About 10 years ago, I started to learn playing baroque pipe organ music literature (and contributed to a concert a couple of weeks later). As an autodidact, I started by just playing the pieces by sight-reading. I soon realized that this is neither an effective nor efficient method to master them. As a consequence, over all those years, I incrementally filled my practicing toolbox step by step. And I’m still not done yet.

Yesterday, I visited the University of Music and Performing Arts in Mannheim. The overarching topic was »Herausforderung Üben«, covered by the following sessions:

• “Neurowissenschaftliche Grundlagen des musikalischen Lernens” (Prof. em. Dr. med. Eckart Altenmüller)
• “Üben und musizieren mit Apps und Gamification” (Kristin Thielemann)
• “Üben geht klar! Impulse zur Gestaltung kreativer Lernwege im Instrumentalunterricht” (Corina Nastoll)

I especially enjoyed the first talk, which was extremely worthwhile. Since the format is established and will continue to take place, I’d like to recommend future issues.