How to Overcome Any Musical Challenge

Posted on July 5, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
How to Overcome Any Musical Challenge

It’s Not About Working Harder and Harder

Many musicians hunker down and work harder and harder – and get more and more frustrated – whenever they face a musical difficulty. This week’s Practice Tip focuses on some creative ways to overcome these challenges – without driving yourself crazy.

8 Strategies to End Your Musical Frustration

1. Don’t blame the challenge on yourself.
Be objective. It’s just a problem and it must have a solution. Don’t let the fact that you’re facing a challenge get you down.

2. Don’t let a particular challenge define you.
Instead, define yourself as the musician you WANT to be. Picture that future version of yourself, and you’re already on the road to becoming that person. This is a very effective use of Visualization. Never underestimate the value of Visualization to help you overcome a musical challenge.

3. Don’t exaggerate the importance of the challenge.
Many musicians say “I always have difficulties with…” It’s probably not true that you ALWAYS have this difficulty. It clearly bothers you when it comes up, and you might be making it more important than it really is.

4. Look outside where you think the problem is.
Musical solutions are often found by focusing on the opposite of what the problem is. Here are two examples:

Example 1: If the problem is that you can’t play something fast enough, make sure you really, truly have total, absolute control of the notes at a slow tempo. Controlling the music at a slow tempo is the only way to eventually control it at a fast tempo.

Example 2: If the problem is that you can’t play the rhythm correctly, first make sure you can play all the pitches correctly. Sometimes it’s the struggle with finding the notes that messes up the rhythm.

5. Describe the challenge VERY clearly.
Saying, “I’m playing out of tune” is not specific enough. If you say, “I keep missing that one C#,” then you can more easily find the technical answer to overcome the issue.

6. Know what the music should sound like.
Define what the music would sound like if the challenge were already eliminated. Say something like, “If I played this the way I wanted it to sound, I would breeze through that C# as I move into the next phrase.” That gives a very different perspective on where you’re going and allows you to start moving beyond the challenge itself.

7. See what other musicians are doing.
Watch videos of other musicians who are not having the challenge with this song. See what they do. Maybe there’s a technique you haven’t thought of that other people are already using. You can use it too.

8. Be objective.
Stay open-minded, positive, calm, and objective. And make sure you are open to any and all possibilities of what may be causing your issue. This will always help you deal with musical challenges. Objective descriptions of problems and solutions are crucial to your success.

Any one of these eight strategies will be helpful for you. Taken together, they’ll create a very powerful force in helping you overcome any musical challenge without getting frustrated.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Music Practice Tips | 2 Comments

Half Year Goals 2017

Posted on July 1, 2017 by David Motto

Goals for the Second Half of the Year

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Today is July 1. Half of the year is gone.

How did the first half of the year go for you? Hopefully, at the beginning of the year, you set annual goals, six-month goals, and three-month goals. If you did, it’s time to check where you are today against where you wanted to be halfway through the year.

Whether you did or did not set goals at the beginning of the year, it’s time to look ahead to the second half of the year and plan what you want to accomplish by December 31st.

Start by picturing yourself on December 31st looking back at the second half of the year. What do you want to feel good about having accomplished?

Whatever this thing is, write it down now. Once you’ve got your goal in writing, it will be easier to come up with a plan to accomplish it.

This simple task of writing down your end-of-the-year, six-month goal is a huge step forward since it forces you to think about what you really want. And, it gives you incentive to create a plan to accomplish it.

In future blog posts, I’ll talk about a few different strategies and systems for creating these plans and for developing meaningful goals.

Here’s to a fantastic second half of the year!

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Ten Minute Virtuoso, Visualization | Leave a comment

How to Use Short Bursts of Time

Posted on June 28, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
How to Use Short Bursts of Time

Our Busy Lives

Many musicians feel that they won’t accomplish their goals without spending extraordinary amounts of uninterrupted practice time.

But, let’s look at reality for most people:

If you’ll only practice when you have a few hours in a row available, chances are you’ll skip practicing altogether.

This is because most of us are lucky to have 30-60 minutes at a time for our practicing.

So, we must get our practicing done in shorter increments. Maybe that means two or three 30-minute practice sessions a day. Multiple, short practice sessions are a very effective strategy for accomplishing your musical goals.

Very, Very Short Practice Sessions

Let’s take it one step further:

Do you ever find yourself with some time to kill? Maybe just a few minutes? You might be waiting to leave your house. You could be taking a quick break from work. Maybe you’re waiting for a call or a text to come in.

These very short increments of time can be turned into short bursts of practicing. It’s amazing how much you can get done in one 5-minute increment. Really! Embracing the concept that you can accomplish something meaningful and permanent in just a few minutes can totally change your outlook on your musical life. I highly recommend that you give it a shot.

