<![CDATA[Nick Cutroneo Guitar Studio - Blog]]>Sat, 16 May 2026 18:25:40 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[12 Ways to Spice Up Your Summer Practicing]]>Wed, 18 Mar 2015 14:39:25 GMThttp://www.nickcutroneoguitarstudio.com/blog/12-ways-to-spice-up-your-summer-practicingWell, it’s that time of year again, the school year is almost done, and your spring semester lessons are almost finished.  Not too far in the distant future are family vacations, road trips, summer camps, BBQ’s, visits to the pool and much more.  But how do you fit in your typical practice with a summer schedule that is sure to fluctuate.  I’ve decided to share a list that I go over with all of my students around this time of the year to help them continue to make progress during the summer.

  1. Don’t stop practicing during the summer months – Seems obvious, but if the conscious effort isn’t made to continue to practice during the 2-3 months of summer, you’ll find it very hard to pick the instrument up again when the fall hits and you start lessons up again.
  2. Allow yourself to take time off – This is very important (even during the rest of the year) to allow yourself time to be away from the instrument.  Sometimes you just need a day for your body and mind to digest what you’ve worked on the day before.  Every week I take a day off just to let myself relax and take in what I worked on during the week’s practice.
  3. Take summer lessons – Summer lessons keeps the routine of practice/have a lesson, thus you continue to make progress throughout the summer.  Even every-other-week lessons or monthly lessons are better than taking a whole summer off.  With regular upcoming lessons (even if they are monthly) you are working to prepare for the next lessons.  This allows for larger breaks in your practice routine (for family get aways, etc…) but to continue on your progress with your instructor during lessons.  I call those, check-up lessons, to help remind you about certain concepts or ideas that were being worked on before the summer started, or to see how things have developed.
  4. Attend Festivals – Whether you are an adult or a parent of a child, attending festivals are great motivational tools.  You can see great concerts, sit in or even play in a master class, watch lectures, interact with other players (or parents of young children who play). 

Those are some ideas that every student (young and old) can wrap their head around.  Here are a few for parents who are trying to keep their kids interested in practicing during the summer months.

  1. Plan time off – Sit down with your child, decide on when they’ll have days not to practice.  Do this in the beginning of the summer, plan out the whole 2 months.  Be sure to include family vacations, summer camps, and anything that might already be planned.  Also include days off that don’t include any planned activities.  With that schedule now set, its clean what days your child needs to be practicing, and it is agreed upon.
  2. Summer Performance – As a teacher I book recitals every semester for my students to play on, I find that it is a great goal to work towards.  So why not plan a small recital for your child to play towards the end of summer.  It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it can be for a small group of friends and their parents, or family members.  This gives your child an opportunity to show off what they’ve been working on during the summer months.
  3. Practice buddies – If your child is friends with another child who also takes private music lessons, they can become practice buddies.  If they play the same instrument, it’s even better!  They can feed off of each other’s energy and excitement for music.
  4. Practice outside – Sometimes a change of scenery is all someone needs for an extra boast of enthusiasm!

For adults, there are some great, more intense ways to help keep the summer months productive…

  1. Goal oriented practice – Pick a summer goal to accomplish.  It can be learning a new piece, refining an old one, a performance that you’ve schedule, etc.  Now work towards that goal, set up small goals that will help you obtain the larger goal.  This can be carried over into your regular practice.
  2. Chamber Music – There is nothing better than getting together with a few friends and playing music together.  This is kind of like that “Practice Buddies” idea just for adults.  Get together with a few guitar friends, or even friends who don’t play the guitar.  Have some fun reading through music together, it doesn’t have to be a serious project, although sometimes it turns into one.  Rock and Folk musicians do this all the time.  It’s called a “Jam Session.”
  3. When in doubt, 15 minutes will do – If the day has been a busy one, driving kids off to camp, going to work, picking them up, going to a friend’s house for the night, and you realize before you go to bed, “Oh I didn’t even get a chance to pick up the guitar…”  Sit down real quick and work on one thing you’ve been struggling with.  Only spend 15 minutes (even use an egg timer if you need too!) on the spot.  This still allows you to make some progress, and some progress is better than none, or even going backwards.
  4. Keep a practice log – This log may be something you start off during the summer, but it can be very useful throughout the year.  Any student that I’ve had who has stuck with it has seen major results happen in their playing.  This can be used in conjunction with goal oriented practice to keep you on track.  Also, you can see what things haven’t helped you to get to your goal.  If they haven’t helped in a week, try something new.  Keep track of your successes, but more importantly keep track of what hasn’t worked.  That way you don’t repeat the same mistake again.


