Practice Makes... You fall more in love.

I recently discovered an old newspaper article written about me when I was 12 yrs old. I had just released my first "tape"...a collection of Christmas Carols called Christmas with Ciara, and the local paper wanted to do a feature on it.

And Yes, it was called Christmas with Ciara.

ok moving on. :)

In re-reading the article, I was actually quite moved hearing my 12 yr old self say some of the very things that I said in the MMS documentary that was just released this month.  

One quote in particular was that I enjoyed playing classical and gospel, but "I like playing what I hear on the radio, too, I love playing by ear".  Learning the fundamentals along side of learning to play by ear and improvise is what kept me inspired and motived as a child, and still now. To this day, this is the very foundation of MMS. We teach you both. To read music and to play by ear. To consume and create. From the very beginning. I encourage ALL students to explore both worlds, rather than only one. Both worlds have tremendous secrets that they want to teach you.

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Ciara McAllisterpracticemakesperfect, practice, pianolessons, playingbyear, sanfranciscomusic
Why I Started Piano Lesson At 26

I had played piano for over a decade, but my fingers still plunked piano keys with the precision of bratwursts.

The way I saw it, I had an excuse: I had never taken a formal lesson.

Piano became a hobby in junior high. I wish I could say I was inspired by a Mozart concerto and had a grand vision of morphing into a musical maestro. But the truth is that I just really liked Linkin Park. We had a piano in our living room, and I thought it’d be awesome to learn “In the End.” That was my grand vision.

Those first nine notes, which I insisted on learning by ear, took me a week and a hundred iPod listens to unlock. I was not a musical prodigy — I was just persistent and obsessed with a rock band.

The more I played — and I would learn every song from Hybrid Theory — the better I got. Songs that used to take me weeks to learn would take days. Then hours. It was addictive.

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Ciara McAllister