If You Have Difficulty Staying Focused While Practicing, Could Clutter Be a Factor?



I was chatting with a musician recently who was housesitting for a friend, and finding it surprisingly difficult to practice in this new environment. Some of it was the heat (no air conditioning), but more than that, they found it surprisingly difficult to focus amongst all of the clutter.
Memory Reconsolidation: A Way to Dump Your Negative Audition and Performance Baggage?



Subscribe to the weekly podcast via iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher Once upon a time, when my daughter was a toddler, we brought home a container of super cute mini zucchini’s that we found a local farmer’s market. She took a nibble, made a face and spit it out, and from that […]
Three Ways to Teach Students How to Play More Expressively (And Is There a “Best” Way?)



Subscribe to the weekly podcast via iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher My daughter has been composing a short piece for a summer program she’s in, and up until this point, her only concept of the piece is the MIDI performance that her computer generates. But in a few days, for the first […]
How Making Mistakes Can Accelerate Learning



A few years ago, my wife and kids spent the better part of a year living abroad. So with a little extra time on my hands, I decided to take a page out of Indiana Jones’s playbook and embark on something of a quest…
…for the best nachos in my neighborhood. 😅
Yep. Every Saturday evening, over the span of a few months, I ordered nachos from a different place.
Chili nachos. Chicken ranchero nachos. Nachos texanos. Nachos el grande deluxe.
And every weekend, I was faced with a dilemma. Should I end my quest and settle for the nachos that I’ve enjoyed the most so far? Or should I continue to search for better nachos?
The Two Most Efficient (and Two Least Efficient) Memorization Strategies



As much as I enjoy a tidy, nicely-made bed, actually making the darn thing every morning is one of those activities in life that often feels like a questionable use of time. I mean, it’s going to get unmade anyway the next evening, right?
Socks (or more accurately, their seeming proclivity for ditching their partners) are another time-sucking black hole in our lives.