The Bulletproof Musician

2026.8 | Lorna McGhee

Do elite performers actually feel as confident as they look? In this conversation with Boston Symphony principal flutist Lorna McGhee, we explore what's really happe

Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse: The Science of Sleep for Musicians

What if one of the most overlooked factors affecting memory consolidation, emotional regulation, practice efficiency, and performance consistency wasn’t a new practice st

Paul Baxter: Why Bad Habits Keep Coming Back (And a Faster Way to Change Them)

Have you ever had the experience of fixing something in the practice room…only to have it come back in performance? Maybe it’s a passage where tension creeps back in. Or

Micah Killion: The One Thing Artist-Level Musicians Do Differently in the Practice Room

How should musicians actually practice to improve faster? In this conversation with researcher and trumpet professor Micah Killion, we explore what expert musicians do di

How to Start a Performance with More Accuracy (Without the Onstage Warm-Up)

One of my teachers often used to say that no matter what you’re playing, when you’re on stage, the beginning of a piece is always the hardest part. Not because the openi

When You Can’t Get Yourself to Start Practicing, Try This

In some years it feels easier to begin the new year with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. Other years, it can be difficult to get going and build up those new habits that

The Central Strategy Expert Musicians Use to Practice Difficult Passages

We all get stuck on problem passages from time to time. And it can be very natural to simply throw more repetitions at it, in hopes that this will eventually unlock somet

How a Small Change in Self-Talk Could Improve Performance Under Pressure

The voice in our head can be an asset at times - but also kind of a jerk at the worst possible moments. And like that one person in the “quiet car” of the train that does

A Learning Method That Outperformed Traditional Practice

A few months ago, when a sportswriter published an article in The New York Times about an unusual and “revolutionary” practice method that NBA star Victor Wembanyama and

How Much Perfectionism Do You Really Need to Succeed?

A friend recently asked if it's true that becoming a virtuoso performer requires being a perfectionist. Well, spoiler alert, it's not a simple yes or no answer

Pallavi Mahidhara: On Practicing for Flexibility, Not Perfection

Playing for other people, whether it’s an audience of one, a dozen, or several hundred, can be a stressful thing! So it’s easy to focus on the negative aspects of perform

What Happened When Musicians Slept 90 Minutes More

Sleep and recovery is an aspect of preparation that athletes prioritize, with teams hiring sleep consultants, and many athletes going to great lengths to ensure they’re g

Why Being Too Quick to Offer Feedback Could Inhibit Learning

I remember a lesson many years ago, when my teacher told me that her job was to teach me how to teach myself. So that I would one day no longer need a teacher. I couldn’

Fewer Repetitions….But More Rapid Progress?

Whether we’re baking a cake, driving to a new restaurant, or putting together a puzzle, we can usually get to the goal more efficiently and effectively if we have a clear

Ida Kavafian: Habits That Separate Good Musicians from Great Ones

This episode with violinist Ida Kavafian is packed with key points about effective practice, plus fascinating nerdy details about bowing and fingering principles, referen

Can Memorizing Music Make You a More Expressive Performer?

One of the arguments often made for why we should memorize music, is that performing from memory facilitates more expressive performances. But is that really true? There

Two Approaches to Memorization (Beware: One Could Leave You Stranded!)

Memory can often feel like a mysterious, unknowable phenomenon. Something that happens magically by itself at times, with great effort at others, and sometimes deceives u

A Hidden Reason You Forget Music on Stage

Mistakes on stage are never fun, but missing a note here or there, or playing out of tune is over and done with pretty quick. Having a memory slip on stage is a whole oth

Jane Ginsborg: On Building Stronger and More Reliable Musical Memory

Talk to anyone who has ever performed from memory, and you’ll probably get a story of a time when their memory failed them. For instance, I remember a time, perhaps in el

How to Use Focus Cues to Play More Freely on Stage

A pianist once told me the last thing their teacher said at their final lesson after years of study: “Now forget everything I ever told you.” Not exactly the parting wis