Practice Resources
from other authors and creators.
A good start.
These resources are excellent for increasing your knowledge and giving you fresh ideas to try. Just one point of caution for those embarking on a course of self-study: these resources are not tailored to you.
While they offer excellent information and general techniques, they will not identify the single thing that is holding you back right now, or give you the best next steps to take to reach your goals.
Like learning an instrument, the fastest and easiest way to improve is by working with a coach who is responsive to your personal needs. If you’re serious about reaching your goals, book an enrollment call with me and we’ll get you unstuck and on a path towards musical fulfillment.
Books of Practice Tools and Techniques
These books are all formatted as categorized lists of tips and techniques, usually one tip or technique per page. The Harnum book also discusses some methodology, so I recommend starting there. All together, this list offers a wide breadth of techniques.
Jonathan Harnum: Practice Like This
David Kish: Practicing with Purpose
Resources on Performance Psychology
The Inner Game of Tennis has quickly become a standard for helping musicians understand and quell the inner critical voice during performance. Noa Kageyama’s blog, The Bulletproof Musician, is an incredible resource on this topic in a modern format. Noa also offers mini-courses in practice technique and overcoming frustration in the practice room. I highly recommend his work.
Books on Mindset and Motivation
The War of Art is a relatable collection of reflections and advice on how to overcome internal obstacles to your creative endeavors. Atomic Habits has quickly become the standard text on how to reach and exceed your goals by using small habits to achieve personal growth.
General Educational Resources
Musical U and Tonebase have a lot of mini-courses, lessons, and articles from excellent teachers and authors. There are also several great teachers who offer excellent educational content on YouTube (I am not listing specific channels because there are so many, and the content is updated so frequently). David Motto’s Musician’s Practice Planner is an excellent tool for music students and teachers. His weekly format puts more emphasis on the specifics of practice goals than mine does, while my daily format focuses more on day-to-day development. The two used together may prove to be a powerful combination! The Harvard.edu article is a great summary of how memory and recall work and can be maximized.