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Hello, my name is John E Brigante. More than 500 days ago I started practicing my baritone saxophone for at least 15 minutes a day, everyday. I was inspired to do this because I found my own practice to be very inconsistent.

As a music educator I have always tried to instill in my students that it is better to practice for 15 minutes everyday than it is to practice an hour and a half once a week. Consistency helps develop muscle memory and a good musical discipline. While I knew this to be true, I was not practicing what I was preaching (no pun intended).

As an experiment I have decided to change my old habits and document my journey of practicing my instrument for 15 minutes a day, everyday to see what it has done for my musicianship. What I have accomplished so far is remarkable and motivating.

It is my goal now to share with you motivating words of encouragement so that you too may set out on the path of consistent practice. The best part is that it truly is easy, because it only takes 15 minutes a day.

Take a moment to read through some of my posts and leave a comment. I hope it inspires you to practice 15 minutes a day, everyday.

Happy Anniversary Portamentor!

It really feels good to have made it this far and to still be going strong. I feel like a completely different player both physically and mentally. It is inspiring to me that I have made this transformation with practicing only 15 minutes a day. It is my hope that I have inspired you too to start doing something everyday even if it is only fir 15 minutes. I promise you that a small change made consistently everyday will start to add up to big results down the line.

Please share with me some comments and suggestions to help make this blog even better for the start of my second year of consistent practice. I’d love to hear from you so please take the time to leave me something good down at the bottom of this post. I’m on my way to Day 730.

I think it is only fitting that this blog post falls on the 2nd anniversary of my senior recital. Let me back up for those of you that don’t know the story of my senior recital and the aftermath. I feel that the story is pertinent to the efforts of motivation and perseverance that hold real estate on this website although it may seem to take a bit of a detour. Hang in there, I promise it will be worth the ride.

It was 2008 and I was fully submersed in the trenches of my “Super-Duper” Senior year of college. I was involved in far too many things at once that semester but considering the type of person I was, it would not have been uncommon for me to crank everything up to eleven. I was working as an instrument repair tech part-time & I was going to college full-time. I was taking courses that required an enormous amount of my time; significantly exceeding the proposed academic credit indication (at least in my humble opinion). With classes like intermediate field experience (pre-student teaching), rigorous teaching sequence courses, a host of ensembles along with performances and of course the practice and rehearsals I had scheduled for my recital, I was set on a crash course for cerebral catastrophe.

If that wasn’t enough, I just had to make sure that the repertoire for my senior recital was of an utmost caliber and perhaps too demanding of the musicians that I strong-armed into performing with me. If you know me, then you know that I wouldn’t be satisfied with an ordinary run of the mill senior recital but the mental and physical exhaustion that came along with it seems to have fallen short of being worth it, looking at it in retrospect. I figured that if I was in college for the last 8 years fighting tooth and nail to one day graduate, then my recital should showcase the culmination of my journey through one big spectacular event even if I had to kill myself in the process.

For all intensive purposes, my recital was a huge success. There were plenty of wrong notes, flubs & sour tones but the overall response was shimmeringly positive. I guess it was a bittersweet experience for me because I knew that there were plenty of things that could have been better but at that point I was just so relieved to have it done and over with. I had finished the performance, shortly thereafter the rest of the semester and things started to die down. As the dust began to settle and I realized that I didn’t have very much to do anymore I went into a bout of serious workaholism withdrawl and depression.

I gave up playing my sax for any serious performances for about a year. I told people that I felt like I deserved a break but honestly, after all I went through I just didn’t feel much desire to start playing again. It was like I blew a fuse in my performance center of my personality. I was feeling depressed that my skills were starting to shrivel up but I wasn’t interested in trying to fix it; it was a vicious cycle. I was turning down opportunities to gig left and right because I was too ashamed to admit that I wasn’t any good anymore… or at least so I felt.

On May 7, 2009 I went to go see a friend of mine, Alex Hamlin, perform live. He is also a bari sax player and his group, The Hog Trio (http://www.myspace.com/hogtrio), totally rocked my socks off that night. After the show, Alex gave me the set list. I asked him if he would sign it for me; so he wrote the following: “Keep playing loud bari… Alex Hamlin”. This turned out to be quite a significant memento because I took it to heart.

Over the next week I would mull over these words in my head. It was such a simple statement but the impact was great. I DID love playing the baritone sax, I DID think I was pretty good at it and I KNOW it would have been a crying shame to have given it up after all of the effort I put into it over the years. It was then that I decided I needed to make a change in my life. I knew that I didn’t have much time during the day to practice so I figured that I would put in a little bit of time everyday just to get the ball rolling. On May 13, 2009 I started practicing for at least 15 minutes a day, everyday and the rest is well documented history throughout the pages of this blog.

