a new piece of music: What’s your typical plan of attack?

Researchers have observed that expert and student musicians display profound differences in their approaches to new material, and those differences lead to huge disparities in performance quality.

Nonetheless, I’ve found that students can employ high-level practice strategies and perform expertly. But those strategies have to be learned. Continue Reading

Zoom H2 Recorder

Imagine that you’re watching an artist paint in her studio: She spreads color on canvas, backs up to appraise her work, and then returns to her easel.

Sometimes she brushes briefly and assesses quickly; other times she paints at length before pausing to reflect.

Correspondingly, when we musicians practice, we proceed through cycles of execution, evaluation, and revision.

But there’s a big difference between our medium and that of visual artists because music exists in time, not space.

After we play or sing a phrase, it’s gone, except for our memory of it. Continue Reading

In The Musician’s Way, I encourage the singing of solfège syllables, scale-degree numbers, counting syllables, and letter names as part of the process of learning, memorizing, and interpreting music.

In my own teaching and playing, I employ the fixed-do solfège system, and I’d like to offer some reasons why. Continue Reading