Quick Practice Tip – Get Constant Feedback

Posted on April 29, 2017 by David Motto

Make sure you’re getting constant feedback. Without it, you’re just going through the motions and are unlikely to improve. Shoot video.
Use a metronome. Use a tuner. Have some way of recording your progress!

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Quick Rehearsal Tip – Be Prepared

Posted on April 29, 2017 by David Motto

At home on your own, prepare well and know before rehearsal what still needs work. This gives you many options at the rehearsal: (1) Openly acknowledge what you’re not ready for and ask your bandmates if you can skip it until next rehearsal, (2) work on the material you still need to learn better (but tell everyone at the rehearsal you’re still working out your part), and (3) ask to work on the material that you know best – because you prepared.

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Quick Practice Tip – Just Start

Posted on April 28, 2017 by David Motto

Just get started, even with no practice plan and no idea what you’ll actually start with. Starting is always better than delaying.

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Internal vs External Goals

Posted on April 26, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Internal vs. External Goals

External Concerns

We spend a lot of time in our lives trying to impress other people and win their approval. Whether it’s our parents, teachers, friends, loved ones, audiences, or fellow musicians, we often worry about what other people think of our playing.

These external concerns interfere with the daily process that truly helps musicians succeed. Thinking about the success or failure of your next rehearsal, audition, or public appearance can cause train wrecks, performance anxiety, and general unhappiness.

 

Practicing for Yourself

External Goals vs Internal Goals

Instead, try concentrating on your personal and technical goals. Directing attention to your internal goals is often referred to as “Practicing for Yourself.”

When you practice for yourself, you don’t worry about the outside world. In this paradigm, you create a vision of performing music in your own, unique way.

Being true to that vision gives practicing a level of excitement that is often missing for many musicians.

This sense of enthusiasm and personal enjoyment is the reason many musicians began playing in the first place!

 

Internal, Mastery Goals

Practicing for yourself means making a mental shift from external, performance-based goals to internal, mastery goals. This realignment of attention allows you to enjoy playing your instrument more and to feel true to yourself.

Here are some examples:

External Goals:

  • What the audience thinks about the hardest section of the song.
  • Wondering if this performance will lead me to even better opportunities.
  • If I blow this audition or a first rehearsal, will they ask me to play with them again?

Internal Goals:

  • Staying focused on technique to nail the hardest section of the song.
  • Executing everything necessary so I feel satisfied with this performance.
  • Focusing on my phrasing, dynamics, and articulations so my audition reflects how I truly want to play this music.

 

Being Your Best

Research shows that people who strive for success by focusing on their internal process, without regarding external benchmarks, are more likely to reach their target goals.

Think about that for a minute:

By focusing on the traditional, societal definition of “success,” you are less likely to achieve that success! Staying focused on your process, your thinking, your technique, your responsibilities gives you a better shot at getting what you want.

My take on this (though this didn’t specifically come up in the research) is that external thinking brings on levels of mental pressure and distraction that don’t allow you to be your best. This external thinking pulls you away from the technical demands of what you’re playing and limits your concentration on your execution – right when you need to be most focused on your playing.

If you want to be your best, practice for yourself. Keep your focus on what you can control, not on the external world.

To Your Musical Success!
–David Motto

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

Know Who to Listen To

Posted on April 19, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Know Who to Listen To

Criticism Comes from Many Sources

As mentioned in last week’s Practice Tip, musicians get negative comments from a lot of sources – even people closest to you.

Sometimes musicians receive criticism from people within the music community. This criticism can be harder to ignore than criticism from friends, family, and other non-musicians. Many musicians feel they should pay attention to the comments from musicians they’re rehearsing with or more advanced musicians they meet for the first time.

 

A Very Important Guideline

Here is a very important guideline:

Only pay attention to advice from people who have your best interests at heart.

Generally speaking, there are only two people who fall into that category: you and your teacher. And, even criticism you give yourself can be subjective and based on negative thinking that isn’t going to help you succeed.

You should expect and welcome criticism from your teacher. (You actually pay for it!) Follow your teacher’s advice and recognize that, even when they tell you something that’s pretty hard to take, they truly do want to see you improve.

