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practice

A collection of 6 posts

Zen in the Act of Pernicious Pedagogy

Philip Toshio Sudo’s Zen Guitar[1] uses the word “training” thirty-seven times, but almost all occurrences of the word refer to one’s training in “The Way of Zen Guitar” and not to the development of the foundation of prior knowledge that should be seen as prerequisite to mastery.

Thinking About Practice: Part Five

Reducing Music to Technique: Intelligent Bunglers and Brainless Acrobats First, some disclaimers: 1. The words in the title after the colon are not mine, they’re Carl Flesch’s and are from an age when musical invective was more a feature of pedagogy than it is today (so I assume—

Thinking About Practice, Part Four

Practice By Design Or Waste Your Time Although I can’t possibly have read everything written about practice, I’ve read, heard, taught, and done enough of my own to know that many guitarists and students are overly focused on what specific things to do. And this “what” is usually

Thinking About Practice, Part Three

Dagobah and East Coker When I first saw Scott Tennant’s Pumping Nylon[1] years ago, I was surprised to see a page that contained nothing but a quotation from Yoda:[2] > Do or do not; there is no try. This struck me as odd. I’ll admit that I

Thinking About Practice, Part Two

Principles or Directives? A principle is a truth or proposition that shapes our reasoning and behavior. We want to have good reasons for what we do and sound principles can be those reasons. Directives, however, are instructions, and are stated in the imperative, a grammatical mood in which commands or

Thinking About Practice, Part One

Thinking About Practice; Practice Is About Thinking Today I inaugurate a multi-part exploration of something musicians do every day, but may take for granted: practice. Much of what is written about practice is either anecdotal, overly prescriptive, or does not take advantage of research in neurology, physiology, or psychology. An