Know What NOT to Do

Posted on February 1, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Know What NOT to Do

Stop Fumbling Through Your Practice Sessions

This week, I’m changing my normal approach to practice tips. Instead of offering suggestions of what to do to make your practicing efficient and effective, I’m going to tell you what NOT to do. Knowing what NOT to do will save you hours of wasted time, frustration, and wondering why you’re playing isn’t getting any better.

By being aware of unsuccessful practice techniques, you can avoid them. This will lead to more productive practice sessions and greater enjoyment from playing your instrument.

Because many musicians do not receive any guidance on how to practice, they fumble their way through their practice sessions, hoping for a positive outcome. Maybe they think that playing something badly over and over again will somehow lead to a perfect performance!

5 Things NOT to Do When Practicing

1. Don’t Practice Mistakes
The errors you make while practicing CAN and WILL find their way into your performances. You can build muscle memory that is wrong just as well as you can build muscle memory that is right. Be careful!

2. Don’t Do Complete Song Runthroughs
Don’t run through a song from beginning to end every time you play it. Instead, practice the parts that truly need the work. If all you’re doing is running a song from start to finish, the easy parts will continue to be easy, and you’ll never figure out the hard parts. Avoiding runthroughs is absolutely crucial when you’re first learning a song.

3. Don’t Learn at Performance Tempo
Don’t play a song at tempo the first time through. Going “full speed ahead” the first time you attempt something will probably be disappointing and frustrating. By going slowly, you’ll be able to take control of the music more quickly and make sure that you’re building the technique needed to play all parts of the song.

4. Don’t Assume You Have Perfect Time
Working on rhythms and keeping an even tempo is a big part of mastering a song. Generally, you won’t want to trust that your interpretation of even time is completely accurate – especially when working out a challenging rhythm. It’s better to trust a metronome, drum machine, accompaniment software, or other tool designed to beat perfect time and evenly-spaced subdivisions.

5. Don’t Stay in Your Comfort Zone
Don’t spend all of your practice time playing only what’s comfortable and fun. It’s important to work every day on something that needs improvement. While you don’t want to leap too far outside of your comfort zone (which leads only to frustration), you want to always push just beyond your current technical limits.

Avoid Common Errors

Each of the five items on this list is a common error made by musicians. Making these errors will slow your progress and make you less successful. The best thing is you can combine your practice strategies and avoid all of these errors at the same time. Here’s how:

In your song, choose a very short section that you can’t yet play (so it’s just outside your comfort zone). Loop that section at a very slow tempo, playing it without mistakes along with a metronome. Do this every day!

To speed up your road to success, know what NOT to do. Then, focus on what you WILL do.

To Your Musical Success!
–David Motto

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Skip Your Warmups

Posted on January 25, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Skip Your Warmups

Some Days Are a Challenge

Though it’s a great idea to start your practice sessions with warmups, there are certain days when starting the practice process at all is a challenge.

Have you ever had that feeling? On some days, for some reason, you just can’t imagine playing your instrument. You can’t stand the thought of dealing with that one section of your song that seems unplayable.

And, scales, arpeggios, rhythm drills, and etudes? Forget about it!

We’ve all been there . . .

On those days, here’s what you need to do:

Let Go of Any Pressure

Start playing something you really, truly enjoy. Not the scale you “should” start with. Not your usual warmup routine. Not the song you’re “supposed” to be learning this week. Skip all that. Just play something you feel like playing.

Don’t even think of it as “practicing.” Think of it as “playing” instead. And, be sure to play something fun.

It’s okay to skip your warmups now and then. It’s fine to take a day off from your usual routine in the practice room.

Your musical life is not always about accomplishing something on your road to perfection. The usual pressure you put on yourself to constantly strive for increased speed, better technique, and improved musicality can be forgotten sometimes. Auditions, rehearsals, performances, and lessons – and the pressure that go with them – sometimes need to be left behind.

Something Miraculous Might Happen

When you let go of your usual expectations and do something like skipping your warmups, you can overcome the negative feelings of an “off” day and stay motivated.

And, you know what, something miraculous just might happen. On the day you least want to practice, after playing your instrument–just for the fun of it–you may just find yourself inspired. Inspired to try something new. Inspired to play differently than you usually do. Inspired about having music in your life.

