Effective Practice: Techniques To Improve Your Musicianship

This five-video series will introduce tools and resources for any musician to develop effective practice routines, improve musicianship, and prepare for performances. In this first video, you will discover that the best way to progress musically is through goal oriented practice sessions and organizing your practice time using a journal.

In Lesson 2, you will discover the secret to having an effective practice session by mapping out a clear direction for your entire practice session. Leo Blanco will also guide you through best practices for warming-up while practicing your technique in creative and constructive ways.

This lesson will focus on developing a repertoire library. Your repertoire is a list of songs that you know pretty well and that you feel comfortable playing at any time, whether it’s an onstage performance or recorded session. You will also have an opportunity to jam using play-along tools, such as the PULSE Jam Room and Casio Downloads to develop your performance skills.

Improvisation is the art of composing instantaneously, based on melody, harmony and structure of a song. In Lesson 4 students will describe and understand improvisation's role in a musical tune and focus on developing strategies to improve their own improvisational techniques.

In the last lesson of this series, students will learn about self-assessment, how to modify their goals, and how to find their own voice in music by describing the benefits of recording themselves, identifying their musical influences and long-term goals.