If you made it through this entire post without click away yet then you deserve some parting advice. I feel like there are at least three things you can take away from this story but feel free to interpret it as you will. The first is that you shouldn’t try to bite off more than you can chew. Over the years I have grown accustomed to having a busy schedule but some things aren’t worth the stress. Stay organized, stay positive and most of all stay focused on the most important things on your priority list. Planning and preparation is a crucial part of managing a hectic life style, that without often leads to mental meltdown. Trust me, it’s not worth it.

Secondly, worry about what you have control over (which is you and your actions) and worry not about what you have no control over (everyone else). We must faithfully try to influence our future with good work and due diligence however, we cannot trouble our minds with trying to control the outcome. Things won’t always go as planned but we can do our best to make the most of our current situation and fine tune the details as we go along. Again, it’s a case of not biting off more than you can chew.

Lastly, I have found that I have made a profound impact on someone else when I had no direct intention of doing so other than being the best that I can. If we do our best work and share it with others, people will take notice. I’m sure Alex didn’t know what his note meant to me and wasn’t truly aware of the effect it had. So be kind, be passionate, be cool and be your best. Energy is contagious… so spread some positive energy around and it will come back you, I promise.

Btw: Alex Hamlin also plays bari sax for a band called Jerseyband. They are one of my absolute favorite bands and their music just seriously rocks. Check them out at the following links:

http://www.jerseyband.com/

http://www.myspace.com/jerseyband/

When I first started blogging about my daily practice I had been coming up with ideas to make Portamentor a complete practice training service. I wanted Portamentor to offer the option for users to create their own musical exercise content but with my limited programing skills and shoe string budget this seemed next to impossible.

However, earlier this morning I stumbled upon this website/program called Noteflight. Basically, the program allows you to create your own music in standard notation and share it with full playback functionality.

While this technology has been out for some time now, it seems to me that this is going to catch on pretty quickly in the music educator world. With Facebook and Twitter becoming the platform for social media it only seems fair that Noteflight should set the stage for a new culture of social music education.

I wouldn’t have found this wonderful website if I hadn’t been on Dr. James Frankel’s blog where he talks about everything music technology for the purpose of music education. I got a chance to meet Dr. Frankel at an NJMEA convention and to say I was inspired would be an understatement. He is a very well respected and important creative force in the field of music education technology and it would be well worth your time to visit his sites.

http://www.jamesfrankel.com
http://jamesfrankel.musiced.net

Below, is a mixolydian exercise that I wrote out to demonstrate how simple it is to create and share your own music using Noteflight. My hope is that with the help of others, we can create a wealth of music practice exercises that the Portamentor community can share and practice everyday.

http://noteflight.com/login

Things move very fast in 2010. Television, video games, movies, the internet and everything else that makes our world move at such a fast pace contributes to our collective societal attention deficit. We have so many luxuries and conveniences that make things easier but it also makes it more difficult to figure out what we need to focus on. Problems can occur when we set goals and plans for ourselves that get bogged down by the complexity and multiplicity of how everything interconnects with everything else; ultimately compromising our clarity. You feel your heart racing and your breath get short, you just want to get everything done and include everything and make sure you didn’t forget anything and make sure everything is absolutely perfect…..

This is sort of like how I felt about practicing my saxophone. I wanted to practice so many things and get really good at lots of different things… Really fast! More often than not I’d be so bogged down by all of these thoughts that I couldn’t bring myself to practice it all. I didn’t have the time, I didn’t have the energy and I really just didn’t have the mental stamina to sustain this level of regiment without blowing a gasket.

This is why I started practicing 15 minutes a day. It is just that simple. I don’t concern myself with practicing everything everyday. I don’t even worry about what I want to accomplish. I just sit down and practice something. Maybe it’s scales, maybe it’s a method book, maybe it’s a transcribed solo, maybe it’s just me noodling. I just sit down and practice and I do it everyday. Sometimes I just need the release of playing whatever comes to my mind. While it is important to challenge ourselves it is more important to stay consistent and if that means that some days will have to go into the “I could have done this better” column, then so be it.

Life isn’t perfect so how can we expect everyday to be perfect for practicing? We can’t. We can, however, practice everyday and enjoy the fact that we are being faithful to the process and do it again the next day. If you feel like you could be doing more and are compelled to give it a little more the next day, then do it. Don’t force a feeling or try to get more done then you feel comfortable with. Just live in this moment right now and be joyful in your practice. Pick it up and play, put it away after 15 minutes and do it again the next day.

So on Day 305 I played a gig with an old friend of mine, Jeff Baker. He goes by the name of King Django (www.kingdjango.com) on stage and he has been a reputable musical figure in the Ska and Reggae world for many years. It was a lot of fun to get back into playing the ska and actually play some tenor again too. What I find most rewarding about this gig is that even though I hadn’t played tenor for a good long while prior to Jeff asking me to play the gig, I was able to get back into it quickly enough because I have been practicing everyday. Honestly, if Jeff had asked me to play the gig 305 days ago I probably would have turned him down because my chops were in that bad of shape.

