by STEVEN BOWEN I've written before about the differences between playing your instrument and practicing your instrument. I find that, when I'm playing, all I need is my piano. But when I'm practicing, I almost always have the same...

My kid’s not practicing — should we quit?   (We know, we’ve blogged about practice before but it’s been about a year, and it comes up just about every day, so here we go again...)   Practice is a big problem. We hear very...

"These songs are sooooo boring! Why can’t my child play more popular songs that we know?"   We hear this a lot, and we get it! When we decide to start studying an instrument, we imagine ourselves (or our children) playing our...

If you’ve ever spent an afternoon moving furniture, you know what it feels like to frustrate your muscles. That’s why they were sore the next day. If you made a habit of frustrating your muscles, they would naturally become stronger...

Your piano teacher has asked you to practice a piece — let's say Burgmüller's "Arabesque." So you sit yourself at your piano, put the sheet music in front of you, and decide to practice. Within a few minutes, you've played...