When I was pursuing my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I was a confident trumpet player. I had the unyielding belief that I could win any audition, learn any skill, and do anything I wanted in my career. I had great teachers and friends that were supportive and helped to build me up. As I neared […]
weekly blog post
I’m Taking A Break From Social Media
As a result of growing my brand using social media platforms, I find myself using social media constantly throughout the day. Even though I feel that I have developed a healthy relationship with it, I often have to fight off the urge to constantly check if I have more likes and views on my posts. […]
How To Stay Disciplined (Even When You Don’t Feel Like It)
A common question I see being asked of people that appear to be very disciplined is, “How do you stay disciplined when you aren’t motivated?” Another way to phrase the question would be, “How do you stay motivated?” It’s a simple question, but most people don’t like the answer they are given. The people that […]
4 Reasons You Might Experience Performance Anxiety (And What To Do About It)
Back when I was in grad school, a friend of mine asked me if I had any thoughts about performance anxiety. At that point, I had developed some ideas of why I thought people might get nervous for performances, auditions, and even lessons with teachers. My thoughts and approach haven’t really changed much over the […]
Criticism vs. Impact (Will You Take The Risk?)
I recently finished reading the book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. It’s a bit dense, and you can tell by the vernacular that it really was written in 1934. The success of the book’s history speaks for itself though, and I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to go […]
This One Simple Question Might Change Your Life (What I Learned From My Morning Pages)
For the past 2 months, I have been reading through the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The author suggests that doing morning pages each morning for 12 weeks will unlock creative parts of ourselves that we didn’t know existed. So far, my experience has been nothing short of transformative. For those that are […]
Try This Strategy If You’re Having Trouble Learning Difficult Music
It has been my experience that 95% of the music we learn can be fully learned and successfully performed by what I would call “linear progression”. Full disclosure, I did not make this up. I stole it from the fitness community, as I saw how the benefits in weight training mirrored the benefit in music. […]