So, go to your practice space (which today is your playroom) and regain the fun of playing music.

Here’s to Your Musical Success!
–David Motto

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Stop Learning Mistakes

Posted on January 18, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Stop Learning 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

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Know the Best Ways to Count

Posted on January 10, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Know the Best Ways to Count

One of the best 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.

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—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.
If you see sixteenth notes, then subdivide your count into sixteenths. 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.

Here’s to Your Musical Success!
–David Motto,

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Controlling Your Inner Voice

Posted on January 4, 2017 by David Motto

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week:
Controlling 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. At other times, it tells you that you sound great.

Either way, 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.

Here’s to Your Musical Success in 2017!

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Making Time for Music – Every Day

Posted on March 1, 2016 by David Motto

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 both 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 performers, 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, in no particular order.

These solutions often work best by finding a combination of strategies that exactly fits your situation. If even one of them speaks to you, you can create a positive change in your life.

Strategies for Making Time for Music

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.

3. 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.

12. 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.

19. 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.

23. 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.

26. 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.

32. 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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What the Grammys Teach Us About Success

Posted on February 17, 2016 by David Motto

Rock Concert

Why do some people succeed while others don’t?

After this week’s Grammy Award ceremony, there’s been a lot of talk about winners and losers – though it’s hard to think that an artist has “lost” when they’ve been nominated for a Grammy Award!

As a Grammy voter, I’m very aware of the media coverage of the awards process. But, I want to focus on a completely different aspect of the Grammys.

Let’s take a look at the Grammy broadcast itself to see what it shows us about success in all areas of life. There’s a lot to be learned from the successes and failures inherent in such a large-scale awards ceremony.

Here are 7 lessons in success from the Grammys:

1. It Takes a Huge Team to Create Success

mixing-board-sliders

From the very opening of the ceremony, with all eyes on Taylor Swift staring at the camera in her black and sequins, you instantly sense the enormous effort put in by a large team of dedicated professionals. From the band and backup singers just out of the spotlight to the stage crew, producers, sound crew and lighting team, a lot of people are working simultaneously to make this moment work. If these expert roles aren’t carried out flawlessly, you have a young singer in the dark singing to no one in particular. But, with the right team behind the public face, wow!

2. Each Team Needs a Few, Key Players

key-fire

It’s not enough just to surround yourself with a great team. That team needs a few key leaders to keep the rest of the team motivated, on task, and functioning optimally. Two of those leaders made their presence known. One was Greg Phillinganes, the music director for the Grammy show, on camera playing keyboard for Miguel’s rendition of Michael Jackson’s “She’s Out of My Life.” The other was Nigel Rodgers, playing guitar in Lady Gaga’s tribute to David Bowie. For the past four decades, each of these world-class musicians has had a hand in shaping much of the music the world listens to. Their leadership, vision, and talent make the teams behind superstar performers function at the highest levels.

3. Self-promotion is Not Only Necessary, It’s Essential

Self Promotion

The world will only beat a path to your better mousetrap if they know about it. To be successful, you must promote your ideas, products, services – and yourself. The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, is fantastic at this, calling the Grammy ceremony “music’s biggest night.” Lady Gaga is a master of promotion, even partnering with Intel for not one, but two ads about using their technology for her Grammy performance. Several new stars in the music world, including Tori Kelly and Meghan Trainor, produced their own music or promoted themselves on YouTube in order to let the world know what they were up to. Self-promotion, shameless or otherwise, is an essential component of building success.

4. Everything Changes – and Will Continue to Change

change-ahead

The world around us is constantly evolving. If you want to be successful, you’ll need be part of the new trends, technologies, expectations, and skills that will help carry you to your goal. You may even need to create some of the change yourself, like Lin-Manuel Miranda did in creating the multi-racial, hip hop musical Hamilton. Having a show like this as part of mainstream culture in the U.S. would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. And, Pentatonix? They’ve brought beatboxing into the mainstream, and it now seems normal to hear a fully arranged song performed with voices and no instruments. These changes are deservedly celebrated. Musical styles, and everything else in life, will continue to change. Success will be available only to those individuals who embrace the changes.

