Music You Love vs Music You Have to Learn

Posted on March 8, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Music You Love vs. Music You Have to Learn

Inspiration and Play

Music You Love vs. Music You Have to Learn

Being inspired by the music you are mastering is the ultimate motivational tool for practicing.

Music you love will put the focus back on the “play” in playing an instrument. Practicing will seem automatic, time in the practice room will fly by, and you will pay attention to every detail of the music.

I’m for doing anything and everything possible to stay inspired and motivated in the practice room, so I highly recommend you work on songs that you love. Sounds like the perfect way to play music, right?

There’s just one problem with this strategy:

You don’t always get to choose the music you’re learning. How do you stay inspired and motivated when working on music you have to learn?

Music You Don’t Choose Yourself

There are many times when you won’t be able to choose material yourself:

  • You’re taking lessons and your teacher chooses the songs.
  • That same teacher recommends – or even assigns – drills, scales, studies, and exercises.
  • You’re in a group and many people are involved with picking songs.
  • You’ve been hired for a gig and have no say in what music gets played.
  • You have an audition or competition coming up, and the song list is given to you.

You may feel neutral about the songs. You may hate the songs. The songs could have really hard sections that will take a lot of work to master.

No matter what the case, you’ll want to find something inspiring – not in the music itself, but something that inspires you on your quest for music mastery.

Finding Inspiration in the Details

Here are three ideas for staying inspired and motivated when you’ve got to practice music you don’t really like:

1. Focus on Your Technique: Instead of focusing on the song itself, keep your focus on playing perfectly and learning new techniques. Look at the smallest details, pick them apart, and totally own them! It’s actually pretty easy to get through unappealing music when all you’re thinking about is getting better at your craft.

2. Make a Game Out of It: See how quickly you can learn the tough sections by timing yourself. Or, play something fun once you get 10 repetitions right in the song you can’t stand. There’s always a way to make a game out of practicing!

3. Challenge Yourself to Play Your Absolute Best: Pretend that the song you don’t like is the world’s best song and needs to be presented to the world successfully. Come up with ways to sound great, even in your least favorite parts. I had to do this once for an entire week of recording sessions to complete a songwriter’s album. I disliked the material, but gave my all (as did the other hired-gun musicians) so that the performance was really good. The songs may have been weak, but the band sounded really good.

Keep a Balance

When you have control over choosing which songs to learn, choose songs that speak to you, that you truly like, and that you sincerely want to learn. These songs are the reason you were drawn to play music in the first place!

Just realize that your favorite songs may not actually make you a better musician. If you’re not getting outside your comfort zone, it’s unlikely you’ll improve your technique and musicianship.

When songs are chosen for you, make the best of it and find the hidden gems inside the music that will allow you to stay interested and inspired.

And, if you find yourself in the situation where you’ve got a lot of music you don’t like that you have to learn quickly, end each practice session with some music that truly inspires you as your reward.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

Posted in Achieving Goals, Motivation, Music Lessons, Music Practice Tips, Performance Preparation, Positive Thinking | 4 Comments

Making Time for Music

Posted on March 1, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Making Time for Music When You’re Busy

Musicians contact me daily to tell me about the challenges they’re facing. As a performance coach, it’s my job to help them meet these challenges so they can meet their goals and get more enjoyment from playing music.

The number one challenge I hear is:

“I don’t have enough time to practice.”

This challenge is faced by all sorts of musicians: pro’s who are traveling and performing, adult amateurs with busy jobs and families, students who have ten other activities (and homework) in addition to music in their lives.

As I work with musicians, we come up with customized solutions to help solve the riddle of creating enough time for practicing. Below, I’m including some of these strategies.

These strategies are not listed here in any particular order because they often work best by finding a combination that exactly fits your situation.

If even one of my solutions speaks to you, you can create a positive change by using it. Combining three or four will create a huge improvement in your musical life!

32 Strategies to Make Time for Music Every Day

1. Practice First

This is a variation of the financial advice to “pay yourself first.” If you practice before doing errands, housework, gardening, and all the other activities you engage in, you will make time for music and you’ll still have time to finish all that other stuff.

2. Schedule Your Music

Every important activity in your life is on your calendar. Meetings. Appointments. Vacations. Volunteer work. Social engagements. Find a spot every day on your calendar for music.

visualize-brain3. Visualize

You can practice without your instrument. See, hear, and feel yourself playing perfectly – in your mind’s eye. Take mental control of that little spot you’re struggling with.

