Artist Insights

Our Artist Insights series aims to give you fresh ideas and approaches to help you reach your musical potential. Bringing you closer to our artists, this series gives you access to tips, tricks and experiences from professional musicians around the world and is a resource that you can always come back to.

During my many years as a performer and teacher, one of the most difficult things to master is the art of practice itself. We know that we have limitations and it’s easy to focus on small parts of our technique that need working on, but we are not always able to compartmentalise our entire technique and start working on the whole thing. In this article I will try to provide you with a personalised schedule of practice.

Sitting next to other great players is really the only way to learn about playing. You can listen and watch Youtube forever, but until you’ve felt the wind next to you (or behind you) move, and felt the tonguing and heard the sound of the note coming from a great player beside you, you cannot really comprehend what the difference is.

Our Artist Insights series aims to give you fresh ideas and approaches to help you reach your musical potential. Bringing you closer to our artists, this series gives you access to tips, tricks and experiences from professional musicians around the world and is a resource that you can always come back to.

Our Artist Insights series aims to give you fresh ideas and approaches to help you reach your musical potential. Bringing you closer to our artists, this series gives you access to tips, tricks and experiences from professional musicians around the world and is a resource that you can always come back to.

Benjamin Mellefont, Principal Clarinet of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, has shared with us his personal and interesting take on professionalism in music.

As our next contributor to our Artist Insights series, Sérgio has written an interesting article about musical creativity and comprehensiveness and what becoming an eclectic artist in today's music scene entails.

Yamaha artist Eirik Gjerdevik, tuba soloist and conductor, has collected for us some hints and tips that could come handy when practising on your tuba along with some consideration on the effect your playing has on your band. Click here to read the full article.

In this article I want to discuss some of the thinking I do while I develop my interpretation of a piece of music. When I study a score, my overall objective and responsibility is to be as faithful to the composers’ wishes as possible.

When we’re feeling drained of inspiration or want a reason to practise, what kinds of options can we put in place to jump-start our routine again? Often in our careers as music students and professional players, we hit the wall of what we’d label as boredom or lethargy in practice. There are so many reasons that we know should get us off our sofas to do our hour or 4 hours…or even 10 minutes of one to one contact with our instruments, but the draw and motivation escapes us.

Tuning a mallet instrument requires a deep understanding of complex physical phenomenon. The biggest question is, when does an instrument sound tuned? To answer this question, you need to align physical and subjective aspects.

Erik Janssen, conductor of many bands and ensembles, from beginners to professional level, adjudicator and teacher, in this "Artist Insights" has shared his personal experience on how to make the band your best team.