Is the Practice Revolution book any good? have you read it before?

[Spatula]

Is the Practice Revolution book any good?  have you read it before?  It's by Philip Johnston.

https://www.practicespot.com/pr/

It looks pretty hefty like 300 plus pages, but is it more general to all the instruments or does it pinpoint what exact stuff we should be going after like Chang's book?

 I read the table of contents and it looks rather general, kinda like what Bernhard would go through for the purpose. 

[dorfmouse]

The book is written for teachers of any instrument but he is a pianist and the book has a piano oriented feel.. Many teachers still unfortunately at the end of the lesson just tell their students to practise x,y and z but with no clear instructions how to go about the job. As a result many students waste hours in unproductive "practice" for which they see little progress, or they cannot understand why everything then falls apart in the lesson or performance. A lot of instrumental teachers are themselves untrained professionally. They may be very good players but with little insight into how they've got there. I think most teachers would benefit from having this book in their armoury. (Please note, you teachers who have posted questions about poor student motivation or worse, punishing students ...)

As an adult student of piano I bought this book and found it a really useful and entertaining companion, even though many of the games and techniques advocated are designed and/ or suitable for younger learners who have generally no idea how (and often little motivation) to practise effectively.
I particularly like his games approach for producing self induced psychological pressure at home in order to check the reliability of pieces or sections of pieces you think you know but which amazingly crumble when they get to the lesson or performance situation. Learning to play "The 7 Stages of Misery" will forever banish the claim "But it was fine when I played it at home!!"

Similarly the preparing for performance chapter is filled with ways to practise being nervous, mind games, visualisation strategies. learning to cope with the inevitable mistakes. One of the core ideas across the whole book is that everything can be practised; being nervous is for most people an inevitabe part of performing; OK, so you practice being nervous in a variety of ways and so learn that you can do it nonetheless.

A really nice aspect of the book is Phiilip Johnstone's writing style. It's lively and informal and upbeat, a very positive can do approach. If you like the tone of the website you'll know what I mean.

Since buying the book I discovered Chang's book and Bernhard's invaluable advice. Johnstone's book has many of "their" ingredients expressed differently... he certainly emphasises working on small chunks, away from the instrument preparation, the benefits of rhythmic distortions, finding the correct fingering that will be necessary for speed  and lots more. There is nothing which quite parallels the  7/20 approach  or the concept of using chord attack and repeated note groups to speed down to target speed; indeed he proposes many speeding up techniques using the metronome, many of which are fine when directed to a particular goal.  (He does recommend aiming for an eventual practise speed higher than the intended performance speed, but there is not the detailed discussion of the HS and HT issue for pianists.)
To dream about is a book written by PJ but integrating B and C's insights into a coherent whole. Can you three please get together!!

[mosis]

He's really a strong supporter of lots of slow, metronome practice, and then cranking up the metronome a notch at a time. Bernhard and Chang are zealously opposed to this.

[bernhard]

He's really a strong supporter of lots of slow, metronome practice, and then cranking up the metronome a notch at a time. Bernhard and Chang are zealously opposed to this.

Still it is a wonderful book and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. His website is also amazing - one of the best resources for piano teachers/students.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Spatula]

I guess I should add it to my "will-be" library then!

I'm still building up.

I'll list my music resources soon enough.