Musicians and Mindset

Posts on the mental lives of musicians. Advice to find joy, avoid frustration, and find success in all of your musical endeavors.

Reality Check Your Goals: Mindset and New Experiences

Last time, I focused on why being specific and relevant in your piano journey is helpful and how to implement that practice in your own goal-setting. In this post, I’m focusing in on the “MART” of smart goals and what it means to “reality check expectations,” as this is where new pianists especially struggle with …

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How Curiosity Keeps Us Happy and Motivated While Practicing an Instrument

This post is part 2 in the Chart Your Quest series, for people wanting to start learning piano (or any instrument!) but don’t know where to start! You can read the first part here. Last week, we talked about finding our motivation: what is it we actually want to learn to do in piano and …

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Chart Your Quest: How to Plan Your Piano Journey

Taking up piano is very much like embarking on an epic quest. You have a general idea of where you need to go, but there’s a lot of terrain between here and there that you don’t know about yet.

If you’re not careful, you could end up trapped in a dark forest of no return!

But don’t worry, these posts will be your guide to finding the perfect guide for you. It will help you create the path for your journey, starting with where you’re going and why.

How to Memorize Music: The Many Pieces of the Memorization Process

How to memorize music is a question most classical musicians ask, and it’s not surprising given the incredible feats of mental acuity they are asked to perform. This article explains how expert memory works and how you can use this knowledge to memorize your music more efficiently and much stronger. “The demands placed on memory …

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7 Steps to Practice Joy While Practicing an Instrument

In his 2019 literature review on the study of joy in positive psychology, Matthew Kuan Johnson explains there are four types of joy. Joy can be an emotion, mood, a disposition or trait, or what religious or spiritual practices consider a “spiritual fruit.” As an emotion, joy comes from an external situation; it’s an affective …

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The Selection: How to Pick Piano Repertoire to Increase Momentum and Avoid Frustration

Finding new piano sheet music is one of the most exciting parts of being a pianist. I love visiting old book stores that have a sheet music section, as I’ve found treasures from composers I’ve never heard of. Learning to pick piano music that is at the right level for you (not boringly easy and …

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Book Recommendation: Light the Dark by Joe Fassler

Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process is a collection of super-short, inspiring essays from acclaimed authors that comes originally from Joe Fassler’s online series “By Heart” featured in The Atlantic. In this series of interviews, he asked authors which pieces of writing changed their lives as well as how these …

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5 Popular Chord Progressions and How to Use Them

Start making your own music today with chord progressions from your favorite songs


E G♯ m C♯ m A

1 Progression, 3 Ways

Free

Musescore, Music xml, Midi, and Pdf file types included.

C♯ m G♯ m B E

1 Progression, 8 Ways3

Free

Musescore, Music xml, Midi, and Pdf file types included.

A♯dim C♯m F♯ B

1 Progression, 3 Ways

Free

Musescore, Music xml, Midi, and Pdf file types included.

A♭ E♭m G♭ D♭

1 Progression, 4 Ways

Free

Musescore, Music xml, Midi, and Pdf file types included.

C♯ m Bm E A

1 Progression, 3 Ways

Free

Musescore, Music xml, Midi, and Pdf file types included.

Am Em F C

1 Progression, 8 Ways

Free

Musescore, Music xml, Midi, and Pdf file types included.

Am Em F C

1 Progression, 8 Ways

Free

Musescore, Music xml, Midi, and Pdf file types included.