How To Practice Music

Fiddling with life and learning with the occasional dad joke thrown in…

 

 

Six Ways To Overcome Fiddle Frustration

A lot of you have told me that you’re frustrated because your current level of playing is nowhere near where you want to be. You want to be ripping mind-crunching solos like Mark O’Connor. But it seems like you’ll never get there. In this Fiddlosophy post, I’m going to suggest six ways to overcome fiddle … Continued

The Power Of Adding Variation

On The Endless Plateau So you’ve learned the fiddle and can now play a bunch of tunes. Do you feel like you’ve reached a plateau with your playing? Does it seem like you’re just going through the motions on a tune and it’s not sounding any better? Adding variations to scales and tunes is a … Continued

Practice Just To Practice

Why do you practice the fiddle? What do you hope to achieve? Do you want to be able to play a certain tune? Or do you want to be able to play with people? Do you see a vision of yourself doing something with music in the future? Before reading further, take a moment to … Continued

Practice Notes February 19, 2019

It’s been raining a lot in the Bay Area. It’s been nice. I’ve been hibernating, catching up on work, detoxing and practicing a lot ? Here are some notes I’ve taken from my practice in the last two months. It’s fairly longwinded so I’ll summarize briefly here, and then start blowing wind. (That sentence didn’t … Continued

The Surfing Fiddler

It’s humbling to learn something new. At the moment, I’m living in Bali for a month, updating FiddleHed.com and building a new course on improvisation. I’m also re-learning how to surf. Out on the ocean, it’s pretty clear that I’m a beginner. Struggling to paddle out, getting battered by oncoming waves, not gaining enough speed … Continued

A Fiddlosopher’s Guide to New Years Resolutions

I set out to write a funny and helpful post on making New Year’s resolutions. It would insightfully connect the process of learning the fiddle to living a good life. But then I started to get lost in thinking about it all and blocked by anxieties about the new year. Similar to beginning music students, … Continued

Practice Notes – December 22, 2018

Here are some notes on my current fiddle practice as of December 22, 2018.  In general, I’m practicing the “sawmill tuning” which is AEAE. So the G string is tuned up to A, the D string tuned up to E, the A and E strings stay the same. This makes the fiddle resonate much … Continued

Practice is the goal

We don’t practice the fiddle to get better at the fiddle, we just practice to practice. In other words, when you just do what you’re doing to the best of your abilities then you’ve arrived at the goal, which is realizing there is no big goal to reach other than the present moment. In other … Continued

Practice challenge notes – day two

Today is day 2 of the 14-day practice challenge. This is one way for you to establish music practice in your life. Would you like to be a musician? If so, then just play music every day! That’s what this is all about. It’s not too late to take part. Click here to go to … Continued

A simple tip for getting better sound

I want to offer a simple tip for getting good sound on the fiddle. The simple tip Start by playing an open string. In the video example, I play an open G string with a G drone. Focus on a simple, good sound. Become aware of your breath. Is it happening naturally or is it … Continued