Fundamentals of Piano Practice Review

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Fundamentals of Piano Practice ReviewThis book radically improved my piano playing. I was a good amateur classical guitarist when younger, but did not take up the piano until age 40. I assumed it would be impossible to develop enough technique as an adult to play anything very interesting. I spent 8 years or so banging out Hanon exercises and scales and got nowhere at all musically. With much painful labor I could work through some of the easiest Hayden sonatas at 75% of proper tempo. This book taught me how to practice the piano musically and in about a year and a half all of the Mozart and Hayden sonatas are within range and I am able to play for teachers or friends without falling apart. I no longer creep through scores looking for approachable adagios; I go straight for presto and allegro con brio.
This book clearly shows what's wrong with the way many students and teachers approach piano practice and tells you how to do it efficiently and quickly. Some of the tips I found most helpful were (1) throw Hanon in the trash (2) practice hands apart more than you think you need to (3) whenever you are working on a tricky passage, play it over and over at whatever tempo is relaxed, but end by playing it once very, very slowly (4) start your practice by playing a difficult piece musically without a long warm-up on scales and exercises.
The author sometimes has an idiosyncratic way of looking at things. For example, he suggests that in order to learn to play an Alberti bass very fast you should just realize that playing all notes of the chord simultaeously is the same as playing the Alberti pattern infinitely fast -so all you need to do is slow down a bit from the infinitely fast tempo. Clever, but not really that helpful. In spite of little quirks like that, though, this book can really help.Fundamentals of Piano Practice Overview

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Michael Caine - Acting in Film: An Actor's Take on Movie Making (The Applause Acting Series) Revised Expanded Edition Review

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Michael Caine - Acting in Film: An Actor's Take on Movie Making (The Applause Acting Series) Revised Expanded Edition ReviewIf you like movies, this book is a great read. If you're interested in acting in movies, it's an essential read. If you're interested in moviemaking (behind the camera), it's still an essential read: buy extra copies to pass around on the set, especially if you're a struggling filmmaker and you have a cast of friends who've never acted before.
As a teacher, Caine is as straightforward as he is as an actor. You watch his performances and you're seeing an actor who understands that less is more. You read this book and you're listening to an instructor who understands the same thing. Every anecdote he tells about films he's been in and stars he's worked with is not just namedropping, it's ALWAYS relevant to whatever helpful point he's making about the craft of film acting. And to him it is very much a craft, not an art. The art takes care of itself; it happens mysteriously, but it can only happen if you nail the craft first. No arty-flighty book about acting theory or the Method, this is a working-class, meat-and-potatoes manual that anyone can relate to, much like its author.Michael Caine - Acting in Film: An Actor's Take on Movie Making (The Applause Acting Series) Revised Expanded Edition Overview

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The Inner Game of Music Review

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The Inner Game of Music ReviewFormer principal bassist of the Cincinnati Symphony, Barry Green has created what has to be one of the most important books on musical psychology ever written. As a young clarinetist myself, I've found this read to help me change from one who frets over my auditions and solos to becoming a confident musician in front of others.
Green begins by discussing what makes up a good performance. He invented the formula P = p - i, where P is the level of the performance, p is the potential of the performer, and i is the level of mental interference during the performance. He explains how to decrease the amount of i in order to bring the level of P as close as possible to p.
Green then digs further into his ideas by introducing to two "selves". Quoted, "Self 1 is our interference. It contains our concepts about how things should be, our judgments and associations. It is particularly fond of the words 'should' and 'should not' and often sees things in terms of what 'could have been. Self 2 is the vast reservoir of potential within each one of us. It contains our natural talents and abilities, and is a virtually unlimited resource that we can tap and develope. Left to its own devices it performs with gracefulness and ease." Green goes own to give advice and excercises on how to ignore the interference of self 1 during performance and how to let self 2 work uninterupted.
Over the next chapters, Green goes into more technical and complicated details, while teaching us the powers of awareness, will, and trust. These three chapters are loaded with useful excercises, and most of them have the least do with music, at least directly. But they all tie in somewhere. Green also writes of 'Letting Go', a chapter all about how to 'become' the music while playing, rather than looking at it from a technical aspect.
Later, there's a particularly good chapter on how to, not perform but, listen to music. It explains why sometimes we don't feel moved by the music, and then gives relevant solutions to enjoying the performance.
Green chooses to end the book by not recapping all the techniques he have taught, but instead by writting several chapters on realizing how big a gift music is, and how to appreciate it to the fullest extent.
Reading this book is a potentially life changing experience. I urge all of you to give it a try...even if you are already a capable performer.The Inner Game of Music Overview

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