5 Ways to Perform Under Pressure

Posted on January 2, 2019 by David Motto

If you’re looking for some quick advice on how to improve your performance under pressure, here’s a great list:

1. Body Language: Use body language, power poses, and posture to your advantage.
2. Rituals: Using what Peter Meyers calls “anchors,” you can calm yourself down when needed.
3. Go All In: Speak up and join conversations early.
4. Paraphrase: Saying the main ideas someone else made give you time to think.
5. Laugh: Don’t take yourself too seriously.

This quick list is from a terrific post by Marie Proeller Hueston on Oprah’s website. Be sure to read the entire article at Oprah.com and check out the links of the experts giving this advice.

Posted in Achieving Goals, Performance Optimization | Leave a comment

Resolutions No – SMARTER Goals Yes

Posted on January 1, 2019 by David Motto

Every year around this time, there’s a lot of talk about New Year’s resolutions: How to make them. How not to make them. How to make them work. Why they don’t work.

A resolution is really just a goal, and most people need a system to make their goals stick. The SMARTER Goals system is one that can work for just about anyone. You’ll find it useful when you have a goal that is truly important to you. (And, I recommend only setting goals that are important to you. Otherwise, you won’t follow through!)

The whole point of setting a goal is to actually accomplish it. The setting of the goal is just step one. It’s extremely important that you set your goals in a way that you can and will accomplish them.

If you’re working on new skills, growing your business, getting ready for competition or trying to get your ideas heard and accepted, the process you use to achieve your goal can make or break your success.

SMART Goals

The most common system for setting goals is the SMART Goals system.What I found was the SMART Goals system. Each letter in the acronym SMART stands for a property that makes it more likely that you will attain your goal. Here they are:

S = Specific

M = Measurable

A = Attainable

R = Realistic

T = Timed

The SMART Goals system was developed decades ago to help businesses assess and achieve their project management goals. With some tweaking and experimentation this system has turned out to be just right very useful not only for the business world, but also for creative artists, athletes, and just about anyone with an important goal in life.

However, this SMART system has two serious issues:

Issue #1: The “Attainable” and “Realistic” parts of the acronym mean almost exactly the same thing. If something is attainable for you, then it is also realistic.

Issue #2: There’s nothing in the SMART system about the process of actually working on the goal. SMART is all about setting the goal, not achieving it.

FAST Goals

Because of these two issues, a newer goal setting system has come into vogue: FAST Goals. Fast stands for: Frequent, Ambitious, Specific, Transparent. There’s a wonderful explanation of the FAST system, and why this system is superior to the SMART system, from MIT’s Sloan School of Business.

So, is FAST the answer to SMART? Maybe. It all depends on your situation.

FAST does give you two ways to work on your goal.

First, the “F for Frequent” means to have frequent conversations about the goal. As you go along, working toward your goal, keep the lines of communication open with anyone and everyone who can help you achieve, reshape, and refocus your goal. That is sage advice.

Second, the “T is for Transparent” tells you to be open and public about the goal – as well as being open about the work you’ve already done and how well or poorly that work is going. Also sage advice.

Both of these are important in working efficiently and effectively toward your goals. But, they assume you have a team. Many people working toward a goal – athletes, performing artists, innovators – are working solo and are putting in serious amounts of time day after day without the benefit of a coach or teammates, let alone a boss and direct-reports like you’d have in the business world.

The FAST system has a couple issues also: Deadlines aren’t mentioned. I’m a firm believer in deadlines. Having a deadline, especially one you do not control, is one of the top motivators to add energy and focus to your work.

FAST also leaves out rewards for achieving your goal. It’s always nice to know that something good will happen when you achieve the goal – beyond the act of achieving the goal itself.

SMARTER Goals

So, I’ve developed a system that combines the best of the SMART and FAST systems – and works on some unique elements of human motivation that I’ve witnessed over the years as a performance coach working to optimize performance for business leaders, musicians, and athletes.

Here is my SMARTER Goals system:

S = Specific

M = Measurable

A = Attainable

R = Risky

T = Timed

E = Enabled

R = Rewarded

From the work I’ve done with many clients who are trying to make a real difference in their lives, I’ve seen that, if any one of these elements is missing, problems will occur when trying to accomplish the goal.

In later posts, I’ll go through each of the properties that make up the SMARTER Goals system, showing you how you can achieve your goals. You’ll get the most effective parts of the SMART and FAST systems in my SMARTER Goals system, so you can both set your goals and achieve your goals more confidently, efficiently, and effectively.

