Have you ever had a useless music lesson? Maybe you had a good lesson and then went home and were bewildered as to how to find the momentum you had in your lesson. Or as a teacher, have you had a great and productive time with a student only to find the next week she made no progress or perhaps even regressed?

I love the lessons when the student and I work hard as a team to get through a...

How tuners work and the two different kinds of tuners

Your tuner’s most important function is to assess the pitch you play and provide feedback about how that pitch relates to a standard, as in whether the pitch is sharp, flat or in tune. The standard your tuner uses is one you can set yourself on most tuners: the exact frequency of the A. As I mentioned in the last post, the...

What does it mean to be in tune? You can be in tune with your friend, your spouse, the times or the music of the spheres. We musicians have a particular need to be in tune. We sound best when we are in tune ourselves, and we can play better with others. Here is one of my favorite quotes. It is from the writings of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome from 161 C.E. to 180 C.E. While Marcus...

This week I heard two fabulous graduation recitals at Temple University. Afterwards the performers received kudos and congratulations from their friends and family. And many of their well-wishers had the same question for them: “What’s next?”

It’s the day after. After the big recital, after the orchestra concert, after the important audtion, after whatever it is...

Here is a collection of a few weird music tips and facts. I hope these enlighten and entertain you!

Disclaimer: take the science behind some of these tips with a grain of salt. After all, you’re reading this on the internet.

 Are you a night owl or morning person? Practicing at night may be more effective. Apparently, brains learn better at...

This post follows up on my Practice Solutions series with two more ideas for solving difficulties you may come across in your everyday practice.

Problem: I can’t get this hands together!
Solution: Alternate hands note by note

Why this works: By playing both hands, you are practicing the “hands together” skill. But...

Are you still keeping your New Year’s resolutions? If so, congratulations! You are in a very small group. According to a 2007 study by Franklin Covey (as in Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), 35% of people who make resolutions break them before the end of January and only 23% manage to keep them all year. Another study is even more...

I love detective mysteries, whether the detectives are cerebral like Sherlock Holmes, witty and cultured like Lord Peter Wimsey or more earthy like Jesse Stone. And I love puzzles; crosswords, cryptic crosswords, sudokus, double acrostics, whatever. The harder they are, the better I like them.So when I was asked for help with a musical puzzler recently, I grabbed my deer stalker hat and called...

It’s that time of year when we are dreaming of summer. Summer is the perfect time to put some extra focus on your harp playing by attending a harp camp. And today I want to offer two ways you can step up your playing this summer: the Harp in the Mountains Summer Festival and the first ever Harp Mastery Retreat Weekend.

Harp in the Mountains Summer Festival, now in its seventh year, ...

Seth Godin is an author and marketing guru and the man behind the idea of permission marketing. In his daily blog, he writes with succinct and sometimes painful clarity on marketing, respect, our society and the way ideas spread. I find his writings always give me something to think about and often, as in this post, something to write about.

In a recent blog post called “Those...