REFLECTIONS

How the Brain Learns Music - Part 4: on trust

The Strange Moment After Success One of the most curious moments in learning an instrument happens shortly after something goes right. A student spends weeks working on a rhythm pattern, a difficult passage, or a chord change that seems determined to resist improvement. They put in the repetitions, show up to the practice sessions, and do all the small, unremarkable things that learning tends to require. Most days feel much the same as the ones before them. Then one day, ofte

Michael Isabell

Jun 26 min read

How the Brain Learns Music - Part 3: on integration

When Practice Starts Following You The first stage of learning is awareness. You notice something you couldn't see before. The second stage is repetition. You stay with that realization long enough that it begins feeling less like information and more like experience. Then something curious begins to happen. The skill stops living exclusively inside the exercise where it was learned. A student spends weeks working on a rhythm pattern, a chord transition, or a difficult phrase

Michael Isabell

Jun 16 min read

How the Brain Learns Music - Part 2: on repetition

When the Novelty Wears Off Awareness is a fascinating stage because it gives the student something new to see. Repetition, however, is far less romantic. Once the problem becomes visible, the brain does not reward you with immediate transformation. Instead, it asks for the same motion, the same sound, the same correction, again and again, until the new pathway starts to take hold. This is where many students become restless. Not because repetition is ineffective, but because

Michael Isabell

May 44 min read

How the Brain Learns Music - Part 1: on awareness

When the Fog Lifts: Awareness Learning an instrument can feel strangely mysterious. Some days the instrument feels strangely cooperative, as if your hands and ears have finally agreed on the same plan. Other days you practice the same passage for twenty minutes and it remains stubbornly unconvinced by your efforts. From the inside, progress rarely looks dramatic. More often, it reveals itself in subtle ways and only becomes obvious when you look back. While the experience can

Michael Isabell

Apr 274 min read

Part 3 – Reclaiming Deep Listening: on attention as a choice, not habit

This is the final piece in a three-part series exploring listening, not as a technical skill, but as a way of relating to attention, culture, and ourselves. If listening shapes us, and if cultural shifts reshape the music itself, then the final question is simple. What do we do with that awareness? Attention is still a choice It’s easy to talk about algorithms, platforms, and cultural drift. Those forces are real, and they shape the environment. But attention, even now, is st

Michael Isabell

Feb 243 min read

Part 2 - When Attention Changed, the Music Changed: on compression, immediacy, and the reshaping of time

This is the second in a three-part series exploring listening, not as a technical skill, but as a way of relating to attention, culture, and ourselves. In the first piece, I suggested that listening isn’t neutral - it shapes us. It trains our patience, our tolerance for ambiguity, and our relationship to complexity. If that’s true, then something else follows. Cultural habits rarely stay contained, they ripple outward. When listening habits shift at scale, music shifts with t

Michael Isabell

Feb 163 min read

Part 1 - Listening Isn't Neutral: on taste, attention, and the illusion of subjectivity

This is the first in a short three-part series exploring listening, not simply as a technical skill, but as a way of relating to music, attention, and ourselves. Each piece looks at a different layer of that relationship: how we listen, how that relationship has changed, and what might be lost when listening becomes increasingly passive. These aren’t arguments I’m interested in winning or opinions that need defending. They’re observations drawn from playing, teaching, and spe

Michael Isabell

Feb 85 min read

Heavy is an Attitude: on weight, time, and return

There are moments when music stops feeling like something you’re listening to and starts feeling like something you’re standing inside of. Time loosens, nothing rushes forward, and yet the music never loses momentum. That was the feeling at Denver’s historic Paramount Theatre the other night watching Billy Gibbons play. He was my first guitar hero, long before I knew what a guitar hero was supposed to be and certainly before I understood anything about tone, groove, or craft

Michael Isabell

Feb 24 min read

Industry and Intimacy: on connection, craft, and listening

NAMM was more or less what I expected, although knowing what to expect did very little to prepare me for actually being inside it. Sound spilled from one booth into the next, manufacturers competed for attention, and every turn offered another guitar, amplifier, pedal, or piece of technology asking you to stop and look. The scale was impressive, and so was the amount of craft gathered under one roof, but the sheer volume of it all created its own kind of momentum. There was a

Michael Isabell

Jan 275 min read

This is a space for long-form writing on guitar practice, the rhythms learning, and attention. The pieces here grow out of teaching, playing, listening, and being a life-long student of the craft. Drawn directly from the ideas and structure of the upcoming Guitar as a Mirror guide book. This is an invitation to read - or return to reading - as a way of staying with ideas over time. Rather than condensed tips or passing commentary, the writing here favors continuity, depth, and reflection, offering a slower and more intentional way to engage with the work.

REFLECTIONS