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Thoughts on New Year’s Eve

Posted on December 31, 2018 by David Motto

What does New Year’s Eve mean to you?

Parties? Celebrations? Champagne? Fireworks?

Reflections on the past year? Hope for the new year? Plans to change your life?

I think it’s nice to combine the two.

Let’s celebrate the year that has passed and think about everything we’ve accomplished. We can lose ourselves in a fun time as we change our calendars over to a new year.

Let’s also think seriously about what truly has meaning for us, and how we can make the new year more meaningful, impactful, fulfilling. I’m not talking about making a few resolutions. I’m talking about looking deep inside and setting goals for the new year (and beyond) that will make your life what you want your life to be.

On New Year’s Day, I’ll talk about setting goals in a way that has meaning for you.

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation | Leave a comment

Chord Families: Learn with These Simple Tips

Posted on June 5, 2018 by David Motto

This is a guest blog post from Marc-Andre Seguin of JazzGuitarLessons.net. Marc’s giving some crucial information that’s helpful for all musicians.
–David Motto

When first learning how to play a musical instrument, most students realize that the same chords keep showing up together and that when a song is played correctly, it just sounds right.  

Why is that?  Why do some chords just sound right when played as a group of chords?

You may have guessed there is a lot of music theory out there that will try and explain this, but in reality it’s actually kind of simple once you know a couple of tips as a starting point.

Let’s take a look at why some chords just sound right when played together in a chord family.


Tip 1: Learn the Basics

If we really bore down through all the theory, we can start to see a relationship between the individual notes in a scale and the family of chords that goes with them.

Learn this and you are well on your way to understanding chord families.

Once we identify a scale with numbers (scale degrees), we can then use this to understand the basic relationship between any scale and the family of chords that goes with it.

Here’s how it works by numbering the C Major scale.

Scale Degrees


Note

C

D

E

F

G

A

B

Scale Degree

I

ii

iii

IV

V

vi

vii°

Root

2

3

4

5

6

7

Note: if you played all of these notes on a piano, you would be playing only the white keys.  This makes C major great for demonstrations.

There are seven notes and seven numbers and then we start over again on C after the seventh note.

Roman numerals are a standard convention of Western music (and they look kind of cool too).


Tip 2: Notes and Numbers Remain Constant

It is great to know that the scale degrees (numbers shown in Roman numerals) will never change for this C major scale.  

Notice in the above table that the notes move away by degrees from the root which is C.  So, the root note is one (1st degree) and the third note (3rd degree) is a third away from the root and so on.  

If you were to play the root (I), third (iii) and the fifth (V) of this C major scale (in the above table), you have a basic C Major chord, which is just harmonizing that particular scale by using notes from that scale.

Harmonizing the scale gives us the chord family that goes with that scale.


Tip 3: Chord Families

Here is your first chord family.  

Now that we have named the degrees of the scale, we can now harmonize it and name each corresponding chord as follows:

Chords for C Major Scale


Note

C

D

E

F

G

A

B

Scale Degree

I

ii

iii

IV

V

vi

vii°

Chord

CM

Dm

Em

FM

GM

Am

Bdim

dim=diminished

The C note gets a C chord.  The D note gets a D chord, and so on but notice that some are Major (M) chords and some are minor (m) chords.

We can see in the table that the root note has a corresponding Major chord (CM) and the second degree has a minor chord Dm) and so on.

There is an easy pattern or formula that never changes for this Major and minor chord sequence.

Altogether, you have your chord family for that scale.


Tip 4: Chord Family Formula

Thankfully, there is a formula and that really makes this chord family thing easy.  

Quick Review:

  • Each degree of the scale has its own corresponding chord (see table).  
  • This formula will never change. (Our example is for a Major scale.)  
  • Chords starting on the 1st degree are as follows:

Major        minor        minor        Major        Major        minor        diminished

In summary, the above is the chord family formula.

Remember that only the key of C Major has no flats or sharps so when you change to a different Major scale the formula is the same, but there will be sharps or flats added to the scale and the chords.  

So, in order to be the same degree away from the root, you may have to add a sharp or a flat, but we won’t discuss that much theory here.  If you are interested in learning a little more about chords and scales, check this out.  


Tip 5: Make Your Own Chord Family

It’s easy to refer back to the Major scale formula and then create your own corresponding chord families for different keys because the formula remains the same for all Major scales.

I’m serious.  You now have all the tools to understand chord families with these simple tips, and, you can make your own chord families just by using the table below.  