4. Use Down Time

There are many times a day when a few “dead” minutes occur: waiting to leave the house, standing in line, pumping gas, watching the microwave. Go over that rhythm, interval, phrase, or whatever has been bothering you.

5. Make Practicing Non-negotiable

What if you told everyone in your life that you were absolutely, positively going to play your music every day and that everything else would have to work around this fact?

6. Deal with Distractions

Practice behind a locked door. Put your phone in airplane mode when you practice. (Your metronome, tuner, and music player apps will still work.) Do whatever you can to avoid distractions.

7. Never Skip a Day

No matter what, even if you only play for one minute, play music every day. EVERY day. Count the days. See if you can get to 100 days in a row. 200 days. 365. 500. 1,000. Keep going.

8. Know that Conditions are Never Perfect

You’re life is probably not set up to give you hours of free time on a daily basis. Don’t wait for that perfect future where you’ll have 2 – 3 hours of uninterrupted music time every day. Just get done whatever you can today.

9. Reward Yourself

Did your practicing today? At the very least, congratulate yourself for doing something important that you want to do. If you make your weekly practice goal, go out for dinner. Practiced every day for one year? Throw a party!

10. Declare Your Practice Goals on Social Media

Let all your friends know your practice goal. Give them daily updates. You won’t want to embarrass yourself in front of all your friends.

11. Use the Buddy System

Find another musician and promise one another that you’ll practice a certain amount every day. Make it a competition. The first one to skip a day buys dinner.

social-media-vacation12. Take a Media Vacation

Would you have time for music if you turned off your TV? Stopped reading the news? Didn’t check your social media feeds? Try this for one week. Then, for one month.

13. Make a Deadline

Having a rehearsal, audition, performance, recording session, jam session or anything else that is scheduled and can’t be cancelled is a huge motivation for finding the time to practice.

14. Say No When You Need to Say No

If you say yes every time someone requests something of you, you will never have time for the things in life that are important to you. Learning to politely say no will give you a lot of extra time in your life for music.

15. Figure Out Your Time Siphons

Feel like some things in your life just suck up all your spare time and leave you feeling down? Define these things. Then, see if you can minimize or eliminate them from your life.

16. Keep a Time Log

If you’re not sure how all the time seems to disappear each day, keep a written log of every activity you do for 24 hours, in 15-minute increments. You will be amazed by two things: (1) the amount of down time that happens on any given day, and (2) how you really, actually spend your time!

17. Create a Personal, Daily Ritual

Combine practicing with something you do anyway that gives you some personal time. Coffee. Meditation. Snacking. Stretching. Anytime you take a few minutes for yourself, add on a couple more minutes to play music.

18. Redefine “Practicing”

Practicing does not have to mean what you think it means. Practicing includes: studying your sheet music, listening intently to recordings of songs you’re learning, tapping out rhythms, doing visualizations, hearing a melody in your head, defining phrasing, figuring out your breathing, and many other activities that don’t need to take place during a practice session.

10-minutes-image19. Use Any Time You Can to Practice

Have one minute? Play a scale. Have five minutes? Work on some Tough Stuff you’ve been avoiding. Have ten minutes? Do a warmup, play one arpeggio, play one scale, and focus on one phrase from the song you’re learning.

20. Define What You Must Do Every Day

We all have things we should do. Then, there are things we will do. What about the things you must do? These are the things you are absolutely, completely dedicated to doing – no matter what – every day of your life. Put playing music in this category!

21. Lower Your Standards

No, not your musical standards. Keep those high! I’m talking about other stuff in your life you can do less well. Does the lawn have to look perfect? Do dishes have to be rinsed before going in the dishwasher? Cut yourself some slack!! Some things aren’t really priorities and you can save yourself time – time that you need for music.

22. Always Be Ready to Practice

Keep your practice room set up and ready – always! You want to be set up so that, at a moment’s notice, you could go in there and play music immediately.

consequences23. If You Use Rewards, Use Penalties Too

It’s all well and good to reward yourself when you meet your practice goals. And, if you have a similar system in place that kicks in when you do not meet your goals, you will double your motivation. Always have consequences in place that will occur when you don’t make time for practicing music.

24. Do Other Things Less Often

Your time gets used up by many, many activities. Some of those activities can happen less often. Some things you do daily could be done every other day. Some weekly items could happen every two or three weeks.

