Through my practice of music and through teaching others music I have learned a simple truth—music is a limitless path of mastery. It is a lifelong practice where we may steadily and progressively realize a worthy ideal. We can explore and expand our personal edges – physical, mental, and emotional. The wholehearted practice of music can teach us to bring more awareness, strength, flexibility, balance, presence, spontaneity, creativity, and joy into our lives.

Music is also an art form, which helps us to experience—in the present moment—our unique sense of life, our feelings about living. Music bypasses the intellect and speaks to our hearts, our emotions. Hearing and making music is a powerful experience. When we hear music we want to move our bodies, we want to sing along. The desire to dance, drum, and sing is in all of us from birth.

Rhythm and melody are everywhere in nature. Music encourages us to connect, communicate, and co-create with our world and other people. Through practicing music we can learn to be more authentic, we can learn to be ourselves.

The trick to learning music is to stay on the path. The trick to staying on the path is to enjoy the path. I think the best way to enjoy the path is to make sure it is YOUR path, which follows your interest, your curiosity, your enthusiasm, your sense of life.

Robert Henri, the American impressionist painter and teacher wrote,

“No knowledge is so easily  found as when it is needed.”;
“Use the ability you already have, and use it, and use it, and make it develop itself.”; and,
“All education must be self-education.”

I agree with him. I think learning is a process of clarifying what you already know and then searching for new ideas, new insights, new experiences that build on your current knowledge and skills. I trust that, with some guidance from a person who is an autonomous learner, everyone has the ability to structure their own learning to suit their own purposes.

What would you like to explore now in music?

My method of teaching people to become self-directed music learners rests on Nine Core Principles:

Heart: Follow the path with a heart.
Presence: Awaken to the felt presence of immediate experience.
Mastery: Practice regularly to improve your skill.
Quest: Follow your curiosity, begin your quest for mastery with YOUR meaningful questions.
Play: Play your edges, find the balance between effort and ease.
Flow: Find the best line of energy.
Pattern: Seek the perception of pattern as the foundation of mastery.
Create: Build from forms to details, from large patterns to small patterns.
Share: Show your work.

If you would like a guide who will help you stay on the path of learning to perform, compose, and improvise music, please call or email me to try a private lesson or to visit a combo class.

Peace,
David Froseth