As music teachers, a question we’re often asked is, “Will I need to learn to read music?” "Is Music Reading important?" The answer, of course, is “It depends …”
It depends on what your goals are when learning music. Being able to read music is a great skill to have …
Have a sing on stage in a relaxed environment, accompanied by our Jam Night Host (one of our fantastic IMA Mentors) who will play acoustic guitar and possibly sing backing vocals for you. Your audience and cheer squad will be other clients of IMA who wish to perform and any …
In part one of this blog post I covered the mental aspects of music making and how it applies to practice. In this second part, I’ll be focussing on how having the right set of mental skills helps you in the actual performance of music.
If you …
In then end, improvements in your mental skills improve your playing above all else.
We know that the mental aspects are amazingly important. We’ve seen MRIs of musicians practising. MRIs of musicians mentally practising. And they look exactly the same.
I’ve also noticed that the small changes in …
… or why fundamental technique is your friend
You know when you try to take some kind of shortcut, and it ends up taking you way longer to get to where you’re going? This might be in actually traveling to get somewhere, or in trying to achieve some specific goal …
The practice triangle is a concept very similar to the project management triangle. The project management triangle outlines some constraints that you’ll have when working on a project. Simply stated it says:
Good, fast, cheap: pick two.
In other words, if you want something built well and quickly, then …
Have you heard of ‘Four Stages Of Competence’? It’s a learning model that describes the steps you go through to become good at a skill. It’s something that we like to teach our clients as early as possible in their music learning journey. FSC is a great tool …
We’re all strapped for time and we could all do with a bit of an energy boost. Practising music in ‘Micro Bursts’ could be the answer to our problems.
It has been discovered that short bursts of activity during your day can significantly increase the amount of energy that …
We all know that practice is the only way to get better. Not all practice methods are created equal though. So how do you get the most our of your practice sessions? What’s the best way to structure them?
After years of devising complicated practice structures. I finally came …
Many people who want to learn to play music are put off by the fear that they “Don’t have it”…. that they’re not “musical” or “talented” or that they just can’t learn music. We know this isn’t the case.
We know that everyone can learn music …
“How Long Will It Take to Learn (insert your instrument of choice here)?”
That’s one of the most common questions we’re asked. Beginners want to know that they’ll be able to play something in a reasonable amount of time. They’d like to know how long before …
We often meet new clients who’ve come to us with some terrible habits. This is thanks to the inexperienced music teachers they’ve started with. To fix the problems, we have to take these clients back to basics. They then have to relearn skills that they thought they’d …