5. You Don’t Have to Appeal to Everyone

target-audience-niche

The Grammy Awards are a reflection of our culture and the fragmentation of tastes in the marketplace. Artists are building hugely successful careers and becoming famous while appealing to a relatively small percentage of the public. Audiences are broken into niches, and you can achieve success at whatever you do by matching your offering with the right niche audience. We only have to look at the Album of the Year category to see these niches. The Weeknd’s audience probably doesn’t ever listen to Chris Stapleton’s music – and perhaps never heard of him until they watched the Grammys. Many of Taylor Swift’s most ardent fans are too young for both the language and social consciousness in Kendrick Lamar’s work. This is the reality of our culture for all ideas, products, and services. While there may be some overlap among niche audiences, you definitely don’t have to appeal to everyone to be unbelievably successful.

6. Being Humble Always Makes You Look Good

standing-alone-sunset

The best moments of this year’s Grammy show happened when highly successful artists showed some humility and genuine awe at what was happening in their lives. Ed Sheeran clearly couldn’t believe he had won a Grammy for Song of the Year, and especially couldn’t believe that it was handed to him by Stevie Wonder. Brittany Howard, lead singer for Alabama Shakes, also seemed surprised to be on stage holding a Grammy Award, declaring that she and her band were just a bunch of high school friends when they got started. Moments like these show the rest of the world how to behave when success comes. There are plenty of successful musicians whose behavior is egotistical and rude. It feels good to see some humility.

7. Mistakes Happen

oops

Successful people are not successful all the time. Mistakes and difficulties were clearly on view during this year’s Grammys, and the night was a success regardless. Ariana Grande had difficulty making her way up some stairs in her dress and heals, and she had to deliver a poorly written joke. Adele seemed distracted by what’s been reported as a technical issue, and her performance suffered. Ed Sheeran and Amy Wadge got abruptly cut off during their acceptance speeches for Song of the Year, when video of the late Glenn Frey took over and segued into a Jackson Brown / Eagles performance. These were clearly difficulties in the live show, but these artists will move on to their next successes. Mistakes are an inevitable part of life. Recovering from mistakes is a hallmark trait of successful people.

Awards shows, the music industry, and popular culture itself all offer valuable lessons and insights for anyone finding their path to success. This year’s Grammy Awards broadcast was both a reflection of and an example of what it takes to build success in your life.

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Here’s How I Quickly Set Up Practice Loops for Any Song

Posted on November 16, 2015 by David Motto

One of my Top Ten Practice Tips for making your practice time efficient and effective is to “Break It Down.” This means playing through very short sections of a song, looping each section, instead of going through the entire song from start to finish.

If you want your loops to be really effective, I recommend playing along with a recording.

Here are two free tools to use for creating the exact loops you need:

1. YouTubeMp3

Youtube-MP3-Screenshot YouTubemp3.org is a browser-based application that will convert any YouTube video into an mp3 file. So, you’ll end up with just the music! This is a great way to access some music that you don’t want to own.

How to Use YouTubeMp3

(1) Find the right video on YouTube and copy the web address (URL) for that webpage.

(2) Go to www.youtube-mp3.org, paste in the YouTube URL, and click Convert Video.

(3) When the video has converted, click the Download link.

2. Audacity

Audacity is free software that can be used to record music, play back recordings, change playback tempo without changing pitch, and create loops.

How to Use Audacity to Create a Playback Loop

The first time you create a loop in Audacity, it’s a bit tedious and time-consuming. Once you’ve created your first practice loop, you’ll have a long-term tool to use whenever you practice.

(1) Load your mp3 audio file into Audacity:
(a) Go to the File \ Import \ Audio menu.
(b) Find the mp3 file you want to import and upload the file.

(2) You will now see a visual representation of the song in Audacity.

(3) Play the song and find the section you want to loop.

(4) Create your loop using these steps:
(a) Highlight the section of the song you want to loop.
(b) Copy this section.
(c) Go to: Tracks \ Add New \ Audio Track (or Stereo Track)
(d) In the new Track, Paste in your copied section.
(e) Go to Effect \ Repeat and choose how many times you want your loop to repeat.
(f) If you haven’t already done so, now would be a great time to save your file!

(5) Play back your loop using these steps:
(a) Click the Solo button in your new track.
(b) Click the Play icon.

Bonus Tip: Slow Down Your Loop

When using Audacity for playback of your loop, you can have the music play at a slower tempo without changing the pitch! This is perfect for efficient, effective practicing.

