Run smarter, more effective, and more efficient rehearsals with these tips and resources for getting the most out of your practice time.
Welcome to the second installment of How Successful Musicians Practice. If you’re just joining us now, take a minute to peruse the practice regimes of some seriously successful percussionists here. To recap, I see there being four kinds of practice goals a musician works towards over the course of their career: practicing to learn an instrument and gain…
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. You’ve done it. You’ve crafted a song from start to finish. Perhaps a couple songs. You’ve poured your heart and soul into your music and spent hours…
Along the road to becoming a successful musician, one encounters quite a few “P” words: patience, perseverance, posture, pain, etc. However, the most important of these words is undeniably and frustratingly, “practice.” I’ve personally had a love/hate relationship with practice since 2002. I can remember quite clearly my mother insisting that I practice my drums on a…
By Colleen Kinsey Guitar player: Check. Drummer: Check. Bassist: Check. That’s not a band, yet. You still need to get it together, and that means rehearsals. It takes a lot of practice to mesh the experience and styles that each player brings to your band. Get everybody together regularly, not only to practice for the next gig, but also…
If you’re one of the human beings on Earth born with two functional ears, you should consider yourself lucky. Not only are you a miracle of evolution and natural selection, but you get to experience the vibration of air molecules and interpret them as different sounds! According to Ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus, “we have two…
Improvisation looks effortless and cool — until you try to do it. In reality, spontaneously composing is one of the most difficult things a musician can attempt, and it takes practice. There are a number of crafts that a musician must master to be a good improviser. Technical ability and music theory knowledge are important,…
By Harvey Grant As musicians, we can spend so long trying to improve our technique in terms of scales and “speed” that we bypass one of the most important factors in the success of a piece: timing. Sure, you may say that Glenn Gould didn’t stick precisely to the given measures of Bach’s Goldberg Variations,…
+ Improve your songwriting with Soundfly! Explore our range of courses on emotional chord progressions, basic songwriting technique, songwriting for producers, and many more. Subscribe for unlimited access here. “Practice makes perfect” is a classic cliché — it contains elements of the truth but misses the whole story by a long shot. As musicians, we’ve all experienced times when we…
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Memorizing music is invaluable in the eternal quest of learning and growth. From strengthening your ears to widening your understanding of compositional structure and recognizing patterns, there…
Most of us have a few horror stories involving raised voices, fallen tears, or temper tantrums. There was a time when I thought bad rehearsals were just one of the growing pains every band has to go through — as though a group wasn’t legit until someone kicked over a music stand. Thankfully, I have since…
