Anyone who has followed Jenifer Cook’s The Church Pianist blog knows that she is a gifted pianist and teacher. Her ability to communicate improvisation and arranging techniques to aspiring pianists is unparalleled in my opinion! It’s one thing to be able to play and improvise well, but a whole different thing to be able to […]
Resource Reviews
Free Practice Guide for Beginning Music Students
Mike Saville, of the fabulous How to Practice blog, has put together a beautiful ebook called, “Complete Beginner’s Guide to Practice.” Once you register a free account on the site, you can download the colorful 55-page ebook for free. In addition to lots of great tips and inspirational quotes, the book contains handy lists and […]
Review and Giveaway of Goal-Oriented Practice!
Within days of reading Gretchen Saathoff’s ebook, Goal-oriented Practice, I was already referring to it in conversations with students during their lessons. The 39-page book is an easy read – written in a conversational and easy-to-understand style. Sections of the book include: Your Practice Environment Warming Up Learning the Music You’re Off to a Good […]
Ask Janet Your Injury-Related Questions
If you’ve been keeping up with the posts this week, you know that Janet Horvath has a wealth of expertise and experience to share in the area of injury prevention and recovery. She has kindly agreed to take specific questions from Music Matters Blog readers and answer them in a post next week. You can […]
Interview with Janet Horvath
I am pleased to welcome Janet Horvath, author of Playing (Less) Hurt, to Music Matters Blog today to talk a little bit more about injury prevention and the role it should play in our teaching. 1. You come from a very musical family and began playing at a young age. Can you tell us when […]
An Excerpt from Playing (Less) Hurt
Just to give you even more of an idea of the helpful information you’ll find in Playing (Less) Hurt, the book I reviewed yesterday, here are two brief excerpts that Janet has given me permission to share: 10 POTENTIAL FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO OVERUSE Body size, build. Conditioning. Muscle imbalances due to the demands of playing […]













