Practise Smarter, Play Happier

Practice can be a joyous moment to connect with yourself, your instrument and other musicians around you.

Amateur musicians, especially adults, often have difficulty practising and improving. It’s not just lack of time and the pressures of daily life. Many of us don’t have a set of skills for practising. We’re often self-taught, and just don’t know how to achieve our musical goals effectively or efficiently. In addition, the sheer number of ideas, tunes and styles that are available to us can be overwhelming.

Discover how it feels to connect to yourself and your instrument in ways you haven’t thought of before. Prepare your mind and your body to play with exciting new ideas that you wouldn’t even think of as practice. You’ll learn specific techniques to help you improve faster and feel more positive about your own musicianship.

Who is it for?

If you’re someone who would like to work on this sometimes-overlooked skill, spending time with Mel and Judy might be the perfect opportunity for you. This is a chance for self-reflection, guided in big and small groups, and with chances to share experiences with fellow musicians. Any instrument is welcome, and you can be working at any level on your instrument to take part. You don’t need to be able to learn by ear, or read music.

The Team

Mel Biggs is a Morris dancer, tune writer, performer and melodeon teacher based in South Derbyshire, England. Renowned the world over for her perceptive, patient and mindful manner in teaching groups and individuals, Mel is a leading light in the world of online folk music education with her online courses and popular Patreon club ‘Mel’s Angels’. Having been teaching since 2009, Mel has an ever expanding toolkit of techniques at her disposal which she adapts to every new teaching scenario. You can expect a bespoke blend of learning-by-ear, call and response playing, analogies, visualisations and pattern recognition, tune deconstruction, and notation in moderation.

In her performance career, Mel played in trio Moirai with Jo Freya and Sarah Matthews for almost a decade. Together they created 3 albums, and toured the UK and Europe, culminating in their self-penned show ‘Framed: The Alice Wheeldon Story’. Mel trod the boards as an actor-musician in the 2022-2023 UK & Canada tour of ‘Fisherman's Friend's: The Musical’. She has also been part of Jo Freya’s Komposit Young Composers ensemble (with Annie Whitehead, Judith Weir CBE and Chris Woods), and cross-cultural theatre shows Priya Sundar’s Anglo-Southern Indian ‘Morris:Natyam’, and Kate Flatt’s and Adriano Adewale’s Anglo-Brazillian ‘The Oss & The Ox’.

Mel is currently working on the second iteration of her folk music camp for women and marginalised genders ‘FolkUnbound: The Gathering’ with co-founder Lucy Huzzard, coordinating several local community arts projects in her hometown of Swadlincote, and squiring her heritage-obsessed Border Morris side Wilkes’ Gob.

Judy Minot is a music educator and musician, and the author of the award-winning book Best Practice, Inspiration and Ideas for Traditional Musicians. She plays piano, accordions, and fiddle in a range of styles including Celtic, Québécois, Playford, jazz, and contra.

Judy believes in the power of trad/folk music to bring richness to our adult lives. “Amateur” musicians often compare ourselves, in a negative way, to professionals. But being a dedicated musician does not mean you have to make a living by it, or even perform. If you love making music, you deserve to take yourself seriously and love your own playing, no matter your age, your profession, or your level of playing.

Judy herself has never been a professional musician. Instead, she enjoyed a long and successful career in broadcast television and in digital marketing, while playing Celtic/Irish music with Patrick Clifford and Fiona Tyndall, and playing English Country/Playford and contra dances all over the East Coast US. She was on the staff of Folk College, an annual music camp in Pennsylvania, USA. She has recorded with Patrick Clifford, Anna Bosnick, and the band Na’bodach, and her solo CD, Give Us a Tune, is available via streaming on Soundcloud.

Judy holds a 4th degree black belt in the martial art of Kokikai Aikido, which she taught at Rutgers University for 12 years. She is also a certified yoga teacher. She has written regularly for Acoustic Guitar Magazine, and publishes a regular blog on the concepts of Best Practice. She has taught Best Practice workshops online and in person at many camps and festivals including Ashokan Northern Week, Northeast Heritage Music Camp, and the Northeast Squeeze-In. Judy currently resides in Ireland.