The Musician's Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness [Paperback]

The subtitle of the book is an outline of what you'll find inside. Part one deals with, "practicing deeply." It begins with the necessary, but mundane, subjects of organizing practice time and creating a supportive practice environment. Klickstein divides practice into five zone: new, developing, and performance material along with technique and musicianship. Some of these are self-explanatory, others explore ares few people venture. How much of your practice includes sight reading and ear training?

The following chapters look at how to work with material in each practice zone, and cover things such as mental practice, selecting repertoire, memorization, interpretative issues, and taking breaks in practice. The material is necessarily general. A book could not contain specific practice suggestions for every major piece in every instrument's repertoire. I consider the generality of this advice a strength. The practice concepts in The Musician's Way could be easily integrated with whatever your private instructor is giving you.

I have always thought that there needed to be a good, lengthy book on practicing, but I'd never found one I liked. It had gotten to the point where I thought of writing something myself. Now I don't have to. The The Musician's Way fills that gap.

Part two deals with performance issues. It begins by discussing anxiety's effects on our bodies, and continues with, "five facets of preparation," and issues of backstage and pre-performance routines.

What I like most about the section on performance is its practicality. In short, Mr. Klickstein is not afraid to discuss what most people consider trivial issues. Are your clothes prepared? Do you have the music? How do you start and end a piece? How do you walk out on stage? So much preparation goes into the music itself, but nothing goes into stage deportment or easy issues that, if dealt with, can help a performer be less worried and more focused.

Part three covers, "lifelong creativity." This section is a discussion on injury prevention and how to succeed as a student. The injury prevention section deals with, among other things, an issue that musicians don't like to talk about: hearing damage. Simply put, this section is terrifying. I'd never even thought about most of the things the book covers, but I'm certainly glad I know about them now.

The portion on succeeding as a student covers things such as the student-teacher relationship and dealing with criticism.

--Quote Junkie--

One of my favorite things about this book is the relevant quotes placed before each section.

--Strength in Formatting--

When I first started reading The Musician's Way, I was a bit put off by the numerous lists put in boxed out asides.

Over the course of the book, I realized that these were a strength. The formatting and lists allow quick reviewing, making this book a solid, easily-scanned reference.

If you are...

* a music student
* a professional musician
* a serious (or not-so-serious) amateur musician
* anyone else, really

You owe it to yourself to read this book. The concepts found in it might seem like common knowledge, but there are is some powerful gems contained within the pages of The Musician's Way.

The Musician's Way and The Savvy Musician make a formidable duo of books for any musician. Together they fill major holes in any music curriculum, and offer a wealth of knowledge collected in a few hundred pages. I can't recommend either highly enough.

The Buddhas do but tell of the way; it is up to you to swelter at the task. ~Gautama Siddharta (c. 563-483 BCE)
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I've read (and re-read in many cases) most books out there on practice and this is one of the best, hands down. Klickstein is a classical guitarist who performs throughout the U.S. and internationally and is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

My favorite 2 aspects of the book are the well-chosen quotations sprinkled throughout, and the use of solid research to inform and back up what Klickstein puts forth. The bibliography is solid and well-chosen. The book is fairly comprehensive, covers the nitty gritty of practice, and includes concrete things to actually do, which mostly means strategies for excellent practice, but there are other worthy tidbits, too. The second section of the book is all about performance and the strategies you can use to include performance as another aspect of your practice. Klickstein also covers aspects of the body that are important to good practice: physical warm-ups, injury prevention, resting. The final part of the book covers injury prevention and valuable advice for the student. More specifics on each section are below.

Part I: Artful Practice (6 Chapters, 124 pages)

This section is organized to reflect Klickstein's method of organizing practice. There is basic introductory stuff like definitions, creating a great practice environment, planning and scheduling and Klickstein sets up his method, the "Five Practice Zones" (new material, developing material, performance material, technique, musicianship). Each following chapter is something of an elaboration of these zones. At the end of the first chapter is an excellent guideline for a warm-up. Included in following chapters are tips and strategies for memorization, problem-solving, interpretation, skill maintenance, mental imagery, motivation, and evaluation. The final chapter of Part I deals with collaboration which for Klickstein means playing in ensembles.

Part II: Fearless Performance (5 Chapters, 70 pages)

Everything you might expect is in this section, from preperformance routines to developing stage presence, to dealing with nerves, performance glitches and how to deal with them and concert design. Again, to help you organize your thoughts about this important aspect of music-making, Klickstein reveals his 5 facets of performance: artistic, technical, mental/emotional, physical, and organizational. He includes some helpful information about highly stressful performances such as auditions and competitions, too.

Part III: Lifelong Creativity (3 Chapters, 80 pages)

The first two chapters of this part deal with injury prevention, something important to consider when we're repeating actions over and over for long periods of time. Repetitive stress injuries are common among instrumentalists and Klickstein introduces us to ways to prevent these through posture, good planning and hearing protection. The most valuable chapter in this section however, in my opinion, is the final one, titled Succeeding as a Student. It's filled with excellent advice for students of any age or level and includes strategies for choosing teachers, dealing with fair and unfair criticism, building community and good advice to general approaches to being a musician.

It's difficult to find any fault in the book, and I think anyone will discover much that is valuable within its pages. My only criticism is that it's approach is solidly centered in the Western Art Music tradition and all that entails. Thankfully, solid practice advice transfers to any type of music, but if you're interested in playing punk rock, or perhaps using the computer as an instrument, many of the musical examples won't help you much. That relates to another (very minor) criticism: the musical notation examples are fairly sophisticated and require good note-reading skills. This isn't really a criticism, as Klickstein's intended audience is quite clearly well-trained classical musicians, but for those less able to read music, this might be a stumbling block. A final shortfall for me was the lack of discussion of other tools to help with practice, things such as metronomes, software, and web resources.

As a whole, this is a most excellent book to add to your collection if you're interested in practicing more efficiently. Very highly recommended.

Have fun, and good luck with your practice.

The Musician's Way is an immensely useful book. Gerald Klickstein covers just about every aspect of musicianship imaginable in a concise and thorough way, very much in the holistic manner of his guitar teaching. The book is geared particularly toward young musicians in music school, but can be useful for anyone who wants to improve as a musician. There are specific instructions and suggestions that make the challenges of being a musician much easier to conquer because there's a clear plan. If you have any questions about the book or something not covered in the book, you can go to the website. Kudos and thanks to Mr. K for his dedication and enthusiasm!