Jonathan Harnum's Blog, page 4

James Rhodes Plays Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C Major: You Can Too in 6 Weeks

Get the book here.

Top 10 Practice Strategies

This is today’s top 10. On any other day, I might list different strategies. They’re all important.

Don’t wait to understand something (practice, music theory, scales, love, whatever). Do it first. Do it a lot. The understanding will come later.GO SLOWLY! This is perhaps the most difficult and yet the simplest item on the list. At the most fundamental level, all you’re doing is training your coordination. That must be done slowly enough to avoid all errors and remain relaxed. It’s more of a challenge than it seems. Find out for yourself. Rest. Rest takes many forms, but it’s the short stuff I want to emphasize. Try this today: After working on a passage/lick/chord/whatever a bunch of times, pause for 10-20 seconds. Then begin again. It’s called micro rest and it’s a secret super-power. Here’s Why. Longer rest is important, too, including spending time in the land of Morpheus. Yes, I’m talking sleep, an issue worthy of many words.Use a metronome and rhythm backing tracks (Drum Genius, iTabla, Afro Cuban Drum Machine, etc). Stop whining about it and/or making excuses. Do it. It’ll show you where your rhythm is weak. Make your rhythm strong. Related to this is a hack to get something faster. It’s simple, but not intuitive. Learn the trick and the study that inspired it here. https://amzn.to/2EFmILC

6. Balance your skills. If you learned to read music (band, choir, orchestra) and use reading as your primary way of playing, start playing by ear. Use a favorite song, something you know well to get started. If you’re an ear player, start learning the basics of reading music. I can get kids as young as 4 or 5 reading rhythms in less than 5 minutes (I like to use Froseth cards and method).

7. Memorize songs. This is mostly for those of us who learned in large ensembles, playing parts. In my experience–even after 7 years of study–few school-trained music students can play a full melody from memory. Isn’t that amazing and sad? Memorize songs.

8. Listen to music and musicians! Seems like no-brainer, right? Listen to examples of the music you’re working on. And go listen to live music any chance you get. Make listening part of your practice every day. In many ways, it’s even better for you than prcticing on your instrument, especially for beginners or when you’re just starting to learn a tune/piece/song.

9. Study with the best private teacher you can find and afford. You will accelerate your progress by leaps and bounds. Music has always been a master/apprentice relationship. One-on-one is superior in many more ways than learning in a large group. It doesn’t have to be weekly, though that’s best. Take a lesson, work on the stuff you get, then take another when you’re ready.

10. Don’t give up. Ever. This is a damn slow process for most of us. Glacially slow. Playing music is like asparagus. Or a fruit tree. You’ve got to grow for a few years before the thing will sustain you. Persistence is key. Frustration and impatience are normal and you will feel them, but try as best you can to ignore and/or banish those feelings and just get on with it.

Good luck!

Practice You Can’t Do On Purpose: Recovering From Mistakes

Mistakes happen. It’s one of those truisms like death and taxes. Mistakes happen all the time, especially when playing music. It’s essential that you learn how to recover from them.

Practicing recovery from mistakes is essential, but it’s weird: you can’t do it on purpose, because a mistake is unplanned. You have to wait until a mistake happens in order to practice recovering from one, and there’s the challenge.

Nearly every student I have works on mistake recovery because it’s natural to make a mistake, then back up and hit the passage again as you move on, but that’s exactly what you don’t want to do.

If the mistake is consistent, you do want to stop everything and take enough time to drill away that mistake. If your goal is playing through the tune, you’ve got to keep moving. It’s like stumbling when you’re walking somewhere. You don’t go back and try that step again, right? You just keep moving and if you’re lucky and nimble, you won’t fall on your face.

If at all possible, keep the rhythm/groove going and continue ahead without stopping. A wrong not is less jarring than losing the groove/rhythm. Remember the mistake, so you can go back and smooth it out if necessary, but don’t stop.

You can make mistakes more likely to happen by:

going a little faster than normalchanging the setting in which you play: posture, room, people, instrument, etc.changing anything, really, will increase errors. Use your imagination.

Good luck!

Consolidation of human skill linked to waking hippocampo-neocortical replay

Going full-on science nerd with this link.

Fascinating study documenting micro-rest and its impact on skill-learning from Ethan R.Buch156LeonardoClaudino125RomainQuentin13MarleneBönstrup14Leonardo G.Cohen

Neuroscience of How to Learn SKills Quickly (Huberman Episode 20)

Skip to 16:16 (sixteen minutes, sixteen seconds) in to get to the skill acquisition stuff. Note “chapters” in the YouTube progress bar.

Remove Recording Noise (Hiss, Hum, etc.) with Audacity (Free Program)

I use this Audacity a LOT, even though I have several more high-end programs, because it’s quick and easy (and free: tutorial to get it here).

5 Ways to Listen for Better Practice: Jean Laurenz

Build (and Play) Minor Scales: Natural, Harmonic, Melodic. (Also the difference between parallel and relative minor)

From the Basic Music Theory video course: 50% OFF.
Also available in Book Form, or
Audiobook (free for first-timers)

Bass Legend Ron Carter On Lessons Learned Over His +60-Year Career

The world’s most recorded jazz bassist: 2,221 Recordings (and counting). Whew!

Matter Is Music Solidified

See also:

Golden Ratio, Fibonacci sequence, and Overtones