I just want to give you guys a quick update as to what I’ve been up to lately. I am still in the process of getting a Music Motivator podcast up and on iTunes (not sure if that’ll be the name but…). I am also teaching music (voice & occasional instruments) at both the Chatham, NJ - School of Rock and Elmwood Park, NJ Public Schools and I just am trying to keep blogging and connect with other people online. To everyone that commented on my posts, thank you so much. I’m out there chiseling away at my own stone and it’s always nice to hear from people along the way.

Practice everyday and don’t stop. I’m telling you….. seriously.

Two hundred and ninety days ago I was inspired to practice everyday. I set out on the task and I haven’t looked back since. I started this blog shortly after that and I have since spent the better half of my contemplative mental energy on what I could do to expand the concept and functionality of this website.

I have ideas of offering a service for logging in your practice time so as to stay organized and focused on your goals. This would include features such as daily email reminders or suggestions from other daily practicing musicians on how to stay motivated and consistent. I would like for this to develop into a community where practicing and gigging musicians can connect to share ideas and exercises so that others could benefit.

My most pressing thought about the expansion of this site is however the idea of creating a Portamentor Podcast. I have some things in the works but now I’d like to hear from you. What would you like to hear from a podcast talking about practicing music and staying motivated? What questions would you have about staying consistent? What inspires you to play music and how can we get some that on the podcast?

Let me know your thoughts by posting a comment to this blog. I sincerely appreciate your feedback as well as your time. My guess is that it’ll take you even less than 15 minutes to post… so the rest of the time you can get back to practicing. Cheers.

The last couple of days I have been playing through some really great practice exercises that I found online and printed out. Basically, I just collected them and put them on my music stand in no particular order and just started reading them down. If I found something I liked I would stop and play through it a bit. The hard part was to stay interested in the stuff that was truly challenging or tedious.

This brings me to an interesting point. How often do we challenge ourselves to practice something and really focus on it when it is giving us trouble? Do we push ourselves to concentrate or do we just move on? Even when we know that spending the time on the exercise will be really good for us in the long run, it’s still hard to stay focused.

Today, as I was reading through the stack of exercises I came to a page with long-tones on it. I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t truly sat down and played long-tones since my very first day of consistent practice 274 days ago. I found it only fitting that I spend the time on it and focus without getting distracted. As silly as it may sound, it was hard. Long-tones can be very boring but I know how important they are to developing a good tone and embouchure endurance.

So, in the words of Bill Watterson from Calvin & Hobbes: “Do something you hate, being miserable builds character.” Of course this is a joke, but there is often times truth in jest. Push yourself to do something that is challenging today. When you get that feeling of wanting to move on, remember, it’s only 15 minutes. I think you’ll be glad that you did when you start to see how your discipline pays off in your playing.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with the thoughts of what you’d like to do, that you didn’t know what to do? Maybe you know what you want but you just don’t know how to get it. It’s as if the weight and unclarity of the overall goal paralyzes you from even taking the first step. How do we get out of this cycle? We want formulate a plan that allows us to make informed decisions but how do we proceed in this methodical way?

Paralysis by analysis?… Why not just make any move and see where it leads you? If the move is incorrect you can than make an informed decision about correcting course. You will learn from your mistake so as to be sure not to make them again. Taking the first step is often the hardest, so if we can get that out of the way as soon as possible hopefully the rest will fall into place.

This of course is easier said than done but perhaps taking a simple seemingly insignificant step first can get you over the fear of taking action. You are eventually going to have to jump into the pool so you might as well wade.

Just today I was searching the internet for new saxophone exercises. I stumbled upon a really great website called:

Jazz-O-Matic: http://www.jazz-o-matic.com/

I found some really great resources and exercises there that I was able to download and print out for free. The site has material that comes from many different sources. For example, many different sax players and teachers are a part of the Jazz-O-Matic community and they contribute lessons and exercises to this great body of material. You can read about their credentials in their profiles (bio page). Definitely worth taking a look.

The creator of the page, Richard Thurgood, started playing saxophone in 2001 and he has since grown as a musician by seeking for the information that he needed to learn. Whatever he learned he documented in both written format as well as audio and he reinforced the things he learned by picking the saxophone up and playing it as often as possible. To anyone that might be feeling apprehensive about learning a new instrument or practicing their old one more often, just think about Richard. No matter what mental obstacles we face or create that prevent us from acting now, cast them away and play. If Richard didn’t, he may have never created this great website. Just think what you might be able to create by acting now and never looking back.

Signing up is free and all of the materials are free but you can make a donation if you’d like to support this site. I strongly recommend you visit this site and explore all that it has to offer. I did, and I took one of the exercises (diatonic triad arpeggio exercises 1-3) and I played it for my 15 minutes for day 245. Thanks Richard.