Our music education
Blog
for parents and students.
Are you tired of playing the same old chords over and over again, only to produce the same sound? There are always additional notes we can add to chords to add much more “flavor”. In fact, music wouldn’t be the same today without the bold inventions and creativity of artists with unconventional chords. The list of available combinations of notes to form a chord (any three notes played at the same time) is very long, so for the purposes of this article we will explore the most basic options.
Every experienced musician could say that their time spent practicing defined their abilities as a player or a singer. Just like in any other construct of society, the time we spend preparing and developing pays off in the end. Although there are no “right” answers on how to practice, my hope is that a point discussed in this post will somehow make you better at practicing.
A lot of students have a hard time reading and understanding rhythms. We're talking quarter notes, eighth notes, whole notes, etc. All that stuff is so crucial to a music student's success, but it can be tricky to grasp when they're first learning what it all means.
I used to struggle to try to have my students memorize all these note names and their beat duration, until one day - out of thin air - I thought of a little visual explanation...
I am primarily a drum set player, and I remember when I started noticing a decent amount of lower back pain after a season of lots of practicing and not a lot of exercising. So, I started exercising and focusing on my posture and core strength, and over time, the tension in my lower back from playing the drums diminished to the point of non-existence.
There is a fantastic infographic, created by our friends at TakeLessons, that highlights 10 of the best fitness exercises and stretches for musicians. Check it out and take some notes...
Today I'm going to be talking about that aspect of music education that is far too often overlooked: Ear Training. If I'm being totally honest, I myself didn't really understand the profound value of ear training until I was studying music in college and was required to take three semesters of Ear Training class.
For me, musical ear training was a skill set that I didn't really realize the value of until I had it. So, I'm going try to help you see the value before I did by giving you 3 reasons why ear training matters for your music student and 3 suggestions on how you can help him/her develop their ear.
For most of my musical journey, I didn’t really know how to practice. I never really had a method, and I found myself spending a lot of time practicing with no direction. Throughout music history, music has been passed down through mentorship relationships. In a similar fashion, these four best-practices for nailing the art of practicing music were passed to me by jazz saxophonist and composer, and my mentor, Diego Rivera. Here they are...
In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell convincingly asserts that, "Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness." Many of us have heard this concept before: in order to reach a world-class level of expertise in a given field, you have to spend 10,000 hours working on it. There is one majorly overlooked caveat, though, that Gladwell writes about in his book: Not all practice time is created equal. This is huge for the growing musician. There are techniques, strategies, and thought processes that can help you learn what you are working on, faster. And who wouldn't want that?
So today we're going to focus on applying two of those efficient practicing techniques to the drum set. If your student doesn't play the drums, that's ok! These techniques can be applied to any instrument and can help you advance quickly during your practice time...
