By Ernie Mansfield There is a story about Leopold Auer, who was a famous Russian violin teacher. Auer was the teacher of Jascha Heifetz, who later became one of the [read more...]

Students - and parents of students - often have concerns about how much time should be devoted to practicing instruments at home. I think it is important to understand that [read more...]

I recently had a conversation with a friend. He doesn’t play the piano, but he wants to learn. In fact, he has been wanting to learn for a long time. [read more...]

From time to time, I will post answers to frequently asked questions that I receive from customers and prospective customers. Please feel free to post a question here, and I [read more...]

Someone once asked a well-known writer, “How do you write a book?” The writer replied, “Well, you get this magical device, called a pen…and then you get some magical stuff [read more...]

By Ernie Mansfield - May 2011 Many people tell me their stories of how they always wanted to play piano. Or, how they used to take lessons when they were [read more...]

What if there was a routine that you could follow, and you could methodically practice this routine each day, and by doing so, improve your musicals skills to such an [read more...]

My friend has several parrots as pets. Now, the interesting and entertaining thing about parrots is that they can talk, by picking up and echoing the sounds they hear around [read more...]

Lenny Pickett is one of the most famous saxophonists of our time (Tower of Power, Saturday Night Live Band). Lenny grew up in Oakland. In this interview, Conversations With [read more...]