You’ve been working hard on your music—nailing that tricky chord change, perfecting your drum fills, polishing your vocals. But how do you really know if you’re improving? The secret weapon most musicians overlook is simple: recording yourself at home. It might sound intimidating at first, like setting up a tiny studio in your bedroom. But here’s […]
Home Recording on a Budget: Recording Your Practice Sessions Read More »
As a musician, maintaining a steady tempo while adjusting dynamics can be one of the most challenging aspects of performance. Many players unintentionally speed up during loud passages and slow down when playing softly. Learning to control tempo independently of dynamics is essential for expressive and precise playing. This article will explore key strategies to
Mastering Tempo Control While Changing Dynamics: A Guide for Musicians Read More »
If you play an instrument or sing, you might wonder what level you’re at. You’re not a beginner anymore, but you’re not an expert either. That means you’re in the intermediate stage! Being an intermediate musician means you know the basics and can play many songs, but there is still more to learn. Let’s look
What Does It Mean to Be an Intermediate-Level Musician? Read More »
The Importance of Improvisation on a Musical Instrument Music is fun, and playing an instrument is even better when you can make up your own tunes! Improvisation means making music on the spot, without reading notes from a page. It helps musicians be more creative, learn their instrument better, and play well with others. Being
Improvisation: The Secret to Having More Fun with Your Instrument Read More »
Learning to read music takes quite a while. There are all sorts of symbols and shapes that mean very specific things and it can be confusing trying to keep them all straight. Two common notations that people get confused are triplets and dotted notes. Dots and triplets modify other notes. They change how long beats
Dotted Notes and Triplets: How Do They Work? Read More »
Time signatures come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. When they show up on your sheet music, it’s important to understand what they’re trying to say to you. Thanks to the power of math, you can trick yourself into thinking that many time signatures mean the same thing. But this is not always true.
What’s The Difference Between Time Signatures? Read More »
If you’ve ever gone to the gym or played a sport, you’ll know that warming up is the first thing any trainer or coach will tell you to do. Warming up is the first step to performing any activity that is going to push you to your limits. In this article, we’re going to go
Why Warming Up Is So Important Read More »
Reward In this final post, we’ll follow up the 4 stages of habit building with the final phase, Reward. Who doesn’t love a good reward? You work hard and you’re granted something for your efforts. So what rewards can we use to encourage our playing and how often should we reward ourselves? Daily Rewards A
Making Practice A Habit – Part 4 Read More »
Response So far we’ve covered Cues and Cravings. Next comes the third step in the habit loop which is response. The response is how you react to the habits you’re trying to create. If you’re trying to break a bad habit, your best best is to make it difficult. If you want to stop eating
Making Practice A Habit – Part 3 Read More »
In the previous post, I talked about habit making and “The Four Laws of Behavior Change”. I also discussed a bit at length the first of the four laws which we described as “Make It Obvious” or “Cue” and how you can apply these ideas to making guitar practice a regular habit. Today I’m going
Making Practice A Habit – Part 2 Read More »
