The best students know how to teach themselves. They're motivated, love what they're doing, and take the initiative to explore what interests them and to really understand what they’ve already learned. This concept of learning and exploring on one’s own has never been easier with the rise of technol… Read More

“When you assume that people know what’s expected of them, you are creating an ineffective form of bowling. You put the pins up but when the bowler goes to roll the ball, he notices there is a sheet across the pins. So when he rolls the ball, and it slips under the sheet, he hears a crack but doesn’… Read More

Better Practice isn’t just a practice tracker! We put our main focus in motivating students to want to practice - hence, all of our motivational tools built right into the app! We’ve separated the list below by motivation types - read this article first to see which motivation types your students ar… Read More

What does 200 consecutive days of practice look like? We wanted to take time this week to celebrate a Better Practice student, Meryl, who reached a 204-day practice streak! That is no small feat - anyone who practices an instrument should know. Meryl found a way to practice everyday, no matter wher… Read More

Here comes the 7th and final installment of our Motivating Music Students Series. We’ll be discussing social motivation: what it is, how to identify socially motivated students, and what you can do to help nurture this motivation. Let me start off with addressing one of the biggest issues I have wit… Read More

In order to be successful at anything, one must be able to distinguish between good efforts, great efforts, and the not-so-great efforts. This means you have to be able to critique yourself - and as a musician, this critique should happen every time you practice. Good practice isn’t just about going… Read More

This is the 6th installment in our motivating music students series. Here, we'll talk about intrinsic motivation and how to nurture it. Intrinsically motivated students are genuinely interested in what they’re learning. I’d say this is one of the ‘best’ types of motivation as it builds on truly good… Read More

When I say “motivation by fear”, what comes to mind? Stalin’s Reign of Terror? Your mom bringing out the belt? Both valid answers, but not quite the type of fear I’ll be talking about. As a continuation on our Motivating Music Students series, we’ll be discussing good fear and the motivation that ar… Read More

In my last post to parents, I discussed the role of the parent and your importance in your child’s music education. Here, I will go a little deeper and offer to you, as a parent, some suggestions on how you can take direct steps to support and help your child. It doesn’t matter if you have a music b… Read More

One of the most effective and natural ways kids learn is through modeling. We’ll explore how we can incorporate modeling into teaching music - not just as a teaching tool for playing, but also to motivate and build great habits. This is a very general (but effective!) method that can be applied in m… Read More

This is a guest post by Ben: parent to two young music students and someone who works closely with music teachers (but is not one himself). We hope to provide a unique perspective that hasn't been provided before, and that it can help all of you music parents out there! When parents are actively in… Read More

Sometimes when I was younger, I would get a piece to learn that was so long or so difficult that I just didn’t know where to start. I would get overwhelmed just looking at it. So day after day, I’d put it off - until, before I knew it, a week passed and I hadn’t touched the piece. I’d sulk into my d… Read More

Do you have students who, when you say “Practice these exercises this week”, say in return, “No”? Who say, “I don’t like those songs. I want to do this one instead”? Or students who were given one assignment and come back the next week having practiced a completely different song of their preference… Read More

Do you find yourself repeating the same thing lesson after lesson, or find that students working on similar material could benefit from observing each others’ lessons? Dr. Robert Pace wrote a great piece on his website about his journey from teaching strictly individual lessons to realizing the need… Read More

A Bobo doll is a large, inflatable doll that is weighted on the bottom so it always stands upright. It doesn't have any hands or fingers, can't play any music, let alone make a sound, other than a the thud of people striking it. However, The Bobo doll has taught learning experts a lot about learning… Read More