How To Practice Music

Hey Folks, I’m leading a practice challenge from October 15-28. The main goal, as usual, is simply to play every day. This time, we will emphasize finding joy in your sound. For those of you who sign up, I’ll be sending check-in emails with cheerleading, short lessons, exercises and prompts to get you to slow … Continued

What do you do when you realize you’re struggling? Do you keep pounding away at that challenging thing? Or do you change your approach? In this post, I suggest a practice called “Play it casual” which will help you to let go of mental obstacles so you can focus on the task at hand: learning and … Continued

The FiddleHed lessons are taught in a style I call “Incremental Learning”. We learn small pieces of things and then put them together into bigger pieces. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. And as we learn we try to work right at our edge. This means we practice something that is challenging enough for … Continued

I just published the 20-minute scale practice routine. You can use this in conjunction with other routines, or simply as a warm-up before playing in any situation. I’m in the process of making different routines which each focus on particular aspects of playing. Here are some others: 30-minute tune practice 30-minute tune practice: Kerfunken Jig … Continued

Someone wrote to me yesterday with questions about the new subscription setup. In a post-script she said, “I spend 2-3 hours almost every evening ‘playing’. It sounds more fun than ‘practicing’. And I love it.” This simple statement says a lot about the nature of learning and practicing music. The thing that struck me is … Continued

A lot of you have written to me saying that you are frustrated. You can’t get a good sound, you struggle to play in tune or you can’t figure out how to play a certain song. You want your dog to not leave the room when you start practicing… As a musician, I’ve come to … Continued

I can still hear Richard Dawson saying, “survey says!” on Family Feud, one of my favorite TV shows, along with CHiPs, Dukes of Hazzard and Night Rider. Ooops, just dated myself there, ha ha. Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey. You had a lot of good ideas and a lot of kind comments. … Continued