arrange • compose • conduct
Skills don’t stay solid. I tried to open an old document in Finale today, to make some quick edits. (I haven’t used Finale regularly since 2020, when I switched to Dorico.) I found that I couldn’t effectively make the changes I wanted to make, because my software skills, which I […]
Practice benefits from this delusion. You don’t show any tangible improvement via practice from one day to the next. It’s only over time that the practice starts to become evident. So it’s perfectly lucid to think along these lines: “This practice doesn’t help. I’m not good at this now, and […]
Good practice mindset is knowing tomorrow won’t be different. Practice takes time. It takes repetition, and it takes repeated repetition. If you want to grow a skill, you will need practice – regardless of what the skill is. Along the way, your skill level today will almost always be indistinguishable […]
How do you stay focused on the big picture when it’s hard to get beyond today? The tasks, the responsibilities, the small crises that make every day new just keep coming. But I try to give a few minutes every Sunday to staying ahead of the daily surprises. A couple […]
We don’t take enough time to really talk about how hard it is to sing music well. Especially difficult, harmonically rich music. But really any vocal music. If I’m rehearsing a saxophone quartet, and the tenor plays a B-natural instead of a B-flat in a C7(b13) chord, I might stop […]
You’ve gotta want it. I am constantly working to convince my students to hold onto more of what they learn from one rehearsal to the next. I don’t like re-teaching notes and rhythms, they don’t like repeating the process. But somehow, things sometimes just…don’t stick. There are a lot of […]
Everyone always talks about the work on Thanksgiving Day. I’m much more interested in the work on the day before. The day before is when the pies are made, the stuffing is prepped, the turkey is brined (if you’re making a turkey. I’m happy to not.) The day before is […]
Keep the music you select on the correct side of this axis. My students in Shades of Blue are working on the very difficult a cappella arrangement of “Almost Like Being In Love” by Darmon Meader. It’s aurally demanding, rhythmically tricky, and long! It’s been hard work, but they haven’t […]
How you get it done doesn’t matter. You can organize your rehearsal plan with a spreadsheet, a notes app, a pen and paper. You can mark your score with eighteen colored pencils, with highlighters, or a stylus and ForScore. You can arrange or compose at a piano, a DAW, or […]
I had the great good fortune to get to have one of my favorite humans work with Shades of Blue today. The inimitable Duane Davis. He reminded me of an important mindset to repeatedly offer to students. As he said to Shades of Blue, “The only difference between you and […]