Just follow these two steps in Audacity:

Audacity-Tempo-Control-Image-01

Having recorded loops to practice with will make your practice sessions more fun and more effective.

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Posted in Achieving Goals, Music, Music Practice Tips, Ten Minute Virtuoso, Tools for Musicians | 1 Comment

10 Ways to Stop Wasting Money on Music Lessons

Posted on October 26, 2015 by David Motto

Burning-Money-01

Musicians waste huge amounts of money when they take lessons.

I’m not saying music lessons are a waste of money. They’re not. Taking private lessons can turbocharge your musical progress.

I’m not talking about paying too much per hour for your music lessons. Really good teachers are worth every penny.

And, I’m not saying that music lessons are a waste of time. I fully believe that having a great teacher who personalizes information just for you is a great use of your time and money and will make playing music more fun and rewarding.

Here’s what I am talking about:

Most musicians aren’t taking advantage of everything they could be doing to get the absolute most out of their lesson experience. They’re missing opportunities that are costing them time, money, and effort. Because of these missed opportunities, these musicians are learning more slowly, advancing their skills less rapidly, and enduring unnecessary frustration.

Getting the Most Out of the Money You’re Spending on Lessons

1. Leave Every Lesson with a Written List of WHAT to Practice

Lessons are funny. Unlike working out at a gym, where the benefit comes from the workout itself, the benefit of lessons happens in between the lessons. Each time you see your teacher, they’ll make some corrections to your playing and give you some new material to work on. Then, your musical workout happens at home, when you’re by yourself. If you do not have a specific list of what to do, then your practicing (your musical workout) is a waste of time.

2. Get Better Information on HOW to Practice

Even when you do leave your lesson with a list of WHAT to practice, you may have no information on HOW to practice those items. So, you get home from your lesson, hopefully fired up to build your skills and finally learn that song you love, and you truly have no idea what to do first, second, or third. So, you’re stuck … again. This can go on for years if you’re not careful! Make sure you ask your teacher about the exact process you should be using when you practice at home. If your teacher can’t help you, get my Top Ten Practice Tips eBook.

3. Shoot Video at Your Lessons

If your smartphone is in your pocket during your lesson, you are missing a huge opportunity. During each lesson, (1) your teacher can shoot video of you playing to clearly point out something technical that needs correcting, and (2) you can shoot video of your teacher playing something and talking about the details you’ll need to focus on when you’re at home practicing.

4. Make Sure You Have Near-Term and a Long-Term Goals

Too many musicians start taking lessons because they want to “learn how to play the guitar” or “become a singer.” These ideas are so vague that they can’t really be called goals at all. Your lesson teacher won’t really know what to do with you if you aren’t more specific. You’ll get a lot more out of your lessons if you tell your teacher something like this: “I want to go to a blues jam session in about six months, and my real long-term goal is to play Stairway to Heaven.” With these specific goals out in the open, you will make a lot more progress, and your teacher will give you better lessons. This will give you a lot more bang for the bucks you’re spending.

5. Study with a Great Teacher, Not a Great Player

You may be studying with someone who is an amazing player but who is a mediocre, unfocused teacher. (OK, I’ll just come right out and say it: This person is a BAD teacher.) Just because a musician plays great does not mean that they can explain to others how to build the many, individual skills needed so you can also play great. Some virtuoso players acquired their skills so naturally that they’ve never really had to think of all the steps needed to perfect a specific skill. A famous, virtuoso player cannot necessarily help YOU become a virtuoso player. Find someone who knows how to teach.

6. Make Sure Your Teacher is Exactly Right for You

Even if you’ve found someone who has all the credential and is clearly a great teacher, they still could be the wrong teacher for YOU. Your teacher has to be fully on board with all of your goals. They must understand how to teach someone of your age, gender, level, and learning style. (Yes, learning style. The great teachers have more than just knowledge of music.) They need to understand the genre you’re most interested in. They must be able to give you exercises that get you closer to playing the songs you want to play. If you want more detailed information on how to find the perfect teacher, get my eBook on everything you need to know before hiring a music teacher.

