arrange • compose • conduct
Often in creative work, the only bad choice is not to make a choice. When you’re making something creative, you are presented with opportunity after opportunity to make a choice. Should I voice a chord like this, or like that? Will I make the rhythm of this line A, B, […]
Where do you look when you’re mixing a concert? I learned this the hard way – by getting a stern correction from Steve Zegree during a concert – but maybe the only way to really learn it is by experiencing it both ways. The impulse of a sound engineer is […]
What are we singing on tour? The Rockford High School Touring Choir heads on the road to Spain next week, with performances in Barcelona, Montserrat, Valencia, Toledo, and Madrid. In preparation for the tour, 43 students have been rehearsing roughly monthly since August, preparing an hour of a cappella repertoire. […]
What will rehearsal be like if I’m not there? I consider it my goal to teach myself out of a job by the end of the school year. (Never worrying, of course, because a new group with new needs will be with me soon.) That means that my ensemble should […]
Some of the best teaching I’ve ever done has been in bringing my students to a concert. When students hear high-level versions of what they’re working on, so many lessons get driven home. A concept I’ve been working on for months becomes instantly understandable because they’ve heard it done right. […]
When is it worth having a Zoom meeting in 2023? I admit that I don’t prefer Zooming to in-person meetings. However, there are several situations when I think that Zooming is better than any alternative, and we can take advantage of our new skills in video conferencing. I don’t always […]
When you’re listening to learn, listen with an agenda. Yesterday I heard Michael Mayo describe an approach to listening with specific agenda that I think is a very effective approach to intentional listening. Plan on listening to a single piece multiple times. The first time, listen generally, without a specific […]
Knowing how long it will take to learn a skill is essential to maintaining a positive outlook – and succeeding in learning it. Learning to sing an A on command in rehearsal reliably takes my students a couple of months. Learning to scat like Ella will take 1,000 hours of […]
Sometimes we need reminding that we aren’t totally in control. You can be reminded by an illness that flattens you, or a mistake in performance that never happened in rehearsal. You can be reminded by other humans around whose plans undermine your own. My favorite way of surrendering control, though, […]
After you get a vaccination, you’ll often have a day of “flu-like symptoms.” This is off-putting to some, and actually probably accounts for a fair bit of vaccine hesitancy. We aren’t very good at differentiating between the pain that strengthens us and the pain that weakens us. It’s the same […]