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The MBMS 30-Day

Practice Challenge

A Holistic Journey Towards

Your Highest Musical Self

Sunday, January 12th – Monday, February 10th, 2025

(A 30-Day Email-Based Course)

Participation Fee: 

$30 – Supported Rate
$60 – Regular Rate
$90+ – Sponsoring Rate

Add an Optional 2-Hour Online Practice Workshop for $40.

You'll find many of the ideas in these 13 books in the practice challenge.

What is the MBMS 30-Day Practice Challenge?

The premise of this challenge is simple:

Between January 12th and February 10th, you will be challenged to practice every day for 30 days (except 5 Sundays, which will be rest days).

Every day during the challenge you will get a new lesson delivered straight to your inbox that will contain:

• Simple warmup exercises and activities
• Practice strategies & tips (based on the behaviors of expert musicians)
• Mind-body health practices (based on the Alexander Technique)
• Stories, anecdotes and even some jokes to keep things light
• A daily prompt or question to guide your practice

At the end of the 30 days you'll have a newfound confidence in your ability to practice consistently, efficiently and healthily.

And you’ll have a whole new set of tools to make better and more productive use of your precious practice time (think about what it would mean to 2x, 3x or even 10x the results you get from your practice).

Who Is It For?

This challenge is for any musician who wants to improve their practicing and relationship to practicing in a profound way. 

Any musician, regardless of ability level, style, instrument/voice will benefit from the universal practices concepts on offer here. 

NOTE: If you are a beginner or near the beginning of your musical journey we recommend that you complement this challenge with instruction from a teacher that has expertise in your particular instrument or voice.

This course isn't going to tell you what material to practice (scales, etudes, repertoire, etc.). Instead, this course will give you strategies for how to practice your own material effectively. Therefore, it's important that you have your own material to work on. 

What Will I Learn?

This challenge integrates the most important concepts and ideas from two complementary fields of study: 

• Deliberate Practice –considered to be the gold standard of skill acquisition especially when it comes to music performance. Deliberate practice follows specific rules (based on neuroscience) that accelerate learning. In this course, you’ll learn those rules and how to practically use them to your advantage to deepen your musical learning and growth process.
• Integrative Alexander Technique – this world-famous method has been used by performing artists for well over a century to access their fullest human and artistic potential. With Integrative Alexander Technique, one learns how to practice with an open mind and free body in the activity of making music. This offers two benefits: it prioritizes your health and well-being while also optimizing your learning potential. 

How Is It Structured?

The challenge is divided into four 6-day modules:

Week 1: Basic Principles & Overview (Days 2-7)

Week 1 is all about setting the stage for success throughout the challenge. You’ll be introduced to the main principles and ideas that make up the course, including:

• Redefining Practicing – a more expansive idea of what it means to practice
• Meta Practicing – what are you really practicing?
• The Alexander Technique – how to use your Self well while practicing
• Self-efficacy – believing in your ability to learn
• Deliberate Practice – the gold standard of skill acquisition
• A holistic approach – prioritizing spiritual, emotional, mental and physical health
• Skill-based approach –putting developing skills before learning repertoire
• The 12 Behaviors, Practices & Strategies of Expert Musicians – showing up, experimenting, refining, self-assessing and more
• The 4 RITE Skill Areas – how to shore up your weaknesses in rhythm, intonation, tone and expression

Week 2: Practice Architecture & Design (Days 9-14)

In week 2 we start to look at how to craft, structure and design an effective practice session. Some of the ideas you'll explore include:

• Getting started – the importance of rituals and warm-ups
• Skill work – using deliberate practice strategies to grow your technique and elevate your musicianship
• Repertoire work – how to break problems down into manageable chunks for learning
• Resting – using micro and mini-breaks to increase your learning capacity
• Joyful music making – getting into a flow state of pure enjoyment
• Closing time – cooling down and setting up the next practice session

Week 3: The Research-Backed Practice Strategies of Musical Experts (Days 16-21)

Week 3 is a deeper look at scientifically-proven best practices in skill acquisition and expertise studies, including:

• Interleaved Practice – harnessing the power of randomly ordered practice
• Memorization Practice – how to practice to strengthen and improve memorization
• Mental Practice – how to effectively use imagination, mental imagery and audiation 
• Time-Constrained Practice – how to use timeframes and time pressure to promote learning
• Performance Practice – how to go from practice mode to performance mode
• Technical Practice – how to practice technical passages for accuracy and speed
• Spaced Practice – a specific protocol that unfolds over many weeks

Week 4: Bringing Novelty, Play & Adventure Into Your Practice (Day 23-28)

The final week will explore ways to bring novelty, play and adventure into your practice sessions, including things like:

• Improvisation – using techniques and ideas from improvisation to add spice to your practice
• Composition – think like a composer to get deeper inside the music
• Music Listening – how to use recordings and live performances as practice inspiration
• Story-Based Practicing – becoming the hero of your own practice session
• Role-Playing – embodying different characters and musical idols
• Multimedia Practicing – using other art forms (drawing, painting, writing, standup comedy, etc.) to get different perspectives on music-making

5 Days of Rest: Supporting Factors for Success

Every Sunday (Days 1, 8, 15, 22, 29) during the challenge will be a rest day. The lessons on these days will focus on these supporting factors:

• Movement – how exercise is like Miracle-Gro for the brain
• Sleep – the essential role of sleep in memory and growth
• Rest – the importance of rest in learning
• Diet – a closer look at media and food consumption
• Humor – how laughter lightens and deepens learning
• Journaling – how tracking your progress can improve outcomes
• Accountability – using the support of others to make sure you show up 
• Supporting practices – keeping a practice journal, using others for accountability and scheduling your practice in advance

The final day (Day 30) will be a day of celebration and reflection.

How much do I need to practice each day?

The minimum amount of time required to successfully participate in this challenge is 20 minutes per day, which includes the 5 minutes it will take for you to read the daily practice lesson. Every musician has a different capacity for practice. If you’re rebuilding a practice habit, 20 minutes a day might be all you can do. That will likely increase as the challenge goes along. If you’re in a practice routine already you may already be used to an hour or more of practice every day.

In this challenge, the focus is on the quality of your practice time as opposed to the quantity of it. 

What is the Registration Fee?

There are 3 payment tiers to choose from:

• Supported Rate: $30 – if you have limited financial resources this option gives you assistance to participate
• Regular Rate: $60 – which comes out to $2 per day (or roughly the cost of one music lesson)
• Sponsoring Rate: $90+ – if you’re in a financial position to support others to participate in this course you can invest $90 or more, which will be accepted with gratitude and appreciation. If you invest $250 or more you’ll get the online workshop included plus a private 30-minute practice coaching session with Peter.

You will choose your payment tier at checkout.