arrange • compose • conduct
Posts discussing education, both in and outside of music
I am strongly advocating for an online start to the school year. I cannot wait to begin teaching again. I live for the moments when a student finally grasps an elusive concept. As a choral educator, I get to discuss, shape, and make art with inspired and motivated young people, […]
When the at-home orders started in March, choral leaders everywhere reinvented the wheel, over the weekend or a few short days. It was amazing to see. Part of the reason it worked is because the singers we led were primed by four, five, six months of in-person rehearsals. We had […]
I’ve been solving some logic games this summer, and I’ve noticed there are two opposing strategies I employ. I think it’s good to use them both when facing many different kinds of decisions. Strategy 1 is “Stay In It.” In the course of the minutes I’ve spent on this logic […]
Social media encourages us to have a comment. It encourages us to react, to “engage.” But of course, it’s not real engagement – there is no looking into one another’s eyes, no listening to the tone of voices alongside the words said. I welcome dialogue with my students, with my […]
In his marvelous book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman two related learning models. The first involves the determination of the sex of day-old chickens. It was based on very subtle visual cues, but the professional [chicken] sexers could not report what those cues were. Instead, they […]
I’ll never forget the day I was showed how to color properly. It took years to overcome the unspoken lesson. It was on a bring your child to work day – I was in a staff lounge with my sister while my dad was checking on patients. A friendly nurse […]
There are three pieces of information present in a Roman numeral analysis of a chord. The root of the chord. (Shown by the Roman numeral, which refers to the scale degree of the root.) The quality of the chord. (Shown by the case of the Roman numeral, and possibly an […]
JEFF: You got a dollar? JOSH: Yeah. JEFF: Take it out. Look at the back. The seal, the pyramid, it’s unfinished. With the eye of God looking over it. And the words Annuit Coeptis. “He, God, Favors our Undertaking.” The seal is meant to be unfinished, because this country’s meant […]
Take advantage of these two recent video panel discussions coming from the vocal jazz community. There is much to learn from here as we move into new worlds in the choral world. First, this forum from a couple weeks ago, titled Race Conversations in Vocal Jazz, features a wonderful group […]
I am committed to amplifying more music from Black culture in teaching music theory, ear training, and repertoire. As such I want to amplify these resources from my old friend Justin Binek, who has begun creating an online, freely accessible repository of examples. Included as of now are interval examples […]