Just make a blank copy of this table or copy this one right here and start filling in your own chords using the chord family formula.


Note

Scale Degree

I

ii

iii

IV

V

vi

vii°

Chord

M

m

m

M

M

m

dim

Note: Just place the chord name in front of the chord quality (Major, minor or diminished).  Don’t forget to add sharps or flats as needed.


Summary

We’ve gone over some great tips and delved into the basics of chord families here and I hope that you have found this information helpful and can use these tips as tools to create and understand the essence of how chord families function.

I know at first read, it sounds like a little more theory than you maybe wanted but now you know the why of chord families and can even create your own.

There are books and pdf’s available that list chord families, but now you know why these chords sound good together and when you play a song you now know why these chords make the song sound right.  

I encourage you to continue to explore and enjoy your musical journey and understanding, because it truly is about the journey.

Enjoy!

About the Author

Marc-Andre Seguin is the webmaster, “brains behind” and teacher on JazzGuitarLessons.net, the #1 online resource for learning how to play jazz guitar. He draws from his experience both as a professional jazz guitarist and professional jazz teacher to help thousands of people from all around the world learn the craft of jazz guitar.

Posted in Music, Music Practice Tips, Music Rehearsal Tips | Leave a comment

2018 Grammy Telecast

Posted on January 30, 2018 by David Motto

What Every Musician Can Learn from the Grammy Telecast – 2018

Grammy-60th-2018

Every year the Grammy’s get a lot of media coverage. “Is the show relevant?” “Are the voting members of the Recording Academy out of touch with today’s taste and the current direction of the music industry?” “Should we care about awards shows at all?”

This year there was the added pressure of how the Recording Academy would or wouldn’t deal with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

These social issues are important. And, there are plenty of commentators talking about them. So, I’d like to offer something completely different:

9 Ways Watching the Grammy Telecast Offers Valuable Lessons for All Musicians

1. Always Give It Your All

Successful musicians are willing to take risks and do things that most people would never imagine doing. If you’re willing to give it your all – physically, mentally, emotionally – to create the music you want to create, you’ll have a more fulfilling experience every time you perform.

I’m not saying that most of the performances at this year’s Grammy’s showcased artists giving it their all. Some performers looked like they were just going through the motions. But there were a couple that stood out:

  • Kendrick Lamar’s stunning, imaginative, compelling performance was visually striking, socially important, and sure to be controversial with some people. Lamar is a terrific example of an artist who is willing to take emotional risks with his music.
  • Playing on a barge in the middle of the Hudson River in January, U2 bundled themselves up in overcoats, scarves, and fingerless gloves to survive what must have been a physically painful performance. If you’ve never performed in extreme heat or extreme cold, it is an uncomfortable experience that I do not recommend if you can avoid it. But, if you are willing to endure this physical challenge for the sake of your music, it could be just what it takes to make you stand out from everyone else.

2. Be Visually Compelling on Stage

Many performers at this year’s Grammy’s wore white to support the TimesUp movement. We should all join them in supporting the end to sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in our society.

I’m not a political commentator. I help performers be their best when they most need to be their best. So, I’d like to mention something that is less important to our society, but a worthy lesson for all musicians who take the stage:

Visually standing out when you’re on stage is essential. There were many, many instances at the Grammy’s this year where the lead singer was in white while the rest of the band was in black or gray. The contrast was visually stunning and forced the audience’s eyes to remain on the person in white.

Now, I’m not saying that you need to cover your piano in white, feather angel wings and dye your hair white like Lady Gaga did – while her guitarist was dressed in black. But you might want to think about the equivalent of the long white overcoats worn by Sam Smith or Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild. Having an obvious visual focus on your stage can be an important element in creating a memorable performance.

3. It’s All About the Energy

While every musician spends time daily improving their technique and their craft, when you’re on stage the energy you put out to your audience ends up being more important than technical perfection. You’ve got to give some thought to how you’re bringing the energy level of your music up and down to express yourself. It is this emotional impact that audiences remember – not some technical skill you’ve spent years perfecting.

There were several performances where the artists purposefully manipulated the energy level of what they were doing on stage:

  • Lady Gaga announcing that her song “Joanne” is about her aunt instantly put the audience on her side. Whether or not Lady Gaga had the vocal performance she wanted to have didn’t matter. The energy in the room was with her.
  • Bruno Mars and Cardi B going to the downstage area near the audience and dancing up a storm. Wow! The energy just exploded.
  • My favorite use of energy in a performance was much more subtle but hugely powerful. In the tribute to Fats Domino and Chuck Berry, Jon Batiste and Gary Clark, Jr., showed their formidable talents in a stripped-down trio arrangement. But, it was drummer Joe Saylor who stole the show for me. In “Maybelline” Saylor stuck to a simple tambourine on the first verse, then burst out on full drum set to explode the energy for Clark’s guitar solo.

