The long-awaited final book by Elizabeth A. H. Green.

“In this book...‘Practice what you preach’ becomes ‘Preach what you practice.’ Although most of [Green’s] writing dealt with orchestras, music education, and string pedagogy, she wrote her last book for everyone. This volume can be used by all players of all instruments and by all teachers—it is a book for all musicians.” —E. Daniel Long, in the Foreword

Has this ever happened to you? You begin to practice your [insert instrument of choice], and just when you reach a sixteenth-note passage, you are stopped cold. You repeat the offending section over and over to no avail—until your frustration causes you to quit in disgust. It need not be so!

In Practicing Successfully, legendary music educator Elizabeth A. H. Green draws upon her decades of experience instructing students of all levels to break down the practicing regimen into a logical learning sequence.

GIA is proud to publish this timeless book Elizabeth Green completed in the last days of her life. This manuscript tragically remained undiscovered for many years.

In Part One, she suggests isolating difficult musical passages so they become instantly manageable using rhythmic motifs, scales, accentuations, and etudes. In Part Two, experts on various instruments discuss recurring problems and how to defeat them. In the concluding Part Three, Green notes the physiological principles pertaining to practice and suggests ways to modify practice sessions to reflect these facts.

She writes, “Ultimate success depends upon one immutable, inescapable, and well-publicized fact: the musician has to practice—successfully or not.”

Elizabeth A. H. Green was one of the most important and esteemed teachers of stringed instruments and conducting in America. The completion of Practicing Successfully was truly a labor of love for Elizabeth Green. She was diagnosed with cancer while working on this book and refused treatments to achieve this final goal.