Passionate Practice: The Musician's Guide to Learning, Memorizing, and Performing [Paperback]

Margret Elson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2002

"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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

About the Author

Margret Elson’s dual careers span 30 years of teaching and coaching pianists, vocalists and ensembles, and 25 years as artistic counselor to artists and performers. She is a licensed psychotherapist and was certified as a hypnotherapist. She has performed as a soloist and in ensemble, and in 1993 she and her piano partner Elizabeth Swarthout received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce the CD, Twentieth Century American 4-Hand Piano Music, issued on the Laurel Record label. Ms. Elson’s musical background includes ten years as a piano scholarship student at Juilliard, Preparatory Division, and studies in the San Francisco Bay Area with Marjorie Petray and Alexander Libermann. In addition, she has masters degrees in Psychology, Journalism and Political Science. In 1983 she opened the Center of Artistic Counseling in Oakland, and has presented her innovative work at international conferences such as The Biology of Music-Making (Denver), and The First International Conference on Mind, Body and the Performing Arts (NYC), and in Oslo, Norway and London. Throughout her work, she seeks to maintain her sense of humor.

Product Details

• Paperback: 108 pages
• Publisher: Regent Press (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587900211
• ISBN-13: 978-1587900211
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #540,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

101 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars "Therapy" (with a musical spin), February 5, 2008

By 

Malleus Maleficarum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Passionate Practice: The Musician's Guide to Learning, Memorizing, and Performing (Paperback)

This is a typical self-help book: a lot of "therapy", that is to say mystifying nonsense and psychobabble. I had my suspicions immediately upon getting to the Introduction page: here we have an epigraph from one "Guru Nanak The First Sikh Guru"; goes like this [capitalisation preserved]: "Divine Music is heard in every soul, Continuous, resonant, self-sustaining". Boy, that's deep, that truly expresses ... something. OK, now, quick to the bibliography at the end: here my suspicions were further augmented by the presence of Coelho and Arundhati Roy among the sources. Intelligent people don't read this kind of stuff. OK, moving on to the bio blurb on the last page: a nice picture of the author here -- and a list of accomplishements worthy of a Benvenuto Cellini, including, among other things, not one, not two, but three Master's degrees -- in Journalism, Political Science, and Psychology. One wonders how this is possible and how meaningful all these are ... and in addition, the book is somewhat poorly written, at least for a Master in Journalism. Strangely, no music degrees are listed; this is unusual for someone teaching music (and who, in addition, had the time to obtain three unrelated Master's degrees).

A few specific examples of:

(1) Mystifying drivel, p. 27 "Picture a point of light at a spot in your abdomen and watch yourself breathing to that spot, lighting it up". That's good guidance! -- Deepak Chopra himself couldn't put this better.

(2) Strange grammar and usage, p. xiii, "As a teacher it became my goal to put all the components [...]". I can see HW Fowler spinning in his grave... More of that, p. xv, "This book contains the means to free yourself from [...] As you traverse the road ahead, please bring along ...". Travel, perhaps? Traverse would mean to cross the road; hardly the intended meaning. Page 41, "... notice the minimum amount of energy you need ...". Amount can be of sugar, but not of energy -- energy is an abstract noun. Master's in Journalism, huh.

(3) The book is full of pseudoscientific and/or cutesy little magic words (very typical for the bs-rich self-help genre) -- "Magic Carpet", "Eight-Point Sensory System", "Puppy Dog Hands", "Uh-oh Mindset", "At-one-With-the-Universe" this and that, "R/A Response", etc.

I'm being pedantic, I know.

The bottomline:

I'm not sure if Regent Press is a vanity publisher, but this book feels self-published. OK, tastes differ, fine: suppose you're curious, so check it out and if you find it helpful, god bless -- but do check it out. New-Age "therapeutic" types might like it... As for me, it's not enough (charitably) substance and too much formulaic tripe, so I'm sending it back.

---

PS. This review was originally posted on August 31, 2006, and since then accumulated 40 our of 67 helpful votes. Yesterday it mysteriously disappeared, along with the comments. Why? Well, think of it. Negative reviews on Amazon just have this tendency to suddenly and totally silently disappear. Strangely, this never happens to five-star ones. Anyway, here's a repost. Enjoy. (Comments, as always, are welcome, especially if relevant and cogently expressed.)

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Life as a Statue, October 17, 2007

By 

Karen Laws (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Passionate Practice: The Musician's Guide to Learning, Memorizing, and Performing (Paperback)

What I look for in an instructional manual are easy-to-follow instructions, personality, and at least one good tip that I can internalize for longterm use. Margret Elson's Passionate Practice succeeds on all three counts. As soon as the book arrived, I began working my way methodically through the various exercises and I found them all easy to understand, if sometimes tricky to do. Elson's humor and straightforward, encouraging language helped me to stay on task. What have I internalized, now that this book is tucked away among my Mozart and Beethoven piano music? A greater awareness of tension in my hands, not only when I'm at the piano, but when I'm talking on the phone or driving. As soon as I notice my hands clenched on the steering wheel, remembering Passionate Practice, I relax them. Ditto for that tough phone call--and when I soften my grip on the handset and breathe, the phone call usually gets easier. I loved Elson's technique for attacking problems with memorization and/or wrong notes when two sections of the music are only slightly different. The short version is that you get into the position of two statues that express the feeling of the two passages, and it's surprising how very different statues One and Two can turn out to be. After practicing my statues away from the piano, I find my knowledge of the music substantially changed when I return to the keyboard. For more detailed accounts of this and other techniques, I recommend you get your own copy of Passionate Practice.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant Pianist and Creative Teacher, November 3, 2007

By 

P & T (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Passionate Practice: The Musician's Guide to Learning, Memorizing, and Performing (Paperback)

As someone who has known Ms. Elson for several decades, I can attest to her pianistic artistry and her creative teaching. As an experienced piano teacher myself, I have found her ideas for performance preparation, including practice/preparation techniques and focussing techniques during performance, which draw upon many different sensory resources to be extremely helpful for both me and my students. A number of my students have sworn by it. What I appreciate about Margret is her ability to write a book that is both concise and yet rich in content, easily readable and humorous, yet effective in its step-by-step processes. She practices what she preaches by reaching the reader through many sensory approaches. Anyone who has heard her performances knows that she plays with exquisite taste, style and passion. I highly recommend this thoughtfully written book.