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The Golden Rule of Practicing (Part 1 of 2)
Don’t make Beethoven mad. Practicing. A dreadful, scary word to music students the world over. But it doesn’t have to be scary. Practicing is simply conscious effort aimed at learning …
View ArticleThe Golden Rule of Practicing (Part 2 of 2)
In Part 1, I introduced the Golden Rule of Practicing, which is to stop before making a mistake. Paraphrasing the traditional Golden Rule, we could also put it like …
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11 Tips for Beginning Adult Piano Players
Adult beginner? Here are 11 ways you can optimize your learning experience and your progress: Buy or rent the best instrument you can afford. Minimally, get an acoustic …
View ArticleWhat Does It Take to Learn Jazz?
What does it really take to learn how to play jazz? Well, that depends on what you mean by jazz. If you mean playing jazzy-sounding tunes appropriate for your skill …
View ArticlePiano Mastery (Part 1): Practice for the Sake of Practicing
As a piano teacher with an abiding interest in numerous subjects from business to psychology and human potential, from time to time I will explore the connections between these other …
View ArticlePiano Mastery (Part 2): The Dabbler, Obsessive, and Hacker
“Goals are important. But they exist in the future and the past, beyond the pale of the sensory realm. Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present. You …
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Piano Mastery (Part 3): The Five Keys to Mastery
In Part Two of this exploration of George Leonard’s ideas about mastery, I described three personality types and how they deal with the inevitable “plateaus” that are part of the …
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Piano Mastery (Part 4): Dealing with Homeostasis
Art Tatum, Master In Part Three of this exploration of George Leonard’s ideas about mastery, I explored Leonard’s “five keys” to mastery. In this final post we’ll take a …
View ArticleIs Mindfulness Relevant to Piano Playing?
From 2007 to 2014, I taught an undergraduate course on mindfulness at Indiana University Bloomington that was academic yet also highly experiential. (Not surprisingly, a number of talented IU Jacobs …
View ArticleBecoming a Self-Learning Pianist
Unlike K-12 school students, piano students usually spend just one hour per week with their teacher. The time between lessons is spent practicing what has been discussed in the lesson.…
View ArticleHow to Play 3 Notes Against 2
Every aspiring keyboardist will eventually be confronted with the challenge of accurately playing three notes in one hand against two in the other. This is otherwise known as a polyrhythm…
View ArticleDeliberate Piano Practice (Part 1)
In his book Talent Is Overrated, author Geoff Colvin considers what makes world-class performers different from everybody else. It’s an intriguing thesis and obviously highly relevant to musicians....
View ArticleDeliberate Piano Practice (Part 2)
In Part 1, I discussed performance guru Geoff Colvin’s assertion that superior performance is associated with “deliberate practice.” In this post I’ll consider how a pianist (indeed, any musician) …
View ArticleHow to Succeed As an Adult Piano Student
The goal of this article is to assess the most important factors for long-term success as an adult piano student, and to help students and teachers improve the odds that …
View ArticleStrategies for Maintaining Student Interest In a Piece
Every piano teacher has experienced the frustration of a student losing interest in a piece before he or she has mastered it. At worst, this becomes a pattern and the …
View ArticleFour Essential Practicing Strategies for Piano Students
Learn by Sight and by Ear Reading music is a vital skill, possessed by nearly all professional pianists. There is more music written for the piano than any other instrument. …
View Article8 Foundations for Better Piano Practicing
Before we even sit down to practice the piano, certain things need to happen, and others will optimally happen. Putting the following foundations into practice before you practice can help …
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