 

Who NOT to Listen To

For all other sources of criticism, you need to develop a mental cocoon – essentially a shell you wrap around your thoughts that keeps you focused on your learning and practicing process. Your thoughts, your actions, and your plan that you follow in the practice room will make you the musician you want to be. Don’t let in any outside interference, especially when this interference is in the form of a single piece of criticism from a musician who really could care less whether or not you reach your musical goals.

Sure, criticism from other musicians can be difficult to hear. But, you must bear in mind that these people seldom care about your personal successes or your musical growth. They’re usually more worried about themselves and about showing you that they know more than you do.

If you’re lucky enough to have a performance written up in the media, never take seriously the words of professional critics in their reviews. They’re actually called critics. Their job is to criticize! These writers are not called supporters or coaches.

 

What to Focus On

Your job is to keep practicing and stick to the path you know is working for you. You and your teacher/coach create this path together in order to move you closer to your musical goals. Keep your thoughts focused on creating the outcomes you want.

You need to think about success, visualize success, and stay focused on success at all times. Failure is not an option. Frustration needs to be eliminated. What you focus on will make all the difference!

So, focus on both criticism and strategies from your teacher. With these strategies in place, you’ll have your game plan for the practice room. This is your path to success.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

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

Dealing with Negative Comments

Posted on April 12, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Dealing with Negative Comments

There Will Always Be Criticism

No one ever achieved greatness without dismissing the glaring criticism of others. And, there will always be criticism!

Musicians must develop a thick skin about their playing and learn to focus on their own internal process of practicing and improving.

 

Comments from Non-musicians

One unfortunate source of criticism comes from our family, friends, and roommates. These people often mean well. Unless they are musicians themselves, however, they often have little understanding of what makes a successful practice session.

To the untrained ear, hearing a musician work on a specific skill in no way resembles what music “should” sound like. Most people hear only finished performances of music in their lives, and they assume that the process of learning music must sound similar to the process of hearing a live or recorded performance.

We can’t blame non-musicians for their bewildering comments about our practicing. We can only shrug off their questions and comments.

 

How to Respond

If you must respond, tell your family members that you’re doing exercises that will make you better and stronger when it comes time to perform. This reasoning seems to make sense to non-musicians.

Let them know that the exercises you are doing (including endless practice loops of a single bar of music!!) are just as important as the exercises done by athletes to prepare for competition.

Don’t let the words of other people get you down.  Dismiss their comments, return to your practice room, and keep working!

To Your Musical Success!
–David Motto

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Tough Stuff

Posted on April 5, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Tough Stuff

What is “Tough Stuff”?

In every song or piece you want to learn, there is inevitably one section that seems too high, too fast, or too hard. Sometimes there are many of these sections.

This is the music most of us want to avoid! Depending on the genre of music you play, you’ve probably heard these sections called “hard licks” or “difficult passages.” My favorite term for this music is “Tough Stuff.”

Finding the Tough Stuff in every song you learn is one of your most important tasks. Once you find it, you’ll need a process to deal with it, own it, and turn it into something you fully control.

That process is the focus of this week’s Practice Tip.

 

STEP 1: Find the Tough Stuff

As much as we would like to spend our practice time going< over everything we already do well, real growth comes from learning new skills. You'll get new skills primarily by mastering the Tough Stuff.

This means that every time you come across something specific in a song that you can’t play (or that slows you down or makes you nervous), stop what you’re doing and make a note of it. You’ll keep a list of these specific areas that will need your focus. The list can be in writing, or you can circle the areas in your sheet music.

The contents of this list will become the focus of your practicing.

 

STEP 2: Let Go of Unsuccessful Practice Methods

IMAGE: Turn what you can't do into what you can do

Most musicians avoid the Tough Stuff by using the “Top to Bottom” method of practicing. This practice method is really pretty simple: You play through entire songs – always from start to finish – but never really master them.

This method is unsuccessful, and using the Top to Bottom method leads to musicians’ never figuring out what exactly is causing their difficulties and never learning their music thoroughly.

Sure, you’ll feel like you’re getting better. But, on every runthrough the Tough Stuff will slow you down or force you to restart. After a while, you won’t even notice that some of the notes (usually the same ones every time) sound a lot worse than everything else. You’ll get used to playing the Tough Stuff badly. Or, you’ll just get frustrated and wonder why this song is so hard.