3 Effective Strategies for Micro-Practice Sessions

Here are three suggestions for getting the most out of very, very short bursts of highly focused practicing:

1. Be Specific
Work on something very specific – a short section, one measure, just a couple notes, or even something you’ve been avoiding because it scares you. Like putting a microscope on your music, you’ll filter out the rest of the world and focus only on this one, single item. It’s not so bad to work on it for 1 to 5 minutes. Then, you get to walk away.

2. Be Spontaneous
What if you spent a couple minutes playing whatever you feel like? No planning. No goals. No guilt. Just goof off for 5 minutes and experience the sheer joy of playing music. That joy is likely to be enough to motivate you to do some focused practicing later in the day.

3. See Success
You can spend just a couple of minutes visualizing yourself playing flawlessly. When you do this visualization, focus on one specific part of your music you need to understand a little better. You can make the fix mentally so you’ll be ready to practice it the next time you’re in your practice room actually working through the music.

What a difference a few minutes can make! You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment, and you’ll probably be inspired to play your instrument later in the day.

Science Supports Short, Focused Practicing

Plus, there’s scientific evidence that supports doing very short practice sessions. See why these sessions may be the most effective way you can improve your playing.

Very short, micro-practice sessions are definitely a complement to your other playing. Sneak in 5 minutes of playing your instrument wherever and whenever you can.

And remember: Even when you’re doing longer practice sessions, you’ll want to break them up into short segments so you’re totally focused and feeling fresh for every item on your practice list!

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Music, Music Practice Tips, Ten Minute Virtuoso, Visualization | 3 Comments

Two Scientific Reasons Why You Should Rethink Your Use of Practice Time

Posted on June 27, 2017 by David Motto

Two Scientific Reasons Why You Should Rethink Your Use of Practice Time

How Do You Think About Practice Time?

Like most other musicians, I spent most of my life thinking that how much practicing I did directly impacted how much forward progress I made as a musician. I only wanted to practice when I had at least 2 hours of uninterrupted time for playing. I was a slave to this concept.

This was fine when I was a music major in college, devoting every waking hour to learning to play, surrounded by hundreds of other musicians who were just as devoted, taking weekly lessons and playing constantly. And, the idea of practicing for hours a day is drilled into you in music school.

But, several changes in my life have forced me to rethink my devotion to long practice sessions. And, as it turns out, scientific evidence just might support the notion that short practice sessions are better for us anyway.

Changes in Life = Changes in Thinking

My Life Got Busier: I no longer had 2 hours in a row to practice. I could probably get in 2 hours total during a day, but there were too many demands on my time to have long, uninterrupted hours available for practicing. I suspect your life is like this too.

Being Busy Made Me Frustrated: Since I was a slave to the concept of long practice sessions, and since I was unable to carve out the time for these long practice sessions in my life, I got really frustrated. And, I stopped practicing. Not completely, but enough to feel that I was neglecting my instrument and stopping myself from improving the way I wanted to improve. Being frustrated is not a good state of mind for having productive practice sessions.

A Book Woke Me Up: I read a remarkable book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, several years ago. This book gives readers a series of exercises to complete. These exercises reveal truths about your life – or more directly, they reveal what truths you create as you interpret your artistic life. My own frustration with my use of time kept coming up over and over again. That’s when I had a very big breakthrough: I didn’t have to be a slave to this notion that only hours of practicing counted as “real” practicing.

I could play music for 30 minutes. 15 minutes. Even 5 minutes. I could make progress and make good use of my time in any circumstance. No matter how little time I felt I had, it was still worthwhile – even necessary – to spend that little bit of time improving my playing.

What a revelation this was!

Scientific Evidence for Shorter Practice Sessions

And, as it turns out, the scientific evidence seems to be showing that shorter practice sessions are more effective anyway.

The latest scientific research into skill acquisition and long-term memory enhancement is showing that we humans do best with short, highly focused (evenly emotionally charged) tasks that force us to master very specific skills.

Emotion Creates Long-term Memory: Larry Cahill, professor of Neurobiology and Behavior at University of California, Irvine, has discovered in his research on memory that strong emotional reactions are the key to permanently implanting long-term memories. If we think of learning our instruments as a long series of specific muscle memories, and if we look at memorizing songs as a long series of mental memories, then this research seems to say that our playing needs to be emotionally charged. One way to do this is to develop a level of focus so intense that the work you do while playing your instrument feels like the most important work you could possibly be doing.

Intensity Enhances Learning: Psychologist and pianist Margret Elson, in her book Passionate Practice, uses the term “intensity” for this level of focus. She puts it this way: “Repetition or intensity can each generate learning. What if we harnessed both repetition and intensity to the learning process? We would be in a much better position to learn efficiently and permanently…”

Efficient and permanent. Sounds good to me.