If you can do something with every performance that changes energy levels in the room, you will be a force to be reckoned with!

4. Visualize, Visualize, Visualize

It’s so important to look out into your future as a musician and see, hear, feel, taste, and smell the success you want – rather than focusing your thinking on the hurdles you’re facing right now. Visualizing the future you want is one thing that many successful musicians, artists, athletes, writers, and others have done for years before they achieve their success.

This was so poignantly illustrated at the Grammy’s in Alessia Cara’s speech when she won Best New Artist. I love what she said:

“I’ve been pretend-winning Grammy’s since I was a kid in my shower . . . You are the reason I don’t have to win Grammy’s in my shower any more.”

5. Some Things You Try Won’t Work

Musicians can never expect all of their performances, all of their songs, or all of their media interviews to be successful. It’s okay to fail occasionally – as long as you pick yourself up, keep moving forward, and get back on stage to try again.

For my taste, there were a couple performances that stood out for just not really working successfully. The vision for them may have sounded good on paper, but the actual execution left a lot to be desired.

  • Ben Platt’s performance of “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story never really came together because of the arrangement. He was backed up only by a cellist and a guitarist. The arrangement sounded thin and it never rose up to truly affect listeners on a visceral level. Maybe a string quartet plus guitar would have done the trick. Or maybe Platt could have had the same full-orchestra treatment that Patty Lupone got immediately after him. It just didn’t seem to work.
  • Two country stars – relative newcomer Chris Stapleton and living legend Emmylou Harris – teamed up to pay tribute to the late Tom Petty. Even for these two huge talents, they couldn’t seem to get the song moving forward. They made no eye contact, played similar guitar voicings, and kept to a single style of vocal harmony throughout. It looked awkward and felt awkward to listen to. I was dreaming that the Heartbreakers would suddenly be there to back them up.

If you ever find yourself trying something musically that doesn’t work, don’t take it too seriously. Not everything you (or Grammy arrangers) come up with can be genius-level. It’s okay to toss some ideas and try new ones – even if you’ve already put hours and hours into the idea that just isn’t coming together.

6. You Need a Team

Don’t try to make it on your own. If you’re putting together a band, have a sound engineer as one of your team – so even a performance in a small club sounds the way you want it to sound. If you’re spending too much time booking gigs, get a booking agent or manager – or even just an enthusiastic friend or fan – to do that work for you.

The Grammy telecast is a technical miracle. There is so much going on, and it takes a huge team to make this happen.

The show uses three stages for the music performances (main stage left, main stage right, and the circular stage in the middle of the audience). The performances are rotated among these stages all night long. This means that each stage is struck and reset multiple times through the night. Over and over again, the technical team gets each stage ready in a very short amount of time. If you’ve ever spent 3 hours setting up your band and still had things go wrong, you will appreciate what it must mean to clear a stage and reset it in 20 minutes or less. It’s like a pit stop at the Indianapolis 500 – precision and speed.

There is more evidence of the importance of teamwork at the Grammy’s:

  • The bandmates, songwriters, and producers who join the winner on stage are essential to their success.
  • There is an orchestra playing at many points in the show. They back up some performers, play for the entrance of the people giving out the awards, and play for every commercial break in the telecast. This year, the orchestra was hidden from view during the telecast. Imagine everything that’s needed to coordinate this music!
  • Sound engineers are mixing the show on the fly. At the beginning of each performance, they’re making adjustments in seconds.
  • When a Grammy winner thanks the Recording Academy, they are referencing the thousands of unnamed studio musicians, arrangers, engineers, songwriters, copyists, and others who keep the industry humming along.

Who is on your team?

7. Do What You Love to Do

The music industry is a marketplace of niches. Country fans never listen to hip hop. Hard rock musicians never play jazz. EDM producers could care less about Broadway. Sirius, Spotify, and Pandora have more genres than most people have ever thought about.

You can use this to your advantage. There is room for what you do in this marketplace, and you could even create a new genre. You can follow your own aesthetic and find a fan base for what you do.