These are just a few things that I go over with my students, both child and adult.  Happy practicing!



]]><![CDATA[Are Summer Lessons Worth It?]]>Wed, 18 Mar 2015 14:36:20 GMThttp://www.nickcutroneoguitarstudio.com/blog/are-summer-lessons-worth-itIt’s nearing the end of the spring semester, and I’ve started to talk to students and parents about summer lessons.  When I was taking lessons in middle and high school, and even in college I always continued during the summer.  Taking the summer months off wasn’t something I even considered.  I even attended summer festivals and workshops to further hone my skills on the guitar.  However, I guess I was the exception to the rule, as many students decide to discontinue lessons over the summer.  Some feel that it would be a waste to take lessons because they are rarely around.  Others simply want a break from everything.

Use It or Loose It

Typically progress happens two ways, we either improve or get worse.  During the Summer skills either become honed or rusty.  Without lessons during the summer, students loose the continuity of their progress.  Technique and skills fade as practice time decreases.  Typically if there isn’t something to get ready for, many students stop practicing or decrease their practice time.

Continuing lessons, even an every other week or once a month schedule during the summer, can positively effect a students progress during the summer months.  They have something to work towards.  Multiple weeks or even months away from lessons with no sign of lessons until the fall can put a stop to all of the progress that was made during the school year.

Lessons During The Summer

Typically students that do take lessons over the summer don’t do lessons every week.  One week the family may be on vacation, another their teacher may be out of town (I regularly perform at different guitar festivals and workshops throughout the country and world).  With this irregularity, some students opt to just stop lessons over the summer.  I discourage this, and instead try to tell them why continuing in the summer is beneficial.

  1. Even a lesson once a month can continue development during the summer.  If the student is a hard worker, and practices regularly, doing a “once a month” check up during the summer isn’t awful, and is better then nothing.  Typically these lessons are longer lessons so that I can not only thoroughly go through the material they bring to the lesson, but that I can also walk them through what they should work on for the next lesson.
  2. Taking 2-3 months off means that it will take us (student and teacher) at least that long to redevelop the skills that were worked on towards the end of the year.  New skills aren’t as reinforced as old ones (obviously) and are the first to go.  Typically it takes a student 2-3 months to be at the same level they were at in the final months of lessons before the end of June.  This is a huge ego blow to students, but if you don’t use a skill for a few months it will degrade!
  3. Consistency is the name of the game.  If it is practicing, performing or even when it comes to taking lessons, being consistent will ensure that you make the most progress forward, and not backwards, sideways, or circular.

Have A Project

Sometimes it is unavoidable for students to not take lessons during the summer.  Maybe schedules don’t line up, maybe they go away for the whole summer.  Because of that, I tend to give summer projects to students.  Typically it is a larger piece of music that may challenge them in some ways, but at the same time giving them a bit of a break from the past year as well.

]]><![CDATA[Getting Ready For Your Recital]]>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:07:56 GMThttp://www.nickcutroneoguitarstudio.com/blog/getting-ready-for-your-recitalLast Friday, NCGS celebrated it's first full length student solo recital.  Liam Calhoun did an amazing job performing selections from Books 2-4 of the Suzuki Method.  As I watched him, I noticed how calm and collected he performed. I remember my first solo recital, my Senior Recital at Juilliard as part of their Pre-College program.  I also remember being incredibly nervous!  Liam in command, and performed with wonderful musicality and technical control.  For me, it was a textbook first recital and then some.  You only have one 1st recital -- if you can make that recital a positive experience it will make the continuing journey a pleasant one.

