PRACTICE STRATEGIES THAT CAUSE MUSICAL IMPROVEMENT

If you practice frequently and consistently, your musical skills should rightly be improving. If not, this is about HOW you are practicing, and NOT about who you are. There should be NO doubt in your mind that you CAN become a better player. As musicians mature in their playing abilities and begin to perform, many will maintain a genuine desire to continuously improve their playing skills. Indeed, they can see this as a life-long pursuit. But over time it seems their practice no longer leads to the changes they are striving for. Today, research has led to a much better understanding of the ways to practice that will lead to improvement and the ways that will not. Many players simply do not practice in a way that will cause fundamental changes in the skills related to higher-quality playing. This book illuminates the path toward continuous improvement in the development of musical skills for the seasoned player. The creation of this book was aided by the insights of Jack Lee, Stuart Liddell, J. Reid Maxwell & Steven McWhirter.

STRATEGIES FOR LEARNING AND MEMORISING NEW TUNES

Memorising is the fastest way to learn any new tune.Playing in a pipe band or in solo competitions depends upon your ability to learn and memorise music. For some of you this may mean learning and memorising many new tunes each year. This is not just about “kind of” memorising your music, but engraving it into your brain such that you can confidently perform it at the very times you need it, without fear or anxiety of forgetting.As you will come to understand, there is no logic in separating the processes of learning a new tune and memorising it. Memorising and learning should rightly be integrated into one process. Separating these processes means at least twice the time invested and as you’ll learn that, separation makes memorising the tune much more challenging. Every worthwhile piece of music should be memorised right from the start.In this book you will learn the strategies to synchronously learn and memorise new tunes.