I’d like to personally thank Marcus Dominelli for this wonderful and educational guest post. Last year I bought a Dominelli guitar (spruce/indian) and love it. You can see photos of my guitar here. I didn’t order this guitar, I just visited Marcus and decided to buy this one which he had in the shop. I [...]
Archive | Lessons, Tips and My Week Teaching
Practicing with a metronome – some pros, cons, and tips | The Practicing Musician
A little article I wrote for beginner students on The Practicing Musician: Many students are unsure about how often they should practice with a metronome because there is little consensus in music education as to the benefits or negative consequences. Before outlining some pros and cons I’d like to tell you what I often tell [...]
A Basic Guide to Better Practicing
This post is from The Practicing Musician Blog. The Practicing Musician is a blog about inspiration and personal development in daily music practice. There is one juicy post per week by yours truely. The post was written for beginner students or intermediate students that could use some motivation. Hopefully some of the professionals who read this [...]
31 Days to Better Practicing – The Free Ebook by Chris Foley
A 65 page free ebook on better practicing by Chris Foley of the Collaborative Piano Blog. What more can be said? Get it while it lasts students! Get the Free ebook here: 31 Days to Better Practicing – The Free Ebook – Chris Foley’s Posterous.
Adjudicating Guitar
A common question my students ask is what adjudicators consider when evaluating a performance? This is a complex question because of the nature of performing arts and ambiguity of something we can call “correct” or “incorrect”. Music is vague because it is highly interpretive. One performance may have high technical standards whereas another has high [...]
Three Teaching Books for Beginner and Intermediate Students
Sometimes we all need to remember to really complete some work on solid methods. The first two I’ve listed here are not the most “fun” but they instill solid musical training. They need to be completed a little bit each day rather and bought, looked at for one week, and then shelved. Remember, it may take going [...]
Jerome Ducharme: Practice Routine For Guitar Champions From GFA Winner
After Jérôme Ducharme’s recent concert in Wichita, he discussed guitars, repertoire, technique and more with John Francis and an internet audience. In this video, Jérôme discusses the practice routine that helped him win the championship and exercises that he recommends for aspiring young guitarists. http://jeromeducharme.ca http://wichitaguitar.com http://chainedsky.com
Redesigning my method books
I’ve been redesigning my Guitar Victoria method books so if you like the them buy em up as they won’t be available much longer. I’m combining both of them into one book to be distributed through Classical Guitar Canada. Sadly I’ll have to remove much of the material but I think they will streamline the learning process. [...]
Developing Scales – A few leading questions
Some of these questions come from my experience teaching but I filled it out with a few from The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher (overpriced but great book). Presenting and developing scales: questions to consider for teachers and students: What type of legato: When working on legato scales what type of legato are you aiming for? Will it aim [...]
Having musical friends is just as important as practicing
It’s a myth that if you practice your heart out in the solitary confinement of a practice room you’ll become a great musician. Music is not a solitary experience (not all the time anyway). For the last three years I’ve been the director of the VCM Summer Guitar Academy (Alexander Dunn is the new director [...]
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