While Liam was preparing for his recital, we spoke at great length on how to prepare for his first full length performance.  It was quite clear from his performance that he followed the advice I gave him to the letter, thus making for an outstanding recital.  While we cannot control every variable of the recital, the better we prepare -- the better we play.
Liam and I were working towards this recital for quite a few months.  Along the way there were several key steps we took.  While the information below is presented for someone who is putting together a solo recital of at least 30 minutes or more, this can easily be modified if you are preparing for your performance on your teacher's studio recital or a larger performance where you are one of many players.

Repertoire Choice

Deciding on your repertoire is the first, perhaps most important step you'll take.  This decision needs to take place in advanced, not a week or two before the performance - but months before your performance.  You may wind up bringing up pieces that you haven't played in a while, or wanting to go musically in depth in your interpretation.  Giving yourself time to digest the music and preparing it is important.  

With Suzuki students, typically we are working towards performing the whole book in a graduation recital.  However, as the student continues to learn music, their older pieces might not get as much practice.  While the student can play through the music with little difficulty they may be a bit rusty.  A few memory slips here, some confusion on fingerings there, etc.  By giving you or your child enough time to prepare the full recital, spending time on their music, these issues can be worked out.  

For collegiate students, typically we play at least a senior recital.  (At Hartt I had to play a Junior and Senior recital). For these students, often times they've played only a hand full (at the most) of performances so they are just as -- if not more so -- nervous as younger students.  With the guidance of their teacher, these students decide what will be on their program.  For the first recital, your teacher has been preparing you for this recital since your freshman year by assigning music that will ultimately be on their recital (without the student knowing at times).

Have Enough Time To Prepare

After your repertoire is chosen, next is how much time to prepare.  For most students (collegiate and non-collegiate alike), the you've been continually preparing for your first recital.  The repertoire that you've been working on will probably be on the program.  With that said, while you are learning the last few pieces or movements of a piece for your recital, start bringing your old repertoire to performance level.

Leading up to your recital, there will come a time when you do not learn any new music.  Shocking right!?!  Well it's true.  Once you've learned your final piece, give yourself about 3-4 months to bring back up any old pieces that haven't been relearned or to polish up your repertoire.  This kind of cushion will allow you time to ready yourself for the performance.

Run Throughs

If a student is gearing up for a full length recital, chances are they've performed many times as part of a larger concert.  However, on these concerts many times you'll prepare a single piece.  Maybe you'll be fortunate enough to prepare a multi-movement work or several short pieces together.  You may be lucky and play for 10-15 minutes, but that can be rare.  With a full length solo recital, you'll be preparing 4x as much music to play in one sitting.  The sheer endurance of staying focused during 45-60 minutes of music is something that, as a student, you haven't experienced before.  Plan mock performances of your solo program.  

  • Invite friends and/or family over for dinner.  Use this gathering as an opportunity for you to try out your program in a low-stress environment.  
  • Book performances leading up to your recital date.  Place these concerts a few weeks apart from one another, allowing you time to try to work out any issue that happened on the previous performance.  Libraries and Nursing Homes are wonderfully places where attentive an interested audiences will appreciate your playing.  At the same time the atmosphere is very low key and relaxed.
  • Record yourself regularly.  Listen back and critique.  Use the recording to see if what you think you are playing matches with reality.

Aside from the above points, about eight weeks before the concert I tell students to start running through half of their program every other day.  Thus taking two days to play through the whole program.  Doing this builds up the stamina needed to get through your first full length recital.  Students and/or parents (depending on age) should take note if there are any tricky areas that are causing issues and try and rectify them.

As the concert gets closer, the student should shift from playing half their concert daily to running through their whole program every day.  This should happen around the four week mark.  You can keep track of progress with recording as well as a written journey marking areas of improvements as well as possible solutions and the outcomes.  