This lesson is sort of an “anti-Grammy telecast” lesson. There were 84 Grammy awards given in 2018. The vast, vast majority of these were not part of the televised show. They weren’t even mentioned in print at the bottom of your TV screen. These other awards cover all sorts of genres and activities in the music world that are interesting, relevant, and compelling. You could become a successful performing and recording artist even if you’ll never have a shot at Song of the Year.

8. Things Will Go Wrong

In the music industry, you’ve got to expect technical snafu’s from time to time. These issues are inevitable. You’ve got to learn to roll with them.

At this year’s Grammy’s things went surprisingly well. Most of the technical coordination went off without a hitch. Here are three technical problems that were noticeable:

  • At the beginning of the Las Vegas shooting tribute by Maren Morris, Eric Church, and Brothers Osborne, several vocal microphones were still live from whatever had happened previously on stage. You could hear conversation which was quickly turned off. Then, when Morris began to sing, her microphone needed to be brought up to an audible level and it was full of reverb. The sound engineer quickly made the adjustments and all was well.
  • Pink’s in-ear monitor cable was taped to the back of her neck (a trick used by many performers, including news anchors). How do I know this? Because I saw the tape when an errant camera angle showed her from behind. It’s like seeing how the sausage is made. As performers, we want to hide our tricks from our audiences, not reveal them on an international TV broadcast.
  • SZA had an issue with her in-ear monitor. It seemed like it wasn’t properly placed in her ear. She reached up to adjust it, and at one point it came out of her ear. At the beginning of her performance she was clearly distracted, and her pitch was affected. This was an unfortunate technical issue for an amazing performer. Sorry to see it happen.

Do everything you can to minimize technical glitches. And, at the same time, know that occasionally something will not go as planned.

9. There Are Many Paths to Success

I was struck by the acceptance speeches of Bruno Mars and Kendrick Lamar. These artists are clearly compelled by different forces to create what they create. At the same time, they are both totally committed to what they create – even though their aesthetics couldn’t be more different. They each have expansive worldviews, just not the same worldview.

Here they are in their own words:

From Kendrick Lamar’s acceptance speech for Best Rap Album: “(Hip hop) showed me a true definition of what being an artist was. From the jump, I thought it was about the accolades and the cars and the clothes. But, it’s really about expressing yourself and putting that paint on the canvas for the world to evolve for the next listener and the next generation after that.”

Bruno Mars, accepting the Best Album award: “I remember seeing it firsthand, people dancing that had never met each other from two sides of the globe, dancing with each other, toasting with each other, celebrating together. All I wanted to do with this album was that. Those songs were written with nothing but joy and for one reason and for one reason only: and that’s love. And that’s all I wanted to bring with this album. And, hopefully I could feel that again and see everybody dancing and everybody moving.”

What compels you to make music? Whatever that is, explore it and follow your inspiration to see what you can create. By being true to yourself, you not only have a better chance of being successful, but you’ll also enjoy the uncountable hours of work needed to make it in today’s music industry.

Posted in Achieving Goals, Music, Music Performance Tips, Performance Preparation, Visualization | 1 Comment

Eliminating Mistakes

Posted on January 24, 2018 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Put an End to Making Mistakes

3 Steps for Learning Music without Mistakes

Are You Learning Mistakes Every Day?

Many musicians teach themselves mistakes at every practice session. They’re usually not even aware that these errors are happening.

This habit of learning mistakes is so commonplace because of the way most musicians practice their music. A typical attempt at learning a song looks something like this:

  • Start playing at the top.
  • Stop when a mistake is made.
  • Correct the mistake.
  • Move on.

Then, you simply keep up this process until the end of the song is reached.

Sound familiar?

What Your Muscles Learn

Let’s look at these steps from the point of view of your muscles and what they’re learning:

1. Stopping in the middle of a phrase is normal and acceptable.

2. The incorrect note is a normal part of what your muscles should play.

3. A wrong note followed by a right note is the sequence of activities your muscles should follow for this song.

When you see the process laid out so clearly as it affects your muscles, it’s obvious that you must replace this style of practicing immediately!

Stopping and starting just confuses your muscles, and you will never master your music or your instrument if your muscles are confused.

Another (Better) Approach to Learning New Music

Follow these 3 steps and you’ll stop making mistakes:

1. Practice Slowly: Practice slowly enough that you get every note and rhythm accurately placed.

2. Teach Your Muscles Correctly: Give your muscles the correct sequence of actions needed to play your music without stopping – the first time! (This concept is so surprising to some musicians that they can’t imagine doing it!)