So, the question is: How long can you actually sustain this intense concentration and emotion that will truly help you push the musical information into your long-term memory? I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I can do that for hours at a time.

I think we can only do this for minutes at a time, which is the basis of my Ten Minute Virtuoso method.

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Music, Music Lessons, Music Practice Tips, Ten Minute Virtuoso | Leave a comment

Three Essential Metronome Strategies

Posted on June 21, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week
3 Essential Metronome Strategies

Metronomes Are Must-Have Tools

Metronomes are great tools for helping musicians play evenly, learn rhythms, and take control of counting.

And, you can use a metronome to help you achieve target goals for tempos or to discover sections that need more focused practicing.

Another crucial use of metronomes is to train your muscles to play without making mistakes. By setting the click at an excruciatingly slow speed, you can catch potential mistakes before they even happen and play accurately!

Many musicians need to be more creative with their metronomes. Using a metronome to do more than simply click quarter notes can keep your practicing fresh and help you learn faster than ever!

3 Essential Metronome Strategies

3 Essential Metronome Strategies

These three metronome tricks will instantly improve your practicing:

STRATEGY #1: Subdivide
Modern metronomes can subdivide accurately for you, and it’s great to hear eighth notes, sixteenth notes, or triplets when you need them. Be sure to use these settings on your metronome, not only for learning songs but also for taking complete control of the exact locations of subdivisions in beats.

Your goal is to accurately play any subdivision at any time. For instance, you’ll have a lot more confidence if you know you can accurately play the “ee of 3” or the “uh of 4” in a sixteenth note subdivision.

STRATEGY #2: Use Silence
You can also have your metronome click less frequently than quarter notes, forcing you to fill in the other beats mentally. Here are a few options:

  • For music in four, set the metronome to click only on beats 1 and 3.
  • Another idea for music in four is to set clicks only on beats 2 and 4 (the backbeats in pop music).
  • For music in three, have the metronome click only the downbeat. You’ll need to count and feel the other beats.
  • Also for music in three: (1) have the click only on beat 2, (2) have the click only on beat 3, or (3) have clicks on beats 2 and 3 only.
  • Silence specific beats or subdivisions so you’re only hearing some of the clicks in a bar. There are even metronome apps that have a “random” setting to do this for you. Not only is this a lot of fun, but it also forces you to count more diligently than ever before!

STRATEGY #3: The Disappearing Click
A wonderful metronome technique is the “Disappearing Click.” If you’re playing something in four with a lot of eighth notes, for example, start by setting the metronome to click 8th notes. Next, set a click of quarter notes. Then, give yourself a click only on beats 1 and 3. Finally, set the metronome to click only on the downbeat.

This strategy works best when you’re looping a single pattern over and over. If you have a one-bar pattern, you’ll get the chance to play it many times while you’ll have to keep your thinking clear.

You’ll continue to count 8th notes to play accurately, but your reference will slowly disappear! I can tell you from personal experience and from seeing other musicians attempt this strategy: This is a true game-changer for your ability to control time.

Be Creative and Have Fun!

All three of the strategies above help you learn to control time better. By mixing and matching the strategies, you also get to the point where you are not dependent on the metronome for playing evenly.

Whether you’re using my strategies or developing ones on your own, have fun using your metronome. Come up with creative ways to use this valuable tool, and you’ll change the way you think about your music.

And, though I’ve been saying “metronome” in this Practice Tip, I’m clearly not talking about old mechanical metronomes with a weighted pendulum arm rocking back and forth. I’m not even talking about older electronic metronomes that can only click the beat.

What I’m really talking about are the most current, advanced digital tools and apps available for musicians today. Some of these tools allow you to custom program any click pattern you need, including mixed meters.

New music technologies are being developed constantly, and I encourage you to try them. These powerful applications make learning and mastery faster than ever before in human history. If you’re not already using advanced technology in your music life, give it a try!

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Music, Music Lessons, Music Practice Tips, Tools for Musicians | 2 Comments

Ten Minutes a Day Really Works

Posted on June 16, 2017 by David Motto

Though many musicians, performing artists, and other creatives like the idea of being obsessed with their goals and spending hours at a time on their creations, the truth is that few people have a lot of time each day to work on their art.

What’s more, it’s important to be highly focused when you are working on something creative. That focus comes most easily in short bursts of highly productive, inspired work.

The idea of doing small bits every day is the basis of my Ten Minute Virtuoso method for learning new skills, enhancing current skills, and gaining new knowledge. This idea is spreading like wildfire in lessons, apps, coaching, and anywhere else that people need to make a bunch of progress quickly.

