Better Practice Blog- Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to the Better Practice blog! Our team here is made of music teachers and students alike, trained across a variety of genres (mainly jazz, classical, and pop). Here, we’ll be sharing our insights into music education: tips and tricks we’ve learned, our experiences as teachers and students of music, and the latest advances in music education. Unlike your typical music blog, we will be going beyond music pedagogy to explore topics in behavioral science, child development, performance psychology, and persuasive technologies. We will be delving into research across these areas to help us all gain new perspectives on how to make learning music more effective.
First, let us introduce ourselves: Better Practice is a company originally founded by a family looking to help their child learn to play the piano. The goal was figuring how to make it happen so that they didn’t waste their time and their money or have to deal with nightly battles to practice. They didn't have music teaching experience, so the idea was not to replace the teacher or change what they teach, but rather how to make what the teacher teaches more effective. From this, Better Practice was born.
Our app, in the simplest terms, is an online tool that tracks and analyzes how students practice married with a smart assignment system that makes managing students and their progress a breeze. What makes it so effective is not just that it makes assigning easy and can report what it tracks - rather, Better Practice transforms practicing into a social learning experience, bringing in proven and modern learning techniques and computer intelligence that adapts to what students need based on their practice history. Because, you know, traditional music practice is very, very lonely and repetitive. So many of us grew up with individual lessons and solitary practice time - and we know countless others who quit early because of how tedious this could be.
With Better Practice (and this blog), we aim to take on the challenges of traditional practice directly. We’re not ready to accept that ‘learning music is a character-builder’. We believe everyone should be able to learn music and enjoy the learning process - but this requires us to rethink how traditional practice works today. Instead of being repetitive and predictable, be dynamic and serendipitous. Instead of succumbing to barriers, remove them and build momentum. Instead of taking the shortest path to perfection, take the fastest (and most engaging) process to the goal. Instead of brute force, use intelligent efficiency. Instead of a fear of failure, have a celebration of success. Instead of learning alone, let’s learn together.
With this blog, we will journey together to share, discuss and discover new ways to make learning music better. Whether you are a music teacher, student, parent, or anyone else stumbling upon this blog, we welcome you. We’d love to hear from you and learn as well, so commenting/sharing/writing us is always encouraged!