November 13, 2025
Why Does It Take So Long To Get Really Good Even If We Know The Best Ways To Practice?
I’ve been teaching my course on practicing, and something has come up that is one of the great mysteries of practice – no matter how good we get at practicing, and we’re using the best that…
Read the article →May 13, 2025
Lennon and McCartney
So there I was in the Denver airport after doing some workshops for the Colorado ASTA Summer Conference and The Atlantic magazine was on display in a gift shop. There was a cool rendering…
Read the article →May 13, 2025
Get Yourselves To Practice
We know it is good for us, and we want to do more, a lot more, because we want to get better, a lot better, but the way we go about it does not seem to work most of the time does it? The…
Read the article →May 13, 2025
Did Anyone Teach Us
How is it that some can practice the same amount of time as others yet a few make significantly more progress? You know, the really talented ones. They stand out – you know it when you see…
Read the article →May 13, 2025
The Deliberate Practice Myth
We hear a lot about deliberate practice, right? Some of us even read books about it, but why aren’t we teaching it in schools as a fundamental skill? Why haven’t we all learned how to do it…
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January 25, 2025
Cutting Through the Noise: Is performing really the cure for stage fright?
What can we really learn about stage fright from the research? Have you tried performing over and over again to somehow slay the stage fright dragon? Doesn’t work, does it? The results…
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January 4, 2025
This Ends Now
I’m not big on teasing the possibility of feel good moments by suggesting how things from the learning science might work. I’ve got teaching to do. 😉 However, something occurred to me that…
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September 15, 2024
The Long Arc of Performance Development and Contextual Interference
There is an element of time over the long term that does something to our playing which can’t be duplicated in the short term. We could do all of the right things at the right times in the…
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July 15, 2024
The Lesson Letdown: 3 Ways You’re Deluding Yourself In The Practice Room
But, But, I Could Play it Perfectly at Home! How many times as teachers have we heard this, or as students believed this? There is actually meaning behind these words, but they need some…
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July 15, 2024
Don’t Prepare for the Super Bowl by Losing the Next Game. What Students Can Learn From the NFL.
Don’t Prepare for the Super Bowl by Losing the Next Game. What Students Can Learn From the NFL. I was recently thinking of a way to explain an important concept to a student and I found an…
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June 30, 2024
Turning Fight Reading into Sight Reading Part 1
I taught music for decades before I started coaching practice exclusively over 10 years ago. In the 13 years prior I taught high school music to all levels in classes and rehearsals.…
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June 29, 2024
Turning Fight Reading into Sight Reading Part 2
(Please share your thoughts/questions on this hot topic with like-minded learners in the Facebook Group ) When we last left our sight reading adventure we were guided by the Bulletproof…
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June 2, 2024
Why is Learning to Improvise so Hard?
“People tend to approximate the product rather than attacking it in a realistic, true way at any elementary level — regardless of how elementary — but it must be entirely true and entirely…
Read the article →June 1, 2024
Interpreting the Master(class)
Do we want jazz to stay alive, to thrive? Then get everyone on board who wants to learn it. Get high school students learning riffs, licks, chord progressions, voicings so they can use them…
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April 27, 2024
A Four Part Series – Part 1
What is really going on? Part II Any ideas what to do about it? Part III Calibration, applying deliberate practice to your deliberate practice. Postlogue The Practice Journey (The Learney)…
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April 26, 2024
A Four Part Series – Part 2
What is really going on? Part II Any ideas what to do about it? Part III Calibration, applying deliberate practice to your deliberate practice. Postlogue The Practice Journey (The Learney)…
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April 25, 2024
A Four Part Series – Part 3
What is really going on? Part II Any ideas what to do about it? Part III Calibration, applying deliberate practice to your deliberate practice. Postlogue The Practice Journey (The Learney)…
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April 24, 2024
A Four Part Series – Part 4
What is really going on? Part II Any ideas what to do about it? Part III Calibration, applying deliberate practice to your deliberate practice. Postlogue The Practice Journey (The Learney)…
Read the article →July 15, 2023
The Performer Paradox – Why You Never Sound Like Them and What to do About It
We all know what it is like to work on a piece of music for a long period of time. Sometimes we get it right, the notes, the phrasing, and then give a good performance, but for some reason…
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July 15, 2023
No Pain, No Gain – Feel the Blearn!
No Pain, No Gain – Feel the Blearn! Sometime back around the 1980’s or so a phrase reportedly became a staple at the ever growing number of gyms in the US as the baby boomers realized they…
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July 15, 2023
The Magic of Etudes and How They’ll Help Get You Into College
The Magic of Etudes and How They Can Even Help With College Admission! Some years ago, during my former life as a high school teacher, I was watching an interview on television with a…
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July 15, 2023
Do What They Did, Not What They Do – Lennon & McCartney and How They Can Teach Us to Fail to be Creative
Neuroscience sells. . .sells what? So there I was in the Denver airport after doing some workshops for the Colorado ASTA Summer Conference, and The Atlantic magazine was on display in a…
Read the article →July 15, 2023
What is Really Behind the Curtain?
Thoughts provoked by the recent New York Times article on talent. It is fascinating, and both encouraging and scary, to watch the wave build for the coming age of neuroeducation. I am…
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July 15, 2023
The Trouble with Tremolos
Welcome to my inaugural blog post. Since the Guitar Foundation of America is in town for their national convention I thought I would start with a guitar topic. More to come for all learners…
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Articles by Gregg Goodhart