While much of this seems a bit overwhelming, the idea is to make it so that by the time you hit the stage for the "real thing", you've performed the program so much it becomes second nature.  You learn to deal with issues that come up during a performance.  Also, this preparation gives you the ability to polish your pieces and allow you to sit back and enjoy your own performance!

Check out all of Liam's hard work, below is a video of him performing Etude (Andantino) by Carulli.
For more videos from his recital, check out NCGS' Student Performance Page.
]]><![CDATA[Cramming For Your Lesson Won't Work]]>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 20:36:18 GMThttp://www.nickcutroneoguitarstudio.com/blog/cramming-for-your-lesson-wont-workOften times when I speak with students in their lessons, I’ll hear stories about how they’ve been very busy and weren't able to spend a lot of time to practice.  Part of how I teach is working with students to understand how to practice.  How to efficiently and effectively use their time so they can actually accomplish something.  With all of that said, until the student feel comfortable with that way of practicing, often times they feel the need to cram for a lesson.

Cramming For A Lesson Doesn’t Work

Unlike studying for a test about information that you may never use ever again, learning how to play an instrument for the short term (IE from lesson to lesson) doesn’t work.  Learning how to play an instrument is a skill.  What you learn is used as you advance and become more experienced.  If you learn things only with short term memory, never ingraining the skills into how you play the instrument, progress will never happen.  This means that you cannot do a weeks worth of practicing in a 2 hour cram session the night before your lesson.  Typically this leads to a crash and burn situation.  More importantly, students become frustrated due to the lack of improvement they make, and they don’t understand why.
How Much Time You Should Be Practicing VS. How Much Time You Have

Ultimately, you should find a balance of how much time you can realistically give to practicing daily.  This number should not be one that you hope to get, but one that you know you can accomplish daily.  I think it is very important to have realistic standards for one’s self.  With that said, typically we won’t find the amount of time we want to give to an instrument in a single sitting.  So learning how to break up your practicing becomes very important.  However, there are then always days where we have other things that spontaneously come up.  How do we deal with them?  By having a realistic amount of time you practice, you can now equally take time away from different areas of your practice.  This means that you might not get everything done today, but at least you do get some work done.  Typically we see this when it comes to practice time, either:

  1. We are able to get in all of our practice in a day
  2. We have less time, and use it to work on a few important things
  3. We use what little time we have to play the instrument, but make no real improvements
  4. We say that “Well, I don’t have enough time, so I won’t practice today.”

This list is done in order of important (the best being at the top, and worse being at the bottom).  You never want to go a day without at least touching your instrument.  With that said, you should strive, if you don’t have much time, to make you practicing worthwhile.  So what can you do?  You can isolate a single problem area to focus on for your short practice session.  Instead of worrying about the full piece of music, or a list of technical concerns you want to accomplish, focus on one area.  Use the 10-15 minutes to really become involved in that area, trouble-shoot/problem-solve the situation.  Try and come up with possible solutions and put them to work.  Reinforce the idea, and see how it works.  If it does, then continue to practice your solution, but if it doesn’t look for another one.  This may seem counter productive, but it is very beneficial.  By working this way, you are now becoming involved in the solution, thus ingraining it completely into your playing.

