How to Practice Music (without your instrument)

Mentally practicing music inside your head can be exhausting, but can actually be super helpful!

THE ULTIMATE PRACTICE STUDY SURVEY

Pierre Fournier - Cello Suite (Courante)

BOBBY MCFERRIN IS A BEAST

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Peace,
Adam

[mrrandomcuber]

when he wants to jokingly play the word SOME- from All Star but he is so frightened by copyright law that the half a second is still reduced a half step down.

[TheJacobshapiro]

*this video has been flagged by Universal Music Group for thinking about thinking about thinking about copyrighted material*

[AndyChamberlainMusic]

those faces you made while playing it were gold

I met a guy with a fretboard tattoo in the forearm! The strings had the same spacement as a regular guitar and the sound hole was around the elbow.

[mykhedelic]

Neely Mom! Thank you for doing your part in raising an excellent human being.

[Soundaholic]

I'm a dancer and I relate 100%, except we visualise instead of audiate. It's possible to choreograph a short piece, practise mentally by imagining yourself doing it to the music, and be fairly familiarised with it before actually dancing the choreography.

[grm]

you know Adam has reached god status when he plays imaginary bass on his forearm while an actual bass sits in a gig bag 2 feet from him

[larryf]

I'm picturing a library in a music school with all these students sitting around with scores playing their arms.

[vincee]

Here I am, a drummer, coming home at 6:40am blatantly drunk and watching a video on playing bass with your forearm...

[-subswithoutuploadingavid]

Make sure to not do this in your car, otherwise Lord Neely will come and slap you.

[GrahamMilkdrop]

It is said that teachers of certain Chinese martial arts would have their most promising students stand still, holding a single posture for an entire session, rather than engaging in sparring or practicing specific techniques because they learned more from watching others and imagining themselves doing the exercises or being in the positions that the other students were in. Essentially using empathy to create the proprioception feedback response in themselves not only allowed them to commit the skills to muscle memory but also improved their ability to read other people.

[sunfishslc]

The infamous car video


You thought we forgot

Edit 1: Adam hasn’t acknowledged me yet, he knows I’m fbi

[timesink]

Oh my god it is so nice to know why that guy on my train to New York spent the whole ride tapping on his forearm.

[colecotton]

Adam: or, also, god help you,
Me: don’t say it
Adam: a guitarist

[AkaTengu]

I am unable to sustain the physical aspect of regularly playing my instrument after a bad auto accident, but music is my entire being. This is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing this!

[Yossus]

It would've been cool to have the sheet music along with your playing, just to read along!

[ThatViolaKid]

What a great way to start this year! Here's to more mental practice!!! =)

[CrossProton]

God damn Adam. Now I literally have no excuse not to practice😂😅

[DojoOfCool]

I went to GIT in the early days with Howard Robert's curriculum was still used and Howard still was around do talks. Mental practice was something talked about quite a bit and was part of the learning process. Howard said a lot of what we learn as musicians is both a mental skill and physical skill and trying to learn both at the same time slows the process down. For example practicing sight reading we were told to first put out instrument, then name all the pitches. Next name all the rhythmic values and practice clapping the rhythm with a metronome. Now the mental part came in workout all the fingering using the instrument in your head. Once you've gone the mental part of working on sightreading a piece is done, time for the physical part of learning, so grab your instrument and sightread the piece. At first process it a little time consuming, but the more you do it the faster you get at scanning a pieces of music before trying to play it.

There were other things like many of our daily lessons had time limits on them that we were to set timers for and stop working on the lesson when time is up. As the days went on the times got shorter and shorter. This was to helps learn to learn faster that getting frustrated we didn't finish we starting focusing more in order to finish in the time allotted. He would say... "The task increases with the time allotted" that's why some college are teaching in a quarter the same material other colleges teach in a semester. That humans tend to take as long to learn or do something as the time they are given. Given less time they will find a way to complete. Howard had lots of things like this he'd talk about in his seminars.

[prodPKFlash]

I first discovered this for myself i was first trying to play expert mode in guitar hero. I fuckin bombed at it and went to my room and “thought” about the notes for about 2 hours before i went to sleep, and woke up the next day able to beat that song and actually play other songs on expert mode. I thought i was a wizard or something, but this “mental practice” made highschool music easy and helps a lot in college as a vocalist. Idk why i typed this, just thought this video was relatable probably🤷🏾‍♂️