Unlocking Excellence in Music, Mind, and Practice

Parents, teachers and mentors they all take care of us and it feels wonderful. But even under their wings there are times where you are left alone to be taken care by yourself. Practicing an instrument, writing or any other art form requires a great amount of time...

I always ask my students to come up with a list of (at least) 10 different ways to play a melody or solo. Sparkling creative spirits in music is all about figuring out new and exciting ways to do manageable and pleasurable things sound different. Add character,...

Have you ever felt stuck in a rut? Jazz is all about expressing oneself creatively. But sometimes that liberating state of mind kind of feels closer to a rat in the cage than a lion out in the wild. Unleashing creativity is all about thinking outside of the box....

Did you know that the areas of the brain activated while playing from memory are deactivated during improvisation? Playing a written melody and improvising a solo activates different regions of the brain. We all have a Classical musician friend unable to...

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” (William Arthur Ward) The Center for Music Learning (in the University of Texas Austin’s) is at the forefront of...

It’s Summertime! “The livin’ is easyFish are jumpin’ and the cotton is highYour daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’So hush little baby, Don’t you cry” Sunny weather, drinking cocktails by the pool, bikini girls walking around, running, hiking and biking with...

Is the need to be perfect (or perform perfectly) the most polished way of showing (or disguising) solicitude, insecurity or the impostor syndrome? The topic always reminds me one of my favourite movies of all time and the winning Oscar laureate Natalie Portman for her...

Practicing an instrument and performing live events is what the musician is doing for a living. We can call it work, right? Training, practice session, gig, if you will! 😉 Worrying is a major obstruction to peak performance. Feeling concern harms resting,...

Anders Ericsson’s research on the 10.000 hour rule to achieve mastery has become a corner-stone to every world-class achiever’s frame of mind. 10.000 hours of deliberate practice equals 10 years of hard work. There upon one should ask: how should...

Confidence is one of the winners’ mental characteristics which plays bigger part in one’s development and growth. Confidence is like the Sun which all other character traits circle around. The way you move, the way you talk to yourself, the way you face adversity, the...

Though learning and applying the best practice regimes there will never going to be a guaranteed 100% bulletproof certainty that it will result in achieving our highest goals. Olympic champions are a good example of it. To qualify for the competition they have to...

Strengthening weak skills is the 3rd strategy top performers use to stay ahead in their game. You may realize a décalage between the amount of attention you give to different working areas or skills. You may realize you concentrate more energy working on...

Michael Jordan is probably the greatest sports performer of all time. Opponents often categorize him as “impossible to stop”. How can you stop MJ? You can’t! Well… there is a way: Don’t let him practice 🙂 Practice leads to skills maintenance and...

After studying Top Performers at practice one can observe 5 different strategies used: 1 – Ability to handle mistakes; 2 – Maintenance and improvement; 3 – Focus on weaker areas of expertise; 4 – Mental resilience; 5 – Confidence strengthening. Let’s go through them...

Try multiple variations of the same exercise, weather in time, speed, rhythm, posture, fingering or anything it comes to mind. Real time performance implies unexpected stuff to happen. The perfect conditions to perform are only available in our heads so we should be...

Re-order your topics and subjects in an interleaved fashion. This way you’ll prevent yourself from boredom and continuously trigger your brain to new things. In the long run switching randomly through subjects will improve your ability to acquire and retain...

Spaced Practice is the process of using small numbers of repetitions spaced several times through the course of a day, week or month. Think about it this way. You ask a foreign friend how to say “I Love You” in their language. Will you repeat the expression...

Proper practice prevents poor performances. Top performers aim to grow as human beings so they work their craftsmanship. Great performance is the main goal, so we practice to perform better. But the way top performers reach their peak and enhance their abilities is...

Last week, in Part I we covered: 1 – Overwhelming; 2 – Things we don’t enjoy: A) Anxiety B) Inadequacy C) Comparisons Let’s resume the Mindful path to deal with procrastination. . 3 – How to deal with our mind’s suffering stories about an activity? Our mind often...

Even the most driven, successful, resourceful, motivated and well-intentioned person in the world deals with inspiration breaks, time offs, laziness and gets spaced out, every once in a while. The difference maker, then, is to know one self, acknowledge the...

