Blog Posts in 2011

Here’s one of the most beautiful songs of the season, James Taylor singing “ In the Bleak Mid-winter ”. This specific version is about the only one ...

Playing through the song, not stopping for mistakes is 30% of practice. This is performing, keeping the macro-rhythm constant. It's like Chuck Norris ...

A great sense of writing is developed by listening to and reading great writing. It's the same for music. Some of the learning is by imitation, but ...

Think on this for a perspective on the purpose of excellence in music and the relative importance of your own skill: most excellent music schools ...

Deciding who your audience is may be the very most important decision facing a musician. If it's anyone other than yourself, you must do all musical ...

Don't mistake excitement or interesting arrangements for a good song. Good songs sound great in the simplest arrangements as well as when intricately ...

For pianists, the idea of always and forever having to work a piece by separately practicing the right and left hands is absurd. What excellent ...

Mark Black’s distinction between a science, an art, and a craft: an art is a discipline that can be described only in broad principles which, while ...

Your growth as a musician is an upward angle as you reach forward to learn more and play and sing faster and better. Periodically, though we have ...