One thing you won’t do using this unsuccessful method is take the time to actually make a list of the Tough Stuff – a list that could move you in a new, positive direction.

 

STEP 3: Reorganize Your Practice Sessions

So, how does this list of Tough Stuff impact your practice sessions? Essentially, you’ll want to spend at least half of your practice time on the Tough Stuff.

For many musicians this means rethinking your concept of what practice sessions are. Solving the puzzles hidden inside of Tough Stuff doesn’t seem like a “normal” practice session if you’re used to playing songs top to bottom all the time.

I’m not saying that all you should do is practice Tough Stuff. Don’t eliminate your warmups and technical exercises (which can have Tough Stuff of their own). And, keep reviewing songs you already know how to play by doing runthroughs of them. Just make sure the bulk of your practice time is spent mastering the new and difficult – which is now on your list.

 

STEP 4: Deal Directly with the Tough Stuff

Now that you’ve given yourself time to work on the most difficult sections of your songs, here are some ideas you can use to take full control of the Tough Stuff – so it will no longer be so tough to play:

  • Learn just the pitches, without worrying about the rhythm.
  • Figure out just the rhythm, without worrying about the pitches.
  • Play very, very slowly. (Much slower than you think you should!)
  • Play the first 2 notes, then the first 3 notes, then the first 4 notes. Keep building, note by note.
  • Play just the last note. Then, the last 2 notes. Then, the last 3 notes. Eventually, you’ll be playing from the first note to the last note of this section.
  • Sing through the section to make sure you fully understand how it’s supposed to sound.

 

Your New Practice Goal

The four steps above give you specific strategies to build success when you practice the Tough Stuff.

Focusing on the Tough Stuff may take a rethinking of your use of practice time. Fortunately, this focus will improve your technique, give you confidence, and help your performances.

Instead of practicing what is comfortable, you’ll have a new practice goal:

Turn what you can’t do into what you can do.

This is exactly what will happen when you focus on the Tough Stuff.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

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

Feel Calm Stay Focused

Posted on March 29, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
How to Feel Calm and Stay Focused

Transitioning into the Zone

Making the transition from all the crazy activity of your day to the relative calm of your practice room is not automatic.

This transition, though, is extremely important. When you’re practicing, you can’t be distracted by thoughts of all the non-musical parts of your life. Practicing with these non-music thoughts on your mind is, how can I put this nicely, A TOTAL WASTE OF YOUR TIME AND EFFORT!

To get the most out of the limited amount of time you have in the practice room, you need to develop a highly focused level of awareness. And, you need to be calm and in the zone so that your assessments of your playing are as accurate as possible.

 

The Performance Ritual:
An Effective Way to Calm Down and Focus

IMAGE: If the best athletes and musicians in the world are using Performance Rituals to improve their performance, maybe it's a good idea for everyone to use them.

An extremely effective way to calm down and rapidly expand your focus and sense of self-awareness is to have a specific, short activity you perform just before you start playing your instrument. This activity, when repeated before every practice session, rehearsal, and performance, becomes your personal Performance Ritual.

The Performance Ritual centers your thoughts and signals that you are about to enter the musical realm of your life. The Performance Ritual is a gateway that opens you up to your music, allowing you to leave the rest of your life behind.

Performance Rituals are commonplace in the world of elite sports, where they are put on view for all the world to see. These rituals are also used extensively by elite-level musicians, but they are often hidden from the audience.

If the best athletes and musicians in the world are using Performance Rituals to improve their performance, then it’s probably a good idea for everyone to use them.

 

Creating Your Own Performance Ritual

Here are a few examples of Performance Rituals that may inspire you as you come up with your own:

  • Controlled Breathing:
    Take a specific number of deep breaths. Or, inhale slowly through your nose and exhale sharply out your mouth. Focusing on breathing is a centuries-old technique used in meditation and mindfulness training. It does wonders for performers.
  • Pre-planned Movement:
    Adjust your instrument, microphone, chair, piano bench, music stand, eyeglasses, or some object in a consistent way. Clench your fists or stretch your fingers – exactly the same way each and every time before you play. Or, hold onto a good luck charm or a favorite piece of jewelry in your pocket. Even taking a second to look in the same direction just before you play can be enough to center your thoughts, keep you calm, and get you ready for peak performance.
  • Encouraging Words:
    Silently say specific, consistent words of encouragement to yourself. I call these words your Musical Mantra. You can come up with a phrase or sentence that consistently reminds you to do your best and that will get you into the zone.

