Graham English

Posts Tagged ‘deliberate practice’

1,000-Hour/5,000-Hour Model For Songwriting Success

The concept is this: To be a good, competent songwriter, it will take 1,000 hours of practice. If you want to be a great songwriter, it will take 5,000 hours. Read on…

Applying The 80-20 Rule To Your Songwriting

I’m finding more and more that what stops songwriters from finishing songs isn’t a lack of good ideas but a misdirection of songwriting focus. Based on the comments I receive, musicians are spending more time on tasks that do little to move the song closer to completion.
For example, if you just spent 15 minutes on [...]

Ear Training or Listening Practice?

You can make ear training something you do once in a while or you can make it part of who you are. That’s the difference between ear training and a listening practice.
Ear training has often been half-jokingly, half-seriously referred to as “ear straining.” And I can understand why if it’s something that you feel forced [...]

Precocious Predictions - Debunking The Mozart Myth

This article by Eric Wargo was inspired by an address Malcolm Gladwell gave at this year’s Association for Psychological Science Convention.
To be a prodigy in music, for example, is to be a mimic, to reproduce what you hear from grown-up musicians. Yet only rarely, according to Gladwell, do child musical prodigies manage to make the [...]

Experts on Expertise — Practice Makes Perfect

…the key to dramatic improvement in any field is — that’s right — practice. But, it has to be what Ericsson calls “deliberate practice.”
“A lot of people like to do things that they’re already good at, but what deliberate practice says is you need to find those things that you are weak at and that [...]

Turbocharge Your Practicing

A practice schedule is an important part of your musical development.
My sax teacher, Nathan Davis, used to tell me, “Go without practicing one day, and you know. Go without practicing two days, your friends will know. Go without three days, and everyone knows.” Good advice.
When you implement a practice schedule, here are some critical points [...]

How To Be An Expert

From: How to be an expert
The only thing standing between you-as-amateur and you-as-expert is dedication. All that talk about prodigies? We could all be prodigies (or nearly so) if we just put in the time and focused. At least that’s what the brain guys are saying. Best of all–it’s almost never too late.
MusicHack #2:
Talent = [...]