Some Ways Of Practicing That Might Not Occur To You

  1. Slow Practice – While it seems counter productive at first, slow practice allows you to develop coordination.  This coordination will aid you in performing the task faster.
  2. Repetitions – Not just repeating something over and over again, but repetitions where each time you play something it’s the same way every time.  This, at first, is hard to do, and can become frustrating.  For most students I use my “Three Times In A Row” rule.  However at a certain point, you should be doing hundreds of repetitions over the course of your practice.  Each repetition should be exactly how you want it sound/feel/play.  These repetitions are done as slow and fast performances of a section.
  3. Play Less, Trouble Shoot More - While it may seem like a waste of time, taking time to understand the problem at hand will allow you to come up with a better solution.  Playing something over and over again will not make it better unless you know what you want to change.  Take a minute or two and think over the problem.  Try to come up with a possible solution.  If it works and you see improvement, continue to use it.
  4. Stop Playing Through The Whole Piece - You don’t need to play through the piece over and over again.  This is not practicing.  Focus on a single section to put your effort into.
  5. Reset Yourself – It sounds a bit odd, but sometimes when we practice and hit a wall, its like a computer that freezes up.  There’s too much going on for us to understand.  So sometimes it is best for us just to take a second or two, and reset our minds.  Worry about a single issue, then when you have accomplished that, move on to the next.
]]><![CDATA[What Is Really Needed When Memorizing?]]>Tue, 07 Oct 2014 14:07:53 GMThttp://www.nickcutroneoguitarstudio.com/blog/what-is-really-needed-when-memorizingI remember when I was in high school, I had such difficulty in memorizing a small piece of music.  When I did my Juilliard Pre-College senior recital, there were some pieces that I just couldn’t seem to memorize, after a year of working on them, and I had to use music.  When I got to college, it was more of the same thing.  Certain music just didn’t seem to stay in my mind.  These pieces tended to be ones that had thick contrapuntal textures (Baroque and some Renaissance music).

Throughout high school, I was told about visualizing the piece in my mind.  I was told to try to play through the piece in your mind without the guitar and music.  The only problem was, I didn’t understand how to do this.  How do you develop the ability to do this?  It wasn’t until I got to college, that I was given an answer.

At The Hartt School, I studied with Richard Provost, the writer of the book The Art and Technique of Practice.  I think the first or second week of classes I was asked to go to the library and read the book.  Instead, I bought it and it was the best decision I made my first year at Hartt, because I can now go back to the book whenever I want.  In this book, Provost discusses in detail methods of what goes into memorizing a piece.  I use these methods and ideas in my own practice and teaching.
The Four Parts of Memory

Provost talks about four parts of memory needed to have a piece memorized.  These are physical, mental, aural and visual.  However, just seeing these words might not make sense to many players.  This is how I (and Provost) explain each of the four parts.

  1. Physical – Probably the most common thought of memory, better known as Muscle Memory.  This is developing coordination of phsyically getting the notes/rhythm/dynamic/tone color/shifts/etc.  Typically we work on this through drilling out problem areas in a piece of music.  Plus the simple act of practicing helps develop muscle memory.
  2. Mental – Better known as analysis.  This proves the importance of knowing Music Theory.  Understand simple things like the harmony that you are playing and where the basic structual sections of the piece can greatly increase your knowledge of where you are in the piece.
  3. Aural – It is quite hard to play a piece that you don’t know.  Many students complain about this, and it is very simple to fix.  Listen to pieces that you are playing, if you have the opportunity to.  Being able to hear the piece in your mind allows you to follow along as you perform the piece.
  4. Visual – Many teachers talk about being able to see the piece in your “mind’s eye”.  And it was this aspect of memory that I had the hardest time with.  What you visualize depends on the player, but not matter what there is a mental image running through your mind while playing.  It could be seeing the score of the piece your playing, seeing your hands moving (right, left or both), or a combination of the two.



How To Develop Your Memory

Sing.  This was the single word that changed my life in terms of playing music.  For me, singing letter names and counting allowed me to work on 3 out of the 4 parts of memory all at once.  I’m able to work on my analysis of a piece but hearing and understanding where the phrases are located.  Singing works on my aural recognition of the piece of music I’m playing.  Also, by singing letter names, I’m mentally creating an image of the score in my mind.  Add counting out loud and now I’ve completed the score by adding rhythm to it.

So sing, don’t worry about how “good” your voice is.  You won’t be performing a recital with singing in it.  It will take time for you to get used to this concept, but the more that you do it, the more comfortable you become.  Also, the easier newer pieces are to work on because this process becomes part of your practice routine.
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