25. Delegate

If you’re able to hand off some unimportant activities in your life, you’ll create more time for music. Just as business leaders manage their time by delegating tasks, you need to be the manager of your music time by asking or hiring other people to take care of some of unimportant stuff in your life.

start-small26. Start Small and Expand

It’s okay to play for five minutes a day this week. Next week try ten minutes a day. Next month you’ll be up to 20 minutes a day. Practicing music is not an all or nothing activity. Make sure you play every day even if you can’t put in as much time as you want to.

27. Leave Work on Time

There are so many things that can make people stay late at work. Do your absolute best to minimize these distractions. You may be able to buy enough time at home to practice daily.

28. Make Practicing Part of Your Homework

If you’re a student, put practicing music into your homework mix. It’s not an either/or situation. Practicing is just part of homework.

29. Schedule the End Time for Phone Calls

At the beginning of every phone call you receive, tell the person who called you that you can talk for a certain number of minutes – and stick to this end time! Over the course of a day, you could buy yourself an hour of time for music.

30. Break Everything Down

If you break down every song and exercise into small segments (achievement researchers call these segments “chunks”), you can focus on specific segments during any given practice session. This frees you from the dangerous and time-consuming thought that you need to play through every song every time you practice.

31. Use a Timer

When you’re practicing, give yourself micro-deadlines for each activity by setting a timer for one minute, two minutes, or five minutes. That’s all the time you’ll spend on whatever item you’re currently on, and you will focus at a higher level knowing that your time for improvement is limited.

sunrise32. Know Thyself

For any of these strategies to work, you need to know why you want to play music in the first place. The meaning that music has in your life can serve as a huge motivating factor as you’re figuring out how to make the time to play music every day.

How to Use This List Successfully

This is a long list. And, there are even more ways to increase the amount of time you could have for playing music than I listed here. Which ones you try and how many you try isn’t important. Here’s what is important:

Today, right now, try just one of these strategies to see how it works for you. Choose the one that you feel in your gut will be the most effective for you.

If that strategy works, stick with it. If it’s unsuccessful, try something else.

For a few weeks, add one new strategy weekly, keeping the ones that work and tossing the ones that don’t. Over time, you will find the perfect combination of strategies that fit your life.

Leave me a comment about how you’re doing creating more time for music. I’m curious about which strategies are working for you.

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To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

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Think Like Your Teacher

Posted on February 22, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Think Like Your Teacher

You’re Alone When You Practice3 Ways to Think Like Your Teacher in the Practice Room

Imagine how great it would be to have your music teacher with you every time you practice – like a sports coach working with athletes. You’d get objective feedback. You’d get encouragement. And, you’d stay focused on your task.

But, that’s not the way it works for musicians! You’re left on your own for six days between lessons and are totally alone when you practice. Your only choice is to be your own teacher in the practice room.

 

Benefits of Playing the Teacher Role

Being your own teacher is not about replacing your teacher. It is about taking on the teacher persona during your practice sessions.

Playing this role means you must think like your teacher. Today, I’m giving you 3 ways to think like your teacher in the practice room. Each of these strategies will help you make big strides forward in learning, improving, and retaining skills.

In addition to helping with your music skills, acting like your teacher when you practice lets you step outside your usual thought process – so you’re not trapped by your usual assumptions, emotions, and reactions to your playing.

Let’s take a look at how you can think like your teacher to maximize the impact of your practicing:

 

Think Like Your Teacher – 3 Strategies

1. Observe (And Be Objective)
In the practice room, you need objective feedback. If all your decisions are based on how you feel when you play, then you’re only giving yourself subjective feedback – which is clouded by your emotions and mood.

What would a teacher do? They would observe your actions closely and listen to your sound carefully. They would pay attention to the actual music you create and how efficient your technique is to make that music.

You need to do the same. Notice every detail of your technique, sound production, rhythm, and intonation. If you’re struggling with being objective, shoot video of yourself practicing. Then, watch the video.

It’s not about how you feel when you play. It’s about how you actually sound when you play.

2. Analyze (And Coach)
Your music teacher is your personal coach. Once they’ve observed you, they start giving you advice. They’ll give you solutions to technical issues. They’ll create exercises that help you play a certain pattern. And, they’ll offer musical suggestions on things like phrasing, dynamics, and how to attack your notes.

Essentially, a good teacher analyzes everything you’re doing and coaches you through a series of potential solutions that create improvements for you. All of this analysis is designed to improve your technique and your sound.