3. Slowly Build Speed: Slowly work up to performance tempo with your muscle memory intact.

This approach lets you learn correctly the very first time you go through new music. It undoes the normal process of teaching your muscles mistakes.

The Consequences of Learning Mistakes

If your muscles learn to play mistakes, you face a very painful process of re-learning your music so you can play accurately.

First, you must un-learn the mistake. Then, a new (correct) sequence must be learned by the muscles. While this corrected sequence is being learned, there will be a struggle as the earlier mistake tries to creep into the music.

Here’s why that earlier mistake will stay with you forever: Scientific research shows that when one muscle memory is learned and is then replaced by a subsequent, corrected muscle memory, the first muscle memory is not actually replaced! That wrong sequence is still there in your brain, waiting to be pulled up just like all the other muscle memories you’ve put there.

So, you have to make a pledge: Never learn mistakes. Never teach your muscles incorrect actions.

Not only does re-learning your music disrupt progress with your practicing, the mistakes you’ve learned can totally destroy your upcoming performances. That is a level of frustration you never want to experience – in the practice room or on stage.

Rather than experience this frustration, use your muscle memory to your advantage by playing slowly and correctly. You will learn faster, feel more confident, and enjoy playing more.

Here’s to Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Music, Music Lessons, Music Performance Tips, Music Practice Tips | Leave a comment

Best Counting Methods

Posted on January 17, 2018 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
The Best Counting Methods

Why Count? 8 Ways Counting Makes You a Better Musician

One of the top pieces of advice music teachers give their students is to count all the time while they’re playing. Keeping the count allows musicians to improve their sightreading, be better ensemble players, and to never get lost.

Counting While Sightreading

When you sightread (whether reading written-out notes or chord charts), you must count as if your life depends on it. Here are two counting rules for sightreading:

1. Never Stop Counting: You can never stop the count while reading unfamiliar music. If you get tired of counting, you should just count with even more concentration, raising the volume of your inner voice to make sure you’re paying attention!

2. Subdivide: Subdivide your count to match the fastest notes on the page.

  • If there are eighth notes in your music, then count eighth notes (“1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”). Subdivide even in the bars that have only larger note values.
  • For a song in 6/8, 12/8, or even 4/4 with a ton of triplets, subdivide your count into triplets. (“1 and uh 2 and uh 3 and uh 4 and uh”)
  • If you see sixteenth notes, then subdivide your count into sixteenths. (1 ee and uh 2 ee and uh 3 ee and uh 4 ee and uh.) Make sure you start this process before you get to the bar with the sixteenth notes in it!

Improving Rehearsals and Performances

Many people, especially those who regularly rehearse and perform in a group, rely on other musicians to help them keep their place. Well, wouldn’t it be great if you were the person everyone else relied on? You would be an asset to the group, you would feel in control of your music, and you would contribute to a better ensemble experience.

And, you’d be more relaxed. And confident. You might even have more fun!

Working on counting in the practice room gives you confidence in rehearsals and performances. Try these two strategies to improve your group playing:

1. Count the Song Form: When you know where you are in your music, you can cue other musicians and make stronger transitions. Be sure you know how many bars are in each section of your songs.

2. Focus on Downbeats: Always make sure you know where the downbeat (beat one) of each measure is. If you don’t know where beat one is, you could easily get lost. Actually, it is highly likely that you will get lost.

How Counting Redefines Success

The counting process needs to be worked on at every practice session and can actually re-define what it means to practice, learn, and master a sequence successfully.

Most musicians feel they are successful when they play all of the correct pitches—even if they accidentally stretched time a bit to get to all those pitches.

However, you view success differently if your focus is rhythm and time. Keeping all the rhythms intact—even at the expense of missing a couple pitches—could be seen as more successful than getting pitches while missing rhythms.

After all, this is what must occur during a rehearsal or performance. If you miss a specific note while on stage, the rest of the musicians do not slow down so you can go back and correct that pitch! So, make sure your practicing is not always focused on pitches. Focus on the count and the rhythms.

If you are having difficulty keeping the count in your head while playing, then count out loud while playing. This is extremely difficult (especially for wind players!!) and forces you to slow down to a speed where you can both play and count.

Summary of Counting Strategies

Here’s my list of strategies in this Practice Tip of the Week:

1. Never stop counting while sightreading.
2. Subdivide your counting to the fastest rhythm you need to control.
3. Be the person who knows song forms, so you can lead other musicians.
4. Always know where Beat One is.
5. Play songs where keeping the rhythm intact is the main goal.
6. Count out loud.
7. Slow down if you need to, in order to count and play at the same time.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Music, Music Practice Tips, Music Rehearsal Tips, Performance Preparation, Sightreading | 2 Comments

Controlling Your Inner Voice

Posted on January 10, 2018 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Take Control of Your Inner Voice

Performing while criticizing yourself is not healthy

It’s important to use your inner voice very carefully when you practice and perform.

