arrange • compose • conduct
My middle child was just sounding his way through the Mozart clarinet concerto in his bedroom. My eldest has been making progress on learning chords on the guitar he got for Christmas. My youngest has every word of Encanto memorized. “Gee, I wonder how you have such musical children,” I […]
Today was one of those days where the mundane crowded out the creative. In the midst of many important jobs that didn’t require my musical creativity, I found 4 minutes to be in front of my notation software. I pulled up my current project, hit the playback, and listened. I […]
In a recent interview with Mike Birbiglia, Malcolm Gladwell said, “I don’t believe in personality….There’s a whole philosophical and psychological tradition around this idea that we are so much a product of our situation and environment that it’s foolish to talk about personality. So, I’m baffled by this notion of […]
Have you tried whisking left-handed recently? (For me, that’s whisking right-handed…what I mean is your non-dominant hand.) It feels weird. I’m pretty agile with kitchen tools, but in my “wrong” hand, I feel like a novice all over again. I sometimes do just that, to remind myself the way that […]
Imposter Syndrome never ends. The sense that you don’t actually belong doing what you’re doing – what Amanda Palmer calls “The Fraud Police” – is, at least in my experience, ongoing in even situations where I know without question that I am qualified and capable. I’ve found only one solution […]
Once upon a time, I always thought like an arranger when I arranged, like a composer when I composed. Effective voicings. Timbre, texture, form, phrasing. I still think about all of those things, of course. But I prioritize thinking like the performer. Would I enjoy singing this? Would this read […]
There are so many stories of creators who got over the hump of creating while working full time by “waking early.” (I proudly chose this practice for many years, writing from 4:30-6am.) Just get up a little earlier, they say, and do your work before the world wakes up and […]
I like to start each new semester with a handful of personal resolutions – things I want to do better this semester, things I want to try, things I want to achieve. Things like: No repertoire I’ve conducted before Keep my talking to under 30 seconds during active rehearsal segments. […]
Hard pieces take time, and every minute student singers spend not knowing the piece is a minute they spend forming judgement on the piece. This can be perilous. We all form judgements before we really understand pieces, and if a strong negative opinion is formed simply because the piece is […]
I’m working on an arrangement for vocal group and big band right now, and as I write it, I regularly remind myself, “You don’t have to fill every bar.” Sections can take breaks. There can be extended rests. In fact, most players would get pretty mad if their parts were […]