In the practice room, you’ve got to be your own analyst. Try different solutions to the musical problems you’re facing. Be creative and don’t be afraid to try things that are different than how you usually play. That’s the whole point – to change your playing. By definition, you’ll have to try new ideas to create change.

3. Encourage (Support and Cheer)
In addition to being an eagle-eyed observer and personal coach, another role of great music teachers is to be your support team and Encourager-in-Chief. I think of great teachers as cheerleaders – always enthusiastic that you can and will win, no matter how hopeless you may feel after trying to play a particularly challenging set of notes.

This cheerleader role is essential for your success in the practice room. You’ve got to inspire yourself and offer yourself words of encouragement. You must convince yourself that you are on the road to success.

 

All Three Roles are Important

Music teachers have many responsibilities. When you’re at your lesson, your teacher is constantly mixing and matching these responsibilities based on what you’re doing at any given moment. It’s a constant juggling act of observing, analyzing, offering suggestions, giving encouragement, being nice (but not too nice), being firm (but not too firm), and creating solutions personalized to your needs.

Each of the teacher’s roles (the Observer, the Coach, and the Cheerleader) is crucial to the success of your lessons. And, the roles are equally crucial during your practice sessions.

There’s just one small problem: Your teacher isn’t there for your practice sessions!

So, be your own teacher when you practice. Observe. Analyze. Encourage. Do absolutely everything you can think of to ensure your success, just like your teacher would if they were there with you.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

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Inner Critic vs Inner Coach vs Inner Cheerleader

Posted on February 17, 2017 by David Motto

What do you call your inner voice?

The most common name for our inner voice is the Inner Critic. Does it have to be that way? I think we would be better off if we could change our inner critic into an Inner Coach or an Inner Cheerleader.

There are plenty of other people to criticize our creative work and our performances. We don’t have to do it to ourselves!

By adjusting the language you allow yourself to use, you can turn inner criticism into useful observations that allow you to make improvements in your skills without beating yourself up mentally. Taking control of the type of language you use with yourself is an extremely effective strategy for opening up your creativity and increasing your output.

Inner Critic, Inner Coach, Inner Cheerleader

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We are what we repeatedly do

Posted on February 16, 2017 by David Motto

Ancient wisdom from Aristotle

We are what we repeatedly do. Excllence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

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5 Questions that Keep You Honest

Posted on February 15, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Staying Honest in the Practice Room

Why Honesty Matters

Practicing is about exploring what you can do with your music. Done correctly, it leads to feeling confident and in control when you perform so you can trust that you’re truly ready.

During a performance, you can have fun and know that you’ve done your best to be ready. Or, during that same performance, you can constantly be worried and not really know if you’ll be able to play everything.

The only way to be truly prepared for performing is to be honest with yourself in the practice room.

I’ve developed 5 questions that all musicians can ask in the practice room to honestly evaluate their forward progress.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself

The only way to be truly prepared for performing is to be honest with yourself in the practice room

1. Do I fully understand what I’m supposed to execute?
You can’t ask your muscles to play accurately if your brain hasn’t first figured out exactly what you’re supposed to do. Understand the pitches and rhythms before you try to play them!

2. Does a small, specific area of music need my attention?
You’ve got to be honest about this. Is there one small area of music that you’re avoiding? If there’s something that needs your attention, please give it your attention. You’ll get the most out of your finite practice time if you spend most of your time on these small, challenging sections of music.

3. Have I made the best decisions about how to play that section?
Occasionally, you’ll come up with a technique that allows you to quickly learn a challenging section of music. Double check that you can use this technique transitioning into the section and out of the section. Sometimes the first way we figure out to play something isn’t actually the best way.

4. Am I comfortable with this passage, section, or riff?
Be honest with yourself. Are you comfortable playing that area you’ve been working on, or are you still worried about it? You might be somewhere in between, for instance feeling comfortable at slow tempos but worried about playing at performance tempo. That’s okay. Just keep track of where you are and what still needs improvement.

5. Am I happy with my pitch, rhythm, tone, phrasing, and dynamics?
Playing all the right notes at the right time is often the goal of practicing musicians. And, that is a worthy goal! Once you can play the correct pitches and rhythms, make sure you can always successfully play them. Also, be sure you like how you’re playing all those notes so you sound exactly the way you want to sound.

These 5 questions let you quickly and honestly evaluate where you are in the practicing process. If there is something that needs more work, admit it honestly and focus on the needed improvements. Don’t make a big deal out of it. The whole purpose of practicing is to make those improvements!

