“It’s very gratifying to improvise in front of people. I feel I’m including them in what I’m doing, taking them someplace they might like to go and haven’t been before.” -Jim Hall, guitarist The Musician’s Way, p. 102 Improvisation is the most playful way that we can...
“It’s better to do 30 minutes of high-quality work than to spin your wheels for hours.” The Musician’s Way, p. 312 Although we musicians strive to maintain regular practice schedules, we all confront periodic obstacles that prevent us from working as...
“Three qualities are essential in a professional musician… the first is good health and the other two are the same.” Mark Hambourg, pianist -The Musician’s Way, p. 241 Whether we make music as professionals, students or amateurs, we strive to create transcendent...
“You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” -The Musician’s Way, p. 196 In Chapter 10 of The Musician’s Way, I emphasize that musicians should view errors not as shameful failures but as neutral information. Having such a healthy...
“Advantageous postures have an active quality; they’re always subtly in motion.” -The Musician’s Way, p. 251 In his book, On Piano Playing, Gyorgy Sandor identifies two features of beneficial postures: stability and mobility. That is, they support the weight of...
“Ten dubious repetitions plus a single accurate one don’t equal security.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 52 Naïve practicers might repeat a passage profusely and make error after error. Then, on the eleventh try, when it finally comes out right, they say, “There, I’ve got...
