Blog posts in Practice

What do you look for, what do you avoid in an instructor. What does a great private lesson teacher needs? How do you find that person? What are great ...

I’ll be talking tonight at 7:45 pm on whether we should to learn licks and riffs or not, and how to get the most out of that effort if we should ...

To Play and Sing - Open livestream Tuesdays at 7:45 pm on whether we should pursue fame or skill – or is it possible to do both? How does one become ...

Reminding all about the new format – Open livestream Tuesdays (tonight) at 7:45 pm on Mark Teaches Music. And then an adlibbing VIDEO released ...

Seriously here, I'm not talking about the amount of time you spend, though that is important. I'm talking about how you spend your practice time and ...

What is music? The OED says "Music is vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and ...

So the idea is to work on songs that are somewhat beyond you until they are within your grasp. But oddly enough, boredom and creativity are brothers. ...

You are practicing to try and pull yourself up ability-wise, so you should be choosing songs to work on that are 5 to 10% above your present abilities ...

Look at the red square of my blurry diagram below - Licks/Study. (Notice on the diagram all the levels are in relation to what's hard or easy TO YOU) ...