7. Know the Difference Between Practicing and Performing

Oh, sure, you think you understand this, but you and your teacher have never really, truly had the talk. This is the discussion where your teacher tells you the number one secret of the world’s top musicians. What’s that secret? It’s this: Trying to perform a song by always playing through it from beginning to end, only to stop constantly to make little fixes when you play something wrong, is NOT practicing. That process (which I call the SAD Syndrome) is just a lame attempt to perform a song, as if you’re on stage. It has nothing to do with building muscle memory, improving your skills, and making you a better musician. You need to replace these unsuccessful attempts at playing through a song with something completely different, which is the focus of my Ten Minute Virtuoso method.

8. Never Try to Perform a Song Immediately

In addition to spending practice time attempting to play songs from start to finish, most music students think that, when they return for the next lesson, they should be able to perform the song assigned to them. Nothing could be further from the truth! If you think you’re going to get a new song up to performance readiness in a week, you’ll make all kinds of errors that will have long-term, detrimental effects on your forward progress. A more realistic way to spend your week is to have Mastery Goals, not Performance Goals. For instance, your Mastery Goal for the week might look something like this: I will have the A section of the song under control at 1/3 of performance speed, and I will figure out how I’m going to technically control the B section (fingerings, shifts, phrases, breathing, etc) and then work on the B section at 1/10 speed next week. These are goals you can actually achieve.

9. Be Completely Honest with Your Teacher

Don’t lie to your lesson teacher. Let’s say you played for an hour every day this week. And, let’s say that 55 minutes of that daily playing was spent on your favorite licks instead of working through your practice list. If that’s the case, please don’t tell your teacher that you practiced for an hour a day. Instead, tell them exactly what you did. Actually say, “I played an hour a day, but only five minutes a day was really practicing.” Your teacher will respect you more, you will respect yourself more, and your lesson will be tailored to this information.

10. Have Laserlike Focus Between Lessons

If you’re like most musicians, you do exactly what I just talked about: spend most of your practice sessions jamming on your favorite riff or playing through your favorite song while occasionally spending a few minutes of your practice time actually doing the stuff your teacher asked you to do. Why not reverse this? Do the warmup exercises, scales & arpeggios, technical details, and other boring material first. Then, work on the song you’re doing at the lesson. Only if you get through this stuff do you then reward yourself with a personal jam session, playing all your favorite licks, riffs, and songs. You already know how to play this music, so playing it can hardly be called “practicing” anyway!

11. (BONUS TIP) Write Everything Down Between Lessons

Each day when you practice, certain questions or issues will come up. Write these things down so you can ask your teacher about them at your next lesson. You will NOT remember these things if you don’t somehow capture them. Write them in a notebook, put a text or voice memo on your phone, or use whatever system works for you. But, put these ideas somewhere! The same goes for your metronome markings, reminders of where to start tomorrow’s practice session, and exactly what you accomplished today. Don’t trust your memory! If you’re looking for a system to help you, check out my Musician’s Practice Planner, the perfect place to write all this stuff down.

Any one of these Top Ten (er…eleven) Tips can have a huge impact on how much you’re getting out of your music lessons. Use all of them, and you’re likely to make twice the progress you’re making now!

Get my FREE Resources to become a better musician today.

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

7 Visualization Essentials

Posted on June 23, 2015 by David Motto

There’s a lot more to visualization than seeing yourself being successful.

Visualization-from-Stage

I’ve talked before about how the word “visualization” is incomplete. It makes you think only of seeing things. Some performance psychologists and researchers are now saying “mental imagery” instead. That’s a little better. But, it still doesn’t capture the depth of what you’re doing during the visualization process.

When you create a successful visualization, you’ll immerse yourself in a multi-sensory, three-dimensional, better-than reality, all-in experience.

Why do I say “better than reality”? I say this because there is one crucial difference between the real world and the reality you create in your visualization. In your visualization, you are in total control of everything.

Think about that:

Total Control of Everything.

This ability to manipulate and control what happens in your visualization is one of the reasons the process is so powerful.

I’ve defined seven elements that make the visualization process successful and worthwhile. These seven include all five of your senses plus two extra elements that are crucial to your success. And, you control all seven!

The 7 Elements of Successful Visualizations

1. Sight

This is the sense that visualization is named for. It’s clearly important for the process to be successful. In your visualization try to see as much as possible:

The view of the performance space from the stage
What it looks like when you look around in all directions (including up and down)
Where the other musicians will be in relation to you
The face of someone in the audience whose presence you’re particularly dreading
The flashes, screens, and reflections from the cell phones trained on you from the audience
Stage lighting that is in your eye or is too bright

The more you can see in your visualization the better.

