How To Deal With Creative Blocks
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....The Inspired Student: Performance Practice
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 improvise or...The Inspiring Teacher
“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...Defensive Pessimism
It’s Summertime! “The livin’ is easy Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high Your 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...The Need To Be Perfect
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...How To Disengage From Work: Addressing Worries Properly
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, re-charging...Burnout Prevention
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...Balancing Work And Rest
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 the work load...Top Performers Strategies: 5 – Strengthening Confidence
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...