John Wooden is recognized to be the most successful coach in the history of collective professional sports. Ten times NCAA basketball champion in 12 years, he achieved an unprecedented record of 7 titles in a row. Yes, SEVEN! Can you guess how many times in the...

A Masters responsibility is not to find talent. You can’t find talent. Hence, the disciple’s responsibility is, first hand, to work on the fundamentals. Only then both can see where it led. The ability to communicate ideas and translate them into the seamless...

Giving credit to our youngsters can boost their confidence as much as criticism can bring them down. You’ve got to be very careful on how you talk to them and what you say, because they feel things more acutely. Skill building is a confidence acquiring process. Once...

Persistence is the amount of time a person is willing to work to find the solution to a problem. It is variable considering each one’s motivation. Motivation equals disrupting a present comfort in search of a future achievable goal or benefit. It represents an action...

Deep practice requires energy, passion and commitment. So, how can we fuel our motivation, inspiration and creativity to continuously practice and perform on the edge of our abilities? How are motivation, enthusiasm and energy created and sustained? Where is the...

Attentive repetition is the most effective way to build skill. The execution of the action is absolutely imperative and irreplaceable to build and maintain the expert level of proficiency. So, daily practice matters. A lot! But how much repetition is desirable,...

A 2nd degree of Deep Practicing implies breaking the task into the smallest possible chunks. The former idea of Chunking is now taken into extremes. While working on a piece of music, the deep practitioner will divide each musical bar and study it as a new and...

The process of acquiring higher skills revolves around design strategy. What is the best strategy to play an instrument, drive race cars, cook like a chef, practice professional sports, read books faster, travel around the world, set up a business and so forth? This...

After a Pilates/Yoga workout session one of my students started talking about running Lisbon’s half marathon. The 62-year-old man ran 17 Kilometres in 43 minutes and had made it in 42 minutes once. “The most difficult part is not the race, it’s the preparation...

Here’s a deep thought for you: Are you interested in studying Experts and Masters or are you interested in becoming one? Aristotle said that excellence is a habit. He was right. Deep practice is basically the best possible way to practice. It is the process to acquire...

A targeted effort can increase learning velocity. Yes, is that simple! Here is how it works: Myelin is a microscopic neural substance that adds a vast amount of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. It is activated, keeps growing and is optimized by...

New talent arising is not the product of a single phenomenon. If we think about some historical examples, such as the Florence Artists of the Renaissance, we can identify a pattern: Talent tends to appear in clusters. There is a proportional leap in talent...

1 – Listen to a song you like a few times. 2 – Start playing it. 3 – Focus on the score. 4 – Play and Sing the 1st phrase. 5 – Star over from the beginning. 6 – Add the next note and/or phrase. 7 – Replay it in your mind. 8 – Start again. 9 – At each try, add spirit,...

If 80% of our results come from 20% of our actions (“Pareto’s Law”) and if self-improvements occur gradually and cumulatively (“Theory Of Marginal Gains”) we should start focusing on that juicy 20% to working on that. Let’s focus specifically on...

Success is not a question of social thriving but an inner inevitability to everyone who is happy doing what he is doing regardless of the results desired. In our society we’re brought up to think, feel and believe that if we work harder we’ll be...

When we start to play an instrument everything seems magical. It’s fun and exciting as a social experience and when you’re practicing it never feels like you’re alone. You’re always listening to your favourite songs and your guitar never let’s you down. It’s like a...

I grew up inspired by stories about Masters, people who excel themselves and lead by example. Not because they want to but because their community and their peers follow their beliefs. Mr Myagi’s fictional persona on the motion picture “Karate Kid” or Nick Nolte’s...

Nike’s mantra says it all: Just Do It. If you want to get things done, achieve some personal or professional goal, be a better athlete or a healthier human being: Just Do It. As musicians we all want to get better every day. Practice more, perform...

Maximizing Performance. How to do? I believe that jazz performers, composers and teachers are Olympic athletes of creativity that can benefit from an effective mind-body preparation. Research in Music Mindfulness can bring together progress made in other areas such as...