Experiment. Try out different Performance Ritual ideas for a few days. See what sticks. Make adjustments. Search out the most effective rituals for you. Everyone is unique and your ritual(s) will be unique to you.

 

Performance Rituals – Hidden in Plain Sight

Ever wonder why you see certain athletes wearing jewelry during competition? Check out these Olympic athletes talking about their good luck charms. They have some very moving stories, and the significance of their good luck charms helps propel them to success.

Physical objects are only one aspect of Performance Rituals. My favorite ritual is the musical mantra because what you say to yourself and what you think about when you are playing your instrument have an enormous impact on the results you’ll achieve. A mantra helps you regain your focus whenever you need it.

Here’s a fascinating video about how a few seconds of movement, thoughts, and ritual affect the highest-level tennis players – during the time they’re not playing tennis:

 

A Very Public Performance Ritual – Seen by Millions

In addition to the two videos above, there’s one more I want to share with you because this is the athlete who made me think seriously about the importance of rituals for musicians. I hope you find it as valuable as I do.

It’s a video of Boston Red Sox player Manny Ramirez at bat. Watch it with the sound off. You’ll see his ritual before every pitch: (1) Push down the helmet, (2) tap home plate twice, (3) circle the bat a couple times:

Talk about a high level of focus! He’s been doing these moves for so long that they seem automatic – and almost as important as how he swings his bat. Just imagine if you had a Performance Ritual this powerful!

 

You Can Depend on Your Performance Rituals

I highly recommend developing your own rituals to help you successfully start your practicing and performance runthroughs. By going through these ritual processes every day, they will eventually become natural and habitual.

Then, you’ll be able to depend on your Performance Rituals to keep you calm, focus your mind, and allow you to perform at the top of your game.

Have any Performance Rituals you use? Know of any rituals used by famous musicians? If so, please comment below with the information or any videos of you or other musicians performing their rituals.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

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

Learning from Live Performances

Posted on March 22, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Learning from Live Performances

Practicing Can Be Lonely

3 Things to Watch for at Concerts

Becoming a great musician takes more than great practicing. The practice room is a solitary place, and it’s important not to isolate yourself from the real world.

I recommend performing whenever possible, joining groups to play with other musicians, and seeing as much live music as you can. Each of these will promote your musical growth- and make the process of becoming a great musician less lonely, more social, and a lot more fun.

Today, let’s talk about the benefits of attending live performances, my 3 Recommendations for what to do every time you see
live music, and what to do if you don’t have the time or money to see live concerts.

 

The Benefits of Attending Live Performances

Some people say that attending concerts doesn’t count as practicing, and it’s true that attending a concert is not a replacement for practicing your instrument in solitude. You don’t accomplish the same sort of work at a concert as you do in the practice room.

However, you can make the concert experience an extension of your practicing. By deciding what you like and dislike in the performances of others, you give yourself a clearer picture of what to do with your own playing.

Here are some clear benefits of attending live music concerts:

  • You get inspired to reach new heights in your playing
  • You see for yourself the standards set by world-class performers
  • You renew your commitment to continue practicing and improving
  • You set new goals based on what you see other musicians doing

 

My 3 Recommendations for Watching Live Concerts

When you’re a musician attending a live show, it needs to be a much more engaging experience than it is for fans attending the same show. Fans are there to have fun, be in the presence of greatness, and be entertained. Sure, you’re there for all those reasons too! I’m just saying that you’ve got extra responsibilities if you truly want to get the most out of the concert.

Recommendation 1: Watch performers’ technique
If you’re seeing a truly great musician play a concert, that musician has already figured out solutions to all the technical issues you’re currently having. Watch for these techniques. What do they do on certain musical items that you struggle with? How do they hold their instrument? Do they use a different position or angle for their head, torso, arms, hands, fingers, hips, legs than you do? Scrutinize everything they do for the smallest, most obscure technical details that can move you in the direction of playing more like the musician you’re watching.

