Principle 8: Practice With Music for Fast Development

The standard music education practice model of solitary repetition is ineffective, painful and boring. Imagine if we learned our language this way, our parents telling us, “Now go into that room over there by yourself and say these words and sentences over and over again until they are perfect. You need to do this every day for a minimum of ____ hours.” It would be a slow, difficult, unhappy and boring process. Also we would not learn to speak very well no matter how much we “practiced” this way.

Practicing does not have to be a mind-numbing process of sitting in a room alone playing something over and over until it’s perfect. Instead, we can bring music into the practice room with us and make it much more fun and effective.

Principle 7: Don’t Practice, Just Jam!

Of all musical activities, jamming is the most useful, effective and necessary way to develop essential musical abilities. These abilities include listening, self expression, rhythm, performance, improvisation, grooving and many other essential skills. Yet jamming is rarely taught.