arrange • compose • conduct
Posts discussing education, both in and outside of music
The studio has taught me that a tiny drift over enough time can lead to big problems. It’s important to revisit your recorded mixes the next day after a mixing session. The reason is that in long mix sessions, you can tend to drift away from your sonic ideal – […]
What are you teaching for? It’s a question worth asking. Maybe you’re teaching for curriculum. If you’re employed by an organization that requires certain measurable curriculum-related outcomes, that can be an appropriate thing to teach for. Maybe you’re teaching for curiosity. Your goal is to create scenarios where the typical […]
The way I see it, for the last two years we’ve been at sea with our ensembles. We were out on our voyage when we were becalmed by the pandemic. When the winds picked back up, the students I was leading needed to be led to a harbor. Any harbor. […]
We have to stop asking schools to be responsible for 100% of the things we want our kids to learn. I often see memes going around that suggest replacing or revising high school curricula. Suggestions might be along the lines of “Instead of trigonometry, teach personal finance.” Setting aside the […]
It’s time to send yourself an email to arrive in July. This is the time of year when you are able to see what worked and what didn’t, while you’re still in the middle of it. In the summer, this will all seem like a foggy memory – the struggles […]
Teachers need more tools to help students grapple with mental and emotional wellbeing. I’ve recently begun listening to The Happiness lab, a podcast hosted by Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale. It’s a compelling look at how our brains cultivate – or undermine – happiness, and how […]
Good ensemble teaching sometimes means completely relinquishing control. I’ve been doing a lot of riding in the passenger seat with a training driver; having completed his Driver’s Training, he now has to log dozens of hours of driving before he can receive his unrestricted driver’s license. The thing about this […]
Is appearing mysterious as an educator a plus, a minus, or something in between? I used to admire and respect the distance certain professors maintained between their professional and personal lives. It made sense to draw a strong boundary and keep them separate. It was admirably mysterious. Later, I recognized […]
Is there a more precious moment in the year than the annual pivot? The pivot is the moment in the semester or the year when you transition from spending a majority of time on notes and rhythms to a majority of time on higher-order musicality. When you can step back […]
If you’re not a good leader, it doesn’t matter how polished your musical skills are. There’s a reason I spend so much time thinking, reading, and writing about leadership. I think it’s undervalued when we train music educators and conductors, and I think its value is far greater than your […]