Paying Attention to Your Gut Feelings

5 Questions that Keep You Honest

To work on honesty in the practice room, try this:

The next time you find yourself saying, “That sounds pretty good” or “I think I’ll be able to play that at the next rehearsal,” stop for a minute and decide what you really mean.

If you are truly satisfied and truly confident, then it’s okay to move on to something else.

However, if it doesn’t honestly sound good enough, or if you’re not really sure you’ll be successful at that rehearsal, then give it another try. Admit to yourself that the music needs more work and target the specific areas that need improving.

There is a big difference between saying to yourself, “That’s good enough for today” when you truly mean it and saying exactly the same thing with a twinge inside that you can actually do better.

If your gut instinct tells you the music isn’t good enough for today, then keep working. What’s the best way to keep working? Ask yourself the 5 questions and give brutally honest answers.

Your honesty will improve your music, and the truth shall set you free.

To Your Musical Success!
David Motto

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

tomorrow’s victory is today’s practice

Posted on February 9, 2017 by David Motto

Getting Ready for Tomorrow

Once you’ve got a goal in place, you’ll want to work backward from that goal to define the milestones you’ll need to accomplish to achieve your goal. Each milestone will need some strategies to keep you moving in the direction of your goal. What you do today has a direct impact on what you can accomplish tomorrow, and this process keeps going on the road to conquering your goal.

Tomorrow's victory is today's practice

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Control Performance Tempo

Posted on February 8, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
The Proven Way to Control Performance Tempos

Completely Control Your Stage Tempos in 3 Steps

Hitting Your Target Tempo for the First Time

For every song that you learn, you’ll have a performance tempo in mind. This tempo becomes a goal–a target that you want to hit consistently on stage.

The best way to work up to this tempo is to play the music accurately from the earliest stages of learning a new song. This means starting the learning process by playing VERY slowly and building muscle memory that will still be with you in the future when you need it.

After hours, days, weeks, or even months of practicing, you will finally hit your target. That day will feel like a major achievement, and you will have earned the right to congratulate and reward yourself for meeting your goal. (Really, it’s a big deal. Allow yourself to celebrate!)

Staying in Control of Your Target Tempo – Anywhere

At that point, however, you will need to create a new goal. Your new goal will be to consistently control the music at your target tempo under any circumstances.

Because, well, let’s be real: The the stage feels different than your practice room!

It’s one thing to work up to this tempo in your practice room. But, it’s quite another to have the poise and focus needed to play expressively at this tempo during a performance.

To stay in control during performances, you need a strategy in the practice room. This practice method must guarantee that you can successfully play at your target tempo while onstage.

The Proven Strategy for Maintaining Control on Stage

Here’s the proven strategy for staying in control of your tempos in performance:

Make sure you can play all of your music 10% to 20% faster than your performance tempo.

This method is sometimes called “over practicing,” and it yields amazing results. The type of results that many musicians can only dream of.

Here are a couple examples:

Example 1: If your performance tempo is 100 beats per minute (bpm), then work your technique to the level where you can play the song at 110 – 120 bpm.

Example 2: If your performance tempo is 160bpm, work up to 176 – 192 bpm. In this case, maybe 180 bpm is a good target in the practice room.

No matter what your target tempo for the stage, going beyond this tempo in the practice room means that you will never be at the very edge of your abilities in performance. Having to be at the very top, 100% or your capabilities on stage is nerve-wracking. I highly recommend that you give yourself a little “headroom” so you can settle back into your performance tempo from the more difficult tempos you’ve practiced.

 

It’s More than Control – It’s Confidence Too!

Using this practice tip, you’ll have the control and the confidence you need to succeed on stage. You’ll be able to handle the slightly faster concert tempos that sometimes occur when the adrenaline is flowing.

Knowing that your practice room training was more rigorous than the performance itself, you can approach the stage feeling confident, inspired, and ready to play.

The stage environment will seem seem downright comfortable – maybe even fun! If you’re like most musicians this will be an unusual – but welcome – feeling.

To Your Musical Success!
–David Motto

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You can’t hire someone to practice for you

Posted on February 6, 2017 by David Motto

Practice Quote for Today

You can't hire someone to practice for you

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Only Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

Posted on February 3, 2017 by David Motto

Timeless Practice Quote
-from Vince Lombardi

Only perfect practice makes perfect - Vince Lombardi

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