My name is Tom Heany. Shortly after my first piano lesson I started practicing. Roughly 13,000 hours later, I'm still at it. In fact, I wrote the book on practicing. It's called First, Learn to Practice and it's available from bookstores and online booksellers.

The oldest recordings of music are well over 100 years old. The oldest examples of written music are 4,000 years old. The oldest musical instruments we have are more than 37,000 years old. People have been making music, all over the world, for a long time. And that means that all that time they’ve been practicing.

About Practicing is an introduction to the thoughts and experiences that shaped my view of practicing. In First, Learn to Practice I boiled them down to Seven Big Ideas and Seven Good Habits. I can't sum them all up in one sentence, but here's the First Big Idea:

If you're not enjoying your practicing, change it until you are.

If you practice, or if you teach people who practice, or if you're the parent of someone who practices (or, in all cases, should practice), I hope you'll find something helpful and interesting here.

 

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