2. Hearing

As a musician, your ability to focus on hearing clearly is essential to your success. In your visualization try to hear everything you might encounter during a performance:

The sound of your instrument

Your intonation

The specific tone/timbre you produce at different points in the music

The sounds of the other instruments or singers on stage

Distractions like someone coughing in the audience, surprising applause or calling out from the audience or, for restaurant/club gigs, espresso machines and blenders

You will spend most of your visualization time focused on what you sound like as you “perform.” Recognizing that there will be other sounds around you is also important though.

3. Touch

Imagine being so immersed in your visualization that you not only hear yourself playing, but you actually feel what it’s like to be playing. There are many parts of using touch effectively:

Feeling the temperature and texture of your instrument
Feeling what it’s like as you manipulate your instrument to play the most difficult section of your song(s)
Noticing the temperature or any breezes that are in the air in the performance space
Paying attention to how your fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, back, and legs feel
Feeling your mouth, throat and breath as you prepare each phrase

4. Smell

Many musicians look at me like I’m crazy when I start talking about anything beyond sight, sound, and touch in visualizations.

If you can make your visualization so realistic that you include smell, you will have a better experience and a stronger outcome from the visualization. Here are some smells you may encounter in actual performance venues that can be incorporated into your visualization:

The Surroundings: the dust in the theatre, the smell of beer on the microphone, cigarette smoke in the air, food cooking in the kitchen
Instrument Accessories: Violinists smell the rosin on their bows, piano players notice the polish used to shine the wood, brass players smell valve oil
People: Perfumes, colognes, sweat, fabric softener. The strange truth is, in most performance situations you will smell the people around you.

5. Taste

Taste is also difficult to imagine for most musicians. But, like smell, adding taste to your visualization gives your brain additional information to make the scene real. Here are tastes some musicians encounter when they perform:

Wind and brass players actually taste their instruments.
Many musicians always eat or drink the same thing just before going on stage: a shot of whiskey, a breath mint, a cough drop. If you do have a performance ritual like this, make sure it’s part of your visualization.
Some musicians talk about the taste of fear. It’s really adrenaline and many performers feel and taste this on the roof of their mouth. If that describes you, put it in your visualization. Then, take control of this taste and eliminate it.

6. Thoughts

Your visualizations will be more effective if you move beyond using just your five senses. As you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste the surroundings in your imagery, what are you thinking about? Are your thoughts supporting your success? Or, are your thoughts detrimental to your success? Some things to notice during your visualization:

Are you staying focused on the performance? Or, is your mind wandering?
When you get to a particularly challenging section of music, what are you thinking about?
Before you even start a performance runthrough in your visualization, are you thinking you’ll be successful?

Controlling your thoughts during a visualization is crucial to having the visualization process work effectively for you.

7. Emotions

Inevitably, your thoughts will lead to certain emotions rising up during your visualization. Please pay very close attention to these emotions. They tend to cause more thoughts to come into your mind. In turn, those thoughts make more emotions rise up from deep inside you. Try these strategies:

Change any negative thoughts and emotions into positive, supportive ones. (Remember: You are in control!!)
Try to create a positive spiral of emotions, with emotions cascading into positive thoughts, which then form more positive emotions.
Think about why any negative emotions might be there in the first place. Are they always showing up in the same section of the music? Are the difficult emotions about the performance itself, or about something external? External issues include feedback and criticism from others, what the performance will do for your life, or how difficult it’s been to prepare for the gig.

Your mind is essentially the most powerful virtual reality and augmented reality app ever conceived of. If you utilize this power correctly, you can formulate visualizations that improve your skills, your memorization, and your performances.

Be sure to recognize the thoughts and emotions that come up as you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste what it’s like to be on stage. Your visualization can prepare you for the real performance and propel your music to new heights.

Posted in Achieving Goals, Positive Thinking, Visualization | Leave a comment

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week: Know What NOT to Do

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week: Skip Your Warmups

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week: Stop Learning Mistakes

David Motto’s Practice Tip of the Week: Know the Best Ways to Count

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