Did you just think to yourself, “What inner voice?” If you did, that’s the inner voice I’m talking about!!

The inner voice often acts as a critic, stating everything you’re doing wrong. (And, a common name for this voice is our “inner critic.” I’d rather have my inner voice be my inner coach or inner cheerleader!)

At other times, it tells you that you sound great. Really great. The best you’ve ever sounded. The voice is full of pride – and not the good kind of pride where you’re proud of working hard and at your highest level. It’s usually the other, bad kind of pride (also known as hubris), which got pride added to the list of the 7 deadly sins.

Either way – critic or braggart – these thoughts can cause you trouble.

Focusing Outward vs. Focusing Inward

If this voice says things about you, then you have gotten outside the music and have started to think about yourself while you play. Your job as you play is just that—to play. You shouldn’t be thinking about you, your capabilities, and how you’re doing. Performing while criticizing yourself is not healthy!

In a perfect world, we would be able to silence this voice completely while we’re playing. But, turning off the voice is next to impossible for most musicians. Instead, you can control this voice and use it to your benefit.

The key is to focus this voice on the process of playing the music itself.

For instance, you can say, “Play those notes loudly” as opposed to saying “I always forget to play those notes loudly, so I better remember this time.” Though these two statements assert the same idea, only the first version helps you play better by focusing outward toward the music.

The second version points inward toward yourself. It also describes a perceived weakness that you may or may not actually have. This inward focus should be avoided at all costs.

Be Wary of Self-Praise

The funny thing about the inner voice is that it causes difficulties in your playing even when it gives positive feedback. Whether the voice is criticizing or praising you, it can be a hazard to your musical health.

If you tell yourself, “I sound great” while you’re playing, it’s a sure sign that you’re outside the music. You’re thinking about yourself instead of just playing.

As soon as the inner voice begins to praise, you will most likely make a mistake in your playing. The higher the praise, the more likely the mistake.

For instance, if you say “This is the best I’ve ever sounded,” you are sure to fumble on some passage that is usually the easiest in the song.

Looking Forward vs. Looking Backward

One reason for this strange phenomenon is that thinking about yourself looks backward—at what you just did. Meanwhile, the music is still moving forward and needs your undivided attention. While you’re busy praising yourself and how well you’ve been doing, no one is in charge of the upcoming notes!

You’ve got enough to do to keep your music rolling forward without adding the extra burden of thinking about what you just did – in the past! So, whether what you just did was amazing or terrible or somewhere in between, keep your inner voice focused on the task at hand.

The practice room is the best place to start focusing your inner voice toward the technical details of your music. Don’t criticize yourself. Just give directions on how to execute the notes.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Music, Music Practice Tips, Performance Preparation, Positive Thinking | 2 Comments

Achieving Your Musical Dreams

Posted on January 3, 2018 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Achieving Your Musical Dreams

Today is the third day of the new year. Some people have already dropped their resolutions! Research tells us that 25% of new year’s resolutions are dropped in the first week, 50% dropped after one month, and only 10% make it to the end of the year. There must be a better way!!

New Year’s Resolutions for Musicians

Musicians typically have resolutions that sound something like this:

Resolution 1: “I resolve to become a better musician this year.”

Resolution 2: “I’m finally going to learn that one song that’s always seemed just beyond my grasp.”

Resolution 3: “This year, I’m actually going to practice every day.”

Sound familiar?

These are all worthy resolutions – and they’d be even better as well-thought-out goals. Let’s look at each of them individually:

1. Becoming a Better Musician
Becoming a better musician is what we all try to do each and every year. It’s a long-term, essentially permanent goal. It’s also just a little bit vague. Vague goals are challenging to achieve.

2. Learning “That Song”
That song. You know the one. It might even be the song that got you to become a musician in the first place. This goal is specific, which makes it a better target as both a goal and a New Year’s resolution

3. Practicing Daily
Practicing daily is also a specific goal. And, it’s incredibly short-term, which makes it a perfect New Year’s resolution. You can control whether or not you practice on any single, given day.

