Taking Selfies with Sound Five Approaches to Use When Recording Ourselves

There have been times when I would feel that my rate of improvement didn’t line up with the large chunks of time I was spending at the instrument practicing. Sometimes practicing a lot isn’t enough. We need other methods to elevate our playing and bring cohesion to all the concepts we are working through.

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The Secret Life of Triads Four Ways to Make Triads Work for You

One of the biggest breakthroughs I had when learning to play music came during a painfully frustrating time. I was trying to work out a lot of Bill Evans material in college and I just couldn’t make it sound good. I spent a lot of hours that didn’t equate to improvement. I was studying with an amazing teacher who could rip through the stuff with ease. He also sensed something wasn’t clicking and said, “You know, everything comes down to triads.”

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Using Restrictions to Develop Creativity Three ways to encourage both creative and accurate playing

Creativity can be an elusive quality to develop. There are many kids and people who seem inclined to do their own things and do them their own way. As teachers, we often categorize these students as creative and do one of three things:

  1. We spend time letting them explore their ideas. Often enamored with their ability to create , we try and not to push them too hard in directions that are not inline with what they want to do so we don’t squash their joy and passion for creativity.
  2. We try to snap them into our program, curriculum or methodology. We don’t encourage creativity until they get certain things on our agenda as teachers within their grasp – if ever.
  3. We do some combination of numbers 1 and 2 above. We dedicate time to both exploration and method.

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