Recommendation 2: Look for non-music performance skills
There’s a lot more to performing than playing all your notes successfully. When watching a master performer or group, look for all the stage skills they have: how they set tempos, give cues, position themselves to see the other performers, start and finish songs, talk to the audience. In short, anything that’s outside the realm of executing notes accurately and that makes the performance more interesting. You can copy all of these skills and make your performances better.

Recommendation 3: Notice changes in energy on stage
Audiences react to the energy and emotion of a performance much more than to the accuracy of a performance. You need to manipulate the energy in your playing to create excitement – for you and the musicians you play with as well as for your audience. Many non-professional musicians have a simple formula: Play loud to build energy. Play quietly to lower energy. When you watch high-level pro’s performing, you’ll see that there’s a lot more to it than volume/dynamics. Professionals use varied technique, body language, note articulations, textures, and tone in addition to dynamics to add emotion to their music. Watch closely for these tricks of the trade and steal any ideas that seem interesting to you.

These three strategies will not only give you lasting memories but also specific ideas on how to improve your playing and your performance skills.

 

No Time or Resources to Attend Live Shows?

Don’t have the time to spend going out to live shows? You can experience them virtually! YouTube, Netflix, and many other sources have thousands of performance videos just waiting for you to watch. You can find concert footage for just about any genre you can imagine.

Watching onscreen isn’t as exciting as being there in person. But, there are advantages to video footage, like being able to rewind and see particularly inspiring playing over and over. (Or, in my case: over and over and over and over.) Plus, you can usually find multiple artists performing a single song or even the same artist playing the same song at several different venues.

Try to attend live performances as often as possible. Concerts can be thrilling experiences and are an integral part of all musicians’ growth. And, inspiration and practicing aside, being an audience member at a live show (or, even a virtual audience member watching a performance video) is a great way to spend time.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Motivation, Music, Music Practice Tips, Performance Preparation | 1 Comment

Listening to Recordings

Posted on March 15, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Listening to Recordings

Playing the Right Notes is Not Enough

Listen to a song before you learn how to play it

In addition to learning the notes of the song you’re working on, it’s important to understand the correct way to play those notes. Of course the term “correct” is open to debate, but there are accepted ways of playing certain styles of music.

Grasping the style of the music is not as simple as placing it in a broad category like rock, classical, R&B, or jazz. There’s more to it than that.

Jazz players use different phrasing for New Orleans and Bebop tunes. In the world of classical music, there are stylistic differences between pieces from the Baroque era versus those from the Romantic era. In pop music, guitarists would never use the same tone playing 1950’s rock, 70’s R&B, or 90’s metal.

These differences are not always obvious, especially if you’re learning from sheet music.

 

Listening to Recordings – An Essential Step in the Practice Process

To make your musical decisions easier, you’ll want to do some homework. In addition to learning as much as you can about the song you’re learning, you’ll make more progress by knowing the ways the song has been performed in the past. Listen to recordings and watch online videos of master musicians playing the music you’re learning.

Here are a few things to pay attention to and think about as you listen:

  • Tone, tempo, articulations, and phrasing
  • Which notes get emphasized in melodies
  • The exact rhythms
  • What it would be like to be the performer on the recording
  • Which areas of the song you want to improve

If you listen to many recordings of the same song, you will hear different interpretations from each of the artists. These interpretations can serve as inspiration for you as you’re learning your music.

 

Benefits of Listening to Recordings

Listening to recordings is a type of musical homework. Doing this homework will give you the knowledge and confidence that you are performing a given style of music correctly.

And, there are many side benefits to listening to recordings, including:

  • Listening to recordings helps you learn faster.
  • Recordings also make memorization much, much easier.
  • You’ll come across other artists, songs, and composers in your genre.
  • You’ll expand your musical universe. (I can’t tell you how many times YouTube or Wikipedia has sent me on hours-long explorations into some really great music!)

Go have fun listening to the song you’re practicing. There are recordings for virtually any music you can think of easily available. Listening is not only fun, it’s also well worth the short amount of time it will take to do.

In the 21st century, listening to a song before you learn how to play it should be as normal as starting a car before you drive it. While you could move a car without starting the motor, why would you want to do all that extra work?

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

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