Listening to the Border Radio On a scale of 1 – 10, how much fire do you have for playing music? When I work with people who want to learn harmonica one of the most common problems is remembering to find the time to practice and play music. I know
Category: Music – Inner Game
Total 38 Posts
If you never heard of D. H. “Bert” Bilbro, I’d like to introduce you to one of the most fascinating harmonica players I have ever heard. In 1928 Bert recorded a steam train imitation on the harmonica that was done in one take, that at times sounds like two
I don’t know about you, but I have had a rocky relationship over the years with the idea of commitments. Im my musical life, there have been times when I was so excited about learning and playing music that it was not a conscious decision to commit myself, I was
I found a great phrase this morning in a book by Steve Chandler: “the voice of your spirit”. I like this Phrase. It zeros in on what I was trying to describe a while ago when I wrote to you about discovering your own voice by recording yourself and then
“If you don’t live it, it ain’t going to come out of your horn.” – Louis Armstrong I love this quote because it reminds me that playing the harmonica gets all tangled up with the rest of my life, and that’s the way it should be. It also means that
I’ve been re-reading Stephen Pressfields book “Going Pro”, and he tells this story about how Rosanne Cash had this disturbing dream about trying to join a conversation with Bonnie Raitt and some guy named Art, and Art dismissed her as a dilettante… This dream kept haunting Rosanne, and caused her
I recently posted an email about how I fell off the path of practice. I ended up getting some replies out of the clear blue that just floored me. One of those resonses came from a man named Dave Moran, a fiddler and harmonica player from Colorado. Here’s Dave’s bio
Time Machines I like to think of some of my favorite things as time machines. As a kid, I was fascinated by the idea of getting into a time machine & walking into another world – like Philadelphia in 1776, or the New York Worlds Fair in 1939. When
What you are looking at above is a photo of my new improved practice space. My goal is to do a short practice that uses: A time limit (7 minutes) Focus on one thing (the tab on the page in the practice journal) A metronome (using the metronome for the
The Power of Embarrassment, or One Good Reason to Teach Harmonica…. Last week I taught classes at an event called the “Harmonica Collective” in Indianapolis. I wanted to focus on a few things that I have found very useful in my own life and as a harmonica player.