The Practice of Practice: Get Better Faster

By: Jonathan Harnum

Narrated by: Jonathan Harnum

Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's Summary

Talent means nothing when it comes to getting better. Practice is everything. But exactly what is good practice? How does good practice create talent?

The focus of this book is music practice, but these techniques and mindsets can be applied to any skill you want to improve. The Practice of Practice covers essential practice strategies and mindsets you won't find in any other book. You'll learn what research tells us about practice, but more importantly, you'll learn how great musicians in many genres of music think about practice, and you'll learn the strategies and techniques they use to improve.

This book will help you get better faster, whether you play rock, Bach, or any other kind of music. It will also help you be a more informed teacher or a more effective parent of a young learner. Don't practice longer, practice smarter.

©2014 Jonathan D. Harnum (P)2015 Sol Ut Press

Read the Book Instead

This book has good content but didn't maximise the potential in an audio book format to incorporate the additional musical elements without having to constantly refer to the books website. This made for a less satisfactory listening experience.

Listened Twice without a break

Would you consider the audio edition of The Practice of Practice: Get Better Faster to be better than the print version?

This might be better in print, because there are pictures and graphs. Everything is available on line though.

Would you recommend The Practice of Practice: Get Better Faster to your friends? Why or why not?

I already have recommended this to my musician friends. This is a very informative and entertaining book for musicians. I noticed that friends who regularly listen to the music of others were interested. As expected, they are also the best musicians.

What about Jonathan Harnum’s performance did you like?

I generally avoid author narrators, but Jonathan Harnum obviously understands perfotmance. I like narrators who blend into the background, and allow you to concentrate on the book.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, but it is just fine to put down. It is divided into discreet sections, so it is easy to put down at the end of one and the beginning of another.

Any additional comments?

Many musicians get in their own way, and this author does a good job of addressing that. There is probably room for a follow up book on this topic alone. He reviews neuropsychology, and some studies are less than solid research, and not sufficient to draw conclusions. The author usually mentions that, and the studies are interesting and entertaining. I enjoyed the use of Youtube links for the performers he reviews. I didn't follow links for performers I already knew. From the authors discription of the others, I expected more.

Must read for all musicians

This book was very eye opening and inspiring to me. It provided a lot of great ideas on how to practice my instrument and to improve. I only wish I would have had this book when I was younger. I will be putting the techniques to the test and look forward to having a lot of fun making music!

Great Listen

This book was awesome! It has expanded my music perception ten fold. From great mindsets, to practice habits, to resources, to humorous stories, this book has tons of useful information. I recommend it to all musicians, novice to expert. I look forward to listening to it again in a few months to see what else I can discover. Thanks for a great book Jonathan.
Ollie

Really Helpful

I really liked this. Helped me come up with some ideas for practicing my bass. Some of the links on the website could be updated (some are expired) but otherwise a great listen.

The part that explained taking things very slowly and doing them right the first time was the most helpful. Knowing that my brain will "learn" to make the same mistakes over and over was an eye-opener.

Thank you.

Excellent book, author gets it. Thank you!

Exactly what I was looking for in a book on music practice. I love it when the author is the narrator, they're able to convey the emotion of their own words in a deeper way, many times.

A book about everything but practice

This book had decent reviews but I'm starting to question if they are real. you will be 5 chapters in before you get your first tip on practice. it's one sentence and the advice boils down to practice slow enough to be perfect. 95% of the words are about other things like how human hearing works or how the brain wirks and even how NASA conducted the search for explanets. thus one really had me scratch my head and went on so long that I though the subject of the book had changed entirely to space. He finally tried to tie it back to practice by saying NASA tried looking for planets one way that gave poor results and then they launched a probe that was better so of course that shows that there are better and worse ways to practice something. It feels like the author had a list of 5 items actually about practice and whole bunch of other subjects he was more interested in. He found a way to turn that into a book that could chew up a few hours of your time. Thankfully audible has a great policy of letting you return books and that's what I'm doing with this one. There is in reality, about as much useful information in this review on practice as you will get reading this book.

Where is the website for this book?

The author keeps referring to a website in connection with the text of this book. I am unable to locate this web site and it seems to be essential to the text. Can Audible respond to this?

Unlearning what I have learned...

This book helped me dispel myths about the usual practice sessions musicians have and gave me new insight on the different ways and different techniques we musicians can apply when heading into a practice session

I would definitely recommend this book to a fellow friend/musician!

An Excellent (and Useful) Book

I went into this book with high hopes, and those hopes were exceeded. Harnum covered many more aspects than I expected and in thorough (but not boring) detail.

Very engaging and interesting

Lots of really interesting content, plus a wealth of extra resources online. Very much enjoyed it. Thanks.

very engaging book on the art of practice

Author is a good narrator, I enjoyed his take on practice inspired by legendary musicians.

Superb and practical

Not the greatest audio quality (a little tinny at times) but we'll read and really fantastic content.

fantastic helpful inspiring book

I loved it. very well written. Very inspirational and helpful. The audio is excellent aswell.