Here are two apps I’ve used recently for learning a foreign language that both take advantage of this idea that a small amount of work every day is the best way to get going and keep going.:

Duolingo includes this advice with its app instructions:

5 - 10 minutes a day to build a habit

Babbel has something similar and explicitly acknowledges that people learning something new still have their normal life to lead:

15 minutes a day gets the job done

Are you ready to work EVERY day, even if just for a few minutes, to achieve your goals? I’ll bet you are!

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Quick Practice Tip – Drive

Posted on June 15, 2017 by David Motto

Drive & Determination

Drive. Determination. Grit. Perseverance. Persistence. Vision. These are more important than skills and knowledge when you start learning something new. Just keep going and you’ll acquire the skills and knowledge along the way.

Posted in Music | Leave a comment

Metronomes Define Priorities

Posted on June 14, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week
How Metronomes Define Your Priorities

The Importance of Mastering the Basics

Mastering the basics is what makes great musicians sound so great. Knowing that you have control of intonation, tone, rhythm, and time lets you focus on your phrasing and add a depth of emotion to your playing.

Mastering time often gets neglected as musicians work to perfect their other skills. But, having a mastery of time is what allows groups of musicians to work together successfully. It’s one of the most important elements of music if you want to perform successfully.

And, if you’re serious about controlling time, you need to have a metronome in your arsenal of musical accessories.

The difference between practicing with a metronome and practicing without one is like the difference between driving on the freeway with your eyes open and driving while blindfolded.

Why do I say that?

Because metronomes open us up to a universal truth for musicians:

We all tend to slow down when the music gets really difficult–and we don’t even know we’re doing this!

Increasing Your Awareness

Many musicians think they’re doing just fine playing through their music. They’re completely unaware that they’re speeding up and slowing down as the notes get easier and harder to play.

With a metronome in place, you will have a guide to show you where you should be focusing your practice time.

Here’s what generally happens: A musician will be playing through something and will hit a section where they can’t keep up with their metronome.

This leads to surprise and sometimes causes frustration.

Defining Practice Priorities

The 80-20 Rule

Most musicians define getting behind the beat and feeling frustrated as a failure. Actually, it’s a huge practice success! You’ve just successfully defined an area where you can concentrate your efforts and make a real change in your abilities. That’s what you’re supposed to do in the practice room! You have found the Tough Stuff – those few, challenging notes that will eventually make or break your ability to perform well.

With this knowledge, you can slow that section down and teach your muscles to play it correctly. And, even at the very slow speeds necessary to train your muscles, you’ll still be using your metronome to guide you through the process.

The metronome itself can be the tool that points out where 80% of your focus should be in the practice room. Always look at these discoveries as successes and recognize that whatever you cannot play today – and figuring out a way to learn it – is the secret to creating breakthroughs in your technique and musicianship.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Music, Music Lessons, Music Practice Tips, Tools for Musicians | 3 Comments

Quick Performance Tip – Use Simple Strategies

Posted on June 13, 2017 by David Motto

Never be afraid to use a simple strategy that gets the job done even if you think you “should” do something more complex. Simple strategies can save performances.

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Clothing as Stage Presence

Posted on June 10, 2017 by David Motto

Costumes, Clothing, and Concert Dress:
Creating Your Stage Presence

Performers must be comfortable on stage, but they also must look the part. Audiences expect a symphony orchestra to be dressed formally, a country act to have a few musicians wearing cowboy hats, and a hip hop group to wear baggy pants and bling.

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Just imagine any of these groups dressing like one another and then giving their usual performance! The public wouldn’t know what to make of it.

The clothes musicians wear are a big part of the concert experience. The day after a performance, audience members tell their friends they saw a concert, not that they heard it. This is profound. Seeing, rather than hearing, a musical performance is built into our very language.

This is profound. Seeing, rather than hearing, a musical performance is built into our very language.

For many musicians, what they wear on stage is an afterthought. These musicians don’t consider the importance of how they look on stage.

In some genres, this is fine. Certain indie rock bands and some jazz groups dress on stage exactly like they do at home. Their not having a “stage version” of themselves is part of what their audiences appreciate about them. They are authentic and are just being themselves during concerts.

Other artists take the opposite approach. For these musicians, their stage look is an enormously important part of their performance. While we often associate this attitude with pop artists like Michael Jackson or Lady Gaga, classical artists like Anne Sophie Mutter and Renee Fleming place just as much emphasis on their clothes when they perform.

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How do you dress when you play in public? Perhaps your concert clothes have been part of a well-thought-out strategy to give your performances a certain luster. Or, maybe you’ve not really thought about it.

Either way, I guarantee that your audiences are reacting to how you look on stage. Whether or not it’s true that “clothes make the man” or that you can truly “dress for success,” you can definitely improve your stage presence by carefully choosing your performance attire.

Posted in Music, Music Performance Tips, Performance Preparation | Leave a comment