Category Archives: Practice

Playing Tetris helps you reduce cravings for food, alcohol, and cigarettes

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This is an interesting article which might have some bearing on the obsessive compulsive behaviour some guitarists have and the question of addiction in general.
I generally find that when I am engaged in practice, my cravings drop away (not that I drink, smoke or overeat…)

For years, those who battle addictions to alcohol, smoking, and overeating have been forced to rely on uncertain methods for curbing their cravings, such as counseling, hypnosis, or heroin. But a recent study by psychology researchers at Plymouth University suggests that playing Tetris for just three minutes can reduce those cravings in both strength and frequency.

10 habits of successful musicians

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Generally I’m not a big fan of articles with the above phrasing, but some of this might be helpful, especially points 6 and 7.

American cellist David Finckel embarks on a series of seminars – entitled Being a Musician – at Stony Brook University, New York on 3 February. Here, he identifies the important habits of those musicians who have built and maintained successful careers

From The Strad

1. Know thyself

2. Be an artist

3. Keep learning

4. Work on your performance

5. Make friends

6. Visualise possible lives

7. Ask not what the industry can do for you…

8. Lead by example

9. Give back

10. Stay the course

 

How to practise with a metronome – All that jazz – Wayne Krantz

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Wayne says:
“The following content is related to the December 2012 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store

In this month’s column, I’d like to talk about practicing with a metronome. I’m sure most of you have read or been told at some point that practicing to a metronome is an important thing for guitar players to do on a regular basis. I think that practicing with a metronome can reap many benefits and have spent a lot of time doing it over the years.

Although I’ve always felt that my sense of “time”—my ability to play at a steady tempo and in a groove “pocket” without speeding up or slowing down—has been pretty good, I realized at one point that it was not quite as good as I wanted it to be. So I spent a considerable amount of effort really focusing on that aspect of my playing, and I think there are ways to practice with a metronome that are more beneficial than others.”

Brilliant advice

More on Metronome

Lipatti’s Final Essay

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“…wanting to restore to music its historical framework is like dressing an adult in an adolescent’s clothes. This might have a certain charm in the context of a historical reconstruction, yet is of no interest to those other than lovers of dead leaves or the collectors of old pipes”

 

“Music has to live under our fingers, under our eyes, in our hearts and in our brains with all that we, the living, can offer it.”

 

Dinu Lipatti was a consummate artist whose playing was sublime.
As usual, the critics are limited by their own shortsightedness and  inadequacies. This essay explains why it is important to play music in our time even if it not of our time, and how striving for  authenticity can strangle creativity in performance.

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