The Art of Practicing : A Guide to Making Music from the Heart

Rating:
Summary: Questionable advice from a questionable source.
Review: To be fair, The Art of Practicing provides good advice on avoiding injuries through posture correction and relaxation techniques. That said, this scientifically-accurate and good advice is mixed in with techniques whose effectiveness must be questioned. Although there are other methods than the ones described which can be utilized to achieve a better ear for the musician, the authors present their ideas as concrete facts; also, they overload their methods with praise, citing that any pianist can cut down eight hours of inefficient practicing into three really good ones. Is this a positive message to be sending to budding musicians? Also, the book tries to cater to every instrumentalist instead of focusing on just pianists, the direction in which it obviously is trying to bend towards. These fleeting refrences to the other disciples of music are often scant and insubstantial, and everyone who reads this book will find pages of material that doesn't apply to them. Also, this book is not exactly a page turner.