Michael Korman

Category: Practicing

  • 6 Steps to Learning Piano Without a Teacher

    6 Steps to Learning Piano Without a Teacher

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    by

    Michael Korman
    in

    How to improve piano skills without a teacher Ask this question in a Facebook group and you’ll be admonished by hordes of piano teachers that it’s impossible to improve at the piano without a teacher. What does your own experience tell you? Have you ever, without a teacher: Changed a light bulb? Sent an email?…

  • Why it’s easier to push yourself when the stakes are high

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    Michael Korman
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    At my last workshop, this question was asked by Rachel, an opera singer: “In performance, the stakes are higher. In practice, it’s hard for me to prioritize. There’s like a roadblock in my practicing, but in real life I’d handle it better.” It’s normal for real-life performance situations to make us perform better. More is…

  • When your playing sounds “mechanical”

    When your playing sounds “mechanical”

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    Michael Korman
    in ,

    First, let’s get one thing out of the way: just because a teacher told you that your playing sounds mechanical doesn’t mean it does. (the teacher might not be expressing themselves very well) While we’re at it, let’s get another thing out of the way: your mechanical-sounding playing is not the fault of the metronome.…

  • Why Music Practice is No Fun

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    Michael Korman
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    I was looking through some old notebooks the other night, and I wanted to share this: I’ve noticed that when most people practice music, they don’t have fun. When I practice, however, I do have fun. So…why don’t you have fun while practicing? (It’s not because you suck at music.) Westerners view music as an…

  • The difficulty of being “musical”

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    Michael Korman
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    I’m gonna lay this out there first: Being musical is not hard. So…why do you think it’s hard? You think it’s hard because you were told it’s hard. Think back to early experiences when you first realized that being musical was hard: Maybe you had a music teacher who told you that you weren’t being…

  • Sitting With Discomfort

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    by

    Michael Korman
    in

    The mind has a funny way of pulling our attention away from what’s most important. If our piano playing is going great, it might say “practicing is so much fun” or “I’m so glad I can play this well.” When that happens, it’s normal to want to continue doing what we’re doing. On the other…

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