arrange • compose • conduct
Posts discussing education, both in and outside of music
If you own the work, they can’t. As an adult – parent, teacher, or leader: you pick – one of the hardest things to do is to forgo ownership. By that, I mean relinquishing control of a project. Witness the massive number of school projects that are partially or completely […]
I don’t think there are many absolute rules in leadership of students. There are many effective ways of leading students in music, athletics, academics, and extracurriculars. This might be as close as I come: Achievement must always come second to humanity. You can always focus as much energy as you […]
We’re kind of terrible at it. According to Dan Gilbert, At every age, from 18 to 68 in our data set, people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next 10 years. We call this the “end of history” illusion. To give you an idea of the […]
Make it personal. The best educators make it personal. They tailor the instruction to the student. They adjust their lesson plans in the moment depending on what’s happening in the room. They teach from motivations of curiosity, passion, and love that they want to share with the individuals they’re teaching. […]
Say it again. As I have continued to write daily on this site for year after year, I occasionally have gotten worried that I won’t have more insights to offer. But I remind myself: this might not be a new insight, but it might reach a new person. Especially if […]
Creativity isn’t a skill. A skill is something that you get better at over time. In my experience, you don’t get better at creativity. You get more versed in accessing it, you get better at recognizing better creative impulses, but you don’t get better at being creative. That’s because creativity […]
I dare you to take a longer break. What was the last day you completely didn’t think about work? For me, I even worked every day I was home with COVID this winter. My last day without work thoughts was in early August, on my off-the-grid family vacation. For better […]
The golden rule of improv applies well beyond comedy. The most famous dictum of improv comedy is “Yes, and.” When someone adds something to the scene, you must accept it and work with it as you continue. Only through that open collaboration can you create something all the improvisers share […]
Get comfortable with not understanding things; it means you’ll get to understanding them faster. If only all realms of learning were like math. Math builds sequentially from one concept to the next. If you understood the last bit, then this bit is the next logical idea. Music literacy is not […]
This is how I started my description of my conducting pattern. (It’s an odd meter piece, with frequent time signature changes and surprising subdivisions.) “You don’t need to know this, but here’s how I’m conducting this.” For a y’all come, multigenerational pickup choir, the theory takes a back seat. And […]