Achieving Your Long-Term, Life Goals

For all goals (including New Year’s resolutions) to be achieved, they need to be specific. If you’ve been reading these practice tips or my blog for any period of time, you know I’m a big believer in the SMART Goals system, and the “S” in SMART stands for Specific.

I also believe that having a short-term deadline is a key component of goal achievement. Short-term goals are easier to grasp in your mind. They’re easier to complete. And, they don’t seem as overwhelming as longer-term goals.

What’s most important about short-term goals, though, is this: Without short-term goals you can’t achieve your longer-term goals anyway. It’s the daily and weekly goal achievement that build up to the big life achievements. Simple, but profound.

Ordering Your Musical Goals

I recommend you put your goals and resolutions in this order:

PUT THIS FIRST: Make Daily Practice Your #1 Goal
Commit to practicing every day. Even if it’s just for 10 minutes. Do whatever it takes. You can definitely, absolutely achieve this very short-term goal!

THIS IS SECOND: Work on “That Song”
Each day, work on a very small segment of “that song” that you’ve been dreaming of playing. Even if there is absolutely no way you can play the entire song now, you can always learn just a few notes a day. Each little section is a short-term goal that you can and will achieve.

THEN, THIS WILL AUTOMATICALLY HAPPEN THIRD: Become a Better Musician
Put together these small sections of your song one by one. Over time, you’ll conquer the song one small bit at a time. The very process of putting the short sections together into one cohesive hole will make you the better musician you’re dreaming of being!

Achieving Short-Term Goals:
The Effective Path to Achieving Your Dreams

If you follow these steps, you will be able to play “that song” by the end of the year! And, working on small skills every day and finally learning “that song” will turn you into the better musician you want to be.

Focus on your short-term goals. They are the key to your success. Without short-term goals, there’s no way to achieve long-term dreams!

Here’s to achieving your short-term, near-term, and yearly goals 2018. Happy New Year!!

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Music, Music Practice Tips | 1 Comment

Drill, Baby, Drill

Posted on December 20, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Drill, Baby, Drill!

Finding the Right Solution

Even when you’re already using efficient practice techniques – like Very Slow Practice, focusing on Tough Stuff, and Breaking Down songs into small chunks – you may feel you need something more to truly master your songs.

What you need are very specific exercises based on the notes, keys, rhythms, and problem areas in your music. These drills give you some relief from the song itself, and they support learning your songs.

If you’re taking lessons, your teacher will often create these short drills for you. However, you’re likely to encounter material between lessons that could benefit from your own creative approach to the notes. So, during your practice sessions, you’ll need to develop the skill of making up these drills yourself.

The first step is to accurately define what the problem is. Then, isolate this problem and create a short pattern that unlocks the difficulty and propels you to success.

5 Effective Drills to Try

To get you started with this process, I’m including five drills as suggestions for you. My hope is that these examples will inspire your creativity so you can develop effective drills of your own. (And, if you’ve created a really good drill, please share it in the Comments below!!)

Here are my five suggestions:

1. Use the Song’s Key
Play scales and arpeggios in the key of the song you’re learning. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to create an “aha moment” when you see exactly what’s been holding you back.

2. Match a Difficult Rhythm to Your Warmups
If you are working on a difficult rhythm, incorporate this rhythm into your scales (including chromatic scales). For instance, run today’s scales and arpeggios using the rhythm. First, play the rhythm on each pitch. Then, go up and down your scale using the rhythm.

3. Isolate a Rhythm
Specific rhythms can also be played on single notes, random notes, or even by tapping your hands on a table. This will free you from the confines of the melody and key while you internalize the rhythm.

4. Break Up Fast Runs
If a run of eighth notes or sixteenth notes is causing difficulty, alter the rhythm to either (a) long, short, long, short or (b) short, long, short, long. This can be just enough of a change to pinpoint the exact notes that need your focus. You’ll force yourself to notice which pitches are easy to play and which are more challenging. Then, you can focus on the challenging parts.

5. Go Backwards
Play a bar or two both frontward and backwards. Playing notes in reverse order gives you a new perspective on moving comfortably from note to note. This is a top practice strategy for solving problems with hitting pitches accurately.

You’ll Save Time

Your drills can be a big time-saver in your practicing. The drills will pull you out of the malaise that can happen when you go over and over one short song section. Drill focus you in on what you’re actually trying to solve.

Drills also can be used effectively as your warm-ups, essentially creating a “two birds with one stone” situation. You’ll be warming up and learning your songs faster! This is especially important if you have a limited amount of practice time each day.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Music, Music Lessons, Music Practice Tips | Leave a comment