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There are weekly live events – and you’re welcome to participate in as many or as few as you would like. i.e. Nobody is taking attendance – and everything is recorded. 😁
Every first Wednesday of the month, at noon Eastern, there will be a live workshop on a new practice or performance-related skill, taught by musicians, researchers, or one of a growing number of folks who straddle both the music and research worlds.
For instance, we’ve had sessions on:
On the third Wednesday of each month, we’ll have Office Hours, when I’ll be available to answer questions and you can “crowdsource” an answer to any practice or performance challenges that you may be working through. Kind of like a combination of the “phone a friend” and “ask the audience” lifelines in the popular Who Wants to Be a Millionaire TV show.
There’s also a bi-weekly (twice a month) performance practice meetup. This is an opportunity to practice performing some new music or to try out a new mental skill in a low-stakes environment.
Members have used this to prepare for recitals and orchestra auditions, as well as lessons and master classes – or even just to test out memory security or practice getting more comfortable with playing for an audience.
It’s open to all levels and experience, whether you’re in your third year of playing an instrument or 30th.
It turns out that whoever said “If you want to go fast, go alone; If you want to go far, go together” was onto something. And some recent studies do suggest that having an accountability buddy or accountability group can really help with realizing your goals. Especially when it comes to “stretch” goals that feel a long ways away. So this is baked into the program as well.
Every quarter, we pick a specific skill and spend a month working through it as a group, with weekly playing and recording homework. Kind of like the live Performance Psych Essentials class, but a little more narrowly focused on specific micro-skills, with 1-2 short videos to watch, instead of live sessions to attend.
So far this year, we’ve worked on developing pre-performance routines for managing anxiety, getting into the zone more consistently using several different attention control strategies, playing more freely and courageously with different forms of variable practice, and cultivating more “bulletproof” memory.
Though I read a lot of research articles every week, I hadn’t read a book in years.
And it turns out I wasn’t the only one who needed a little accountability to maintain a reading habit, so we started a community book club.
Once a quarter, we read a book together, sharing our favorite takeaways and insights gleaned from week to week.
If you don’t already have the courses listed below, you’ll have access to these and any “beta” course materials that are being developed for as long as your Learning Lab membership is active.
Performance Psych Essentials is a live online cohort-based class that I teach each quarter, where we spend 4 weeks working on a core set of essential skills around effective practice, managing performance anxiety, improving on-stage focus, and performing more confidently.
Each week, we explore a set of research-based strategies and techniques in these areas together, with a tiny bit of weekly homework to make sure we’re putting all of it into practice.
Beyond Practicing is a self-paced course with the complete set of skills that I teach in my in-person semester-long classes, and is the source of many of the skills that we cover in the Psych Essentials class.
You’ll have access to a series of 5-minute videos on different strategies like goal-setting, deliberate practice, and interleaved practice, with accompanying worksheets that you and your students can use to integrate these strategies into their weekly practice.
Eventually, I anticipate offering this program for $149 per quarter (i.e. ~$50 per month), but during the “beta” period, it will be available for $129 per quarter ($43 per month).
And, you’ll be able to keep this discounted rate forever, as long as you’d like to remain part of the program – even when the price goes up.
If you have any questions about whether this is right for you or not, send me an email here.
You’ll have access to the courses for as long as you are an actively subscribed member of the community. If you end your All-Access membership, you will no longer have access to the courses, replays, and other resources.
There are no discounts for Learning Lab if you already own some or all of the included courses. However, you will continue to own any of the courses that you’ve already purchased forever, whether you join the All-Access Learning Lab community or not.
It’s tricky to set a minimum age, as I’ve had students as young as 12 in my pre-college classes, and most have been super engaged, curious, enthusiastic, and independent learners.
So while I’m inclined to recommend that participants be age 18 or above, if you have a younger child or student that would like to join the community, just email me, and we can chat about whether this would be a good fit for them at this time.
No problem. Just email me, and I’ll do my best to answer them!
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If you’d like to explore some of the most essential skills and techniques in the course live, with a cohort of curious, thoughtful, supportive, and like-minded educators (and a few mildly irreverent or benevolently sarcastic folks mixed in to make sure we don’t get too serious), that’s also an option!
Starting Thursday, February 3rd, we’ll meet via Zoom once a week, and go through selected strategies related to effective practice, managing nerves, and achieving flow states under pressure. We’ll do some in-class playing experiments (don’t worry – you’ll be muted!), short weekly homework assignments, and small-group breakout sessions to help you integrate these new skills into your teaching.
This 6-week live course is normally $199, but is available at 50% off the regular cost when bundled with Beyond Practicing. For more details about the live course (and dates) CLICK HERE.