"Passionate Practice" ofers a comprehensive and positive path toward authentic musicality. -- John McCarthy, Director of Prepatory & Extension Divisions, San Francisco Conservatory of Music 

Simply stated–this book is terrific. It reads beautifully and will help not only pianists but other performers as well. -- Diana Darby, Ph.D., Pianist, Composer, Inventor, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Music, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering 

There are rich implications here not only for artistic development but for the psychotherapeutic treatment of blocks to creative expression. -- Louise Bettner, PhD., Clinical Psychologist, Classical Pianist, Faculty, John F. Kennedy University

Product Description

"Relax your shoulders." "Let go of tension." "Look at the music." "Don’t look at the music." Look at the keyboard." "Don’t look at the keyboard." "Listen to the music." "Don’t think, just play." Every music student has heard such suggestions, and they all hold some truth. But the challenge is: how? 

This book is a gentle, progressive guide in exactly how to relax, focus, listen, and feel the music and how to harness them to work together, automatically and simultaneously. Its innovative approach combines special relaxing and behavior modification exercises that foster concentration, focus, security and passion in performance. 

The book, user-friendly, comprehensive, and filled with witty illustrations, can also be used as a key tool for psychotherapists working to help clients detoxify trauma, especially that associated with performing issues. 

By Admin Rodki 

This book is fantastic!! It presents excellent techniques for taking your musical practice to the next level. For anyone out there who has a particular hump to get over in their practice, this is the book for you. In a very clear and easy to understand manner, the author shows you how to excel in even the most difficult situations and to do so with a sense of ease. The ideas and lessons presented in this book will help you to face any challenge in life, musical or otherwise. 

Former principal bassist of the Cincinnati Symphony, Barry Green has created what has to be one of the most important books on musical psychology ever written. As a young clarinetist myself, I've found this read to help me change from one who frets over my auditions and solos to becoming a confident musician in front of others.

Green begins by discussing what makes up a good performance. He invented the formula P = p - i, where P is the level of the performance, p is the potential of the performer, and i is the level of mental interference during the performance. 

He explains how to decrease the amount of i in order to bring the level of P as close as possible to p. Green then digs further into his ideas by introducing to two "selves". Quoted, "Self 1 is our interference. It contains our concepts about how things should be, our judgments and associations. It is particularly fond of the words 'should' and 'should not' and often sees things in terms of what 'could have been. Self 2 is the vast reservoir of potential within each one of us. It contains our natural talents and abilities, and is a virtually unlimited resource that we can tap and develope. Left to its own devices it performs with gracefulness and ease." 

Green goes own to give advice and excercises on how to ignore the interference of self 1 during performance and how to let self 2 work uninterupted. Over the next chapters, Green goes into more technical and complicated details, while teaching us the powers of awareness, will, and trust. These three chapters are loaded with useful excercises, and most of them have the least do with music, at least directly. But they all tie in somewhere. 

Green also writes of 'Letting Go', a chapter all about how to 'become' the music while playing, rather than looking at it from a technical aspect. Later, there's a particularly good chapter on how to, not perform but, listen to music. It explains why sometimes we don't feel moved by the music, and then gives relevant solutions to enjoying the performance. 

Green chooses to end the book by not recapping all the techniques he have taught, but instead by writting several chapters on realizing how big a gift music is, and how to appreciate it to the fullest extent. Reading this book is a potentially life changing experience. I urge all of you to give it a try...even if you are already a capable performer. 

Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within

is a book for any musician who finds themselves having reached a plateau in their development. Werner, a masterful jazz pianist in his own right, uses his own life story and experiences to explore the barriers to creativity and mastery of music, and in the process reveals that "Mastery is available to everyone," providing practical, detailed ways to move towards greater confidence and proficiency in any endeavor. 

While Werner is a musician, the concepts presented are for every profession or life-style where there is a need for free-flowing, effortless thinking. Book also includes an audio CD of meditations narrated by Kenny to help the musician reach a place of relaxed focus. From the Publisher 

This is a great book for any musician, and it has literally changed the way people all over the globe think about their lives and their music. Kenny's candid confession of frustrations regarding his own early development really reveal how *everyone* struggles to reach a place of mastery, no matter what facade of confidence they present publicly. 

It is an inspiring book that seems to immediately connect with musicians, who say to us over and over, "I've always felt there was something holding me back, and now I know how to let go and move forward!" The accompanying CD of meditations will be helpful for those wishing to investigate further the practical techniques Kenny discusses in the book.