jedscott

Perhaps you know this good advice for leaders everywhere: If you want something done, ask a busy person. The same goes for placing students – busy students are the most likely, once they carve out time for your choir, to get the job done well. They know how to manage […]

If you’re lucky, you get one good leg to run with a student. They’re on a long race, and you get your turn in the relay. You do your best, and you try to leave the teachers to come after you in a strong position. Every time I see a […]

You can choose the easy way or the hard way. For almost everything. Hard way: scratch gourmet cooking. Easy way: McDonald’s. Hard way: engaged parenting. Easy way: parked in front of a screen. Hard way: emotionally connected, active teaching. Easy way: checked out, robotic teaching. Of course, every one of […]

We all, for a variety of reasons, refer people to other people. A dentist, a doctor, an organic farmer at the market. A choir director when a student moves. Have the sorts of relationships that, when you refer one friend to another friend, for any reason, you can say, “Tell […]

How early is too early for Christmas music? I don’t blame you if you insist on waiting until after Thanksgiving. (I have a fondness for the oft-overlooked genre that is “Thanksgiving Music“, myself.) However, I thing that my willingness to phase in Christmas music as soon as Halloween is in […]

“The right note at the wrong time is the wrong note.” – Robert Shaw Surely we can all agree on the wisdom of what we can call Shaw’s Law. But here’s the first corollary. It follows from Shaw’s law that: The right note held for the wrong duration is the […]

In a recent Jazziz interview, the wonderful singer Jo Lawry says, “I’ve been exploring the type of music that I’d like to listen to, as opposed to the music that I studied. They aren’t necessarily the same.” Those of us who work our way through an academic music curriculum should […]

The other day two of my kids left our choir’s Cabaret show weepy because of a particularly beautiful song. Of course they wanted to listen again when we got home, and my youngest was crying all over again. I pointed out, in an attempt to give perspective, that there is […]

I got fooled by the film montage. In movies, when a section of the story features something repetitive, boring to watch, or otherwise un-cinematic, they can compress it into a montage. The truth is, hard work takes time, and much as you’d like, you can’t fast-forward through the hard or […]

Monitor your performance. Aim for incremental improvement. Focus on repetition. I’ve been thinking a lot about the growth I achieved during school, and the growth I have achieved in the time since school. I think that the algorithm above is the biggest contributor to the fact that my post-academic growth […]