arrange • compose • conduct
I have opened the Zoom for my college composition student at 12:00 every week this semester. Only problem is, it’s at 12:30. My student knows this. My calendar knows this. I know this. But at some point early in the semester, I locked it in at 12:00, and I can’t […]
Someone asked recently on Twitter, “A high school senior comes to you and says they’re going to study music. They ask for your advice. You can respond with 4 words. What do you say?” My four words? Do it. Without debt. I know some who like to discourage aspiring musicians […]
Training experts tell you to alternate days when training; that is, exercise different muscle groups on consecutive days, so that the muscles have sufficient time to recover from intense workouts before they are exercised again. There is a lot of wisdom in that – beyond personal fitness. While many personal […]
ASPIRATIONAL anagrams to PLAN IS A RATIO. It’s a simple ratio: the more aspirational your goal is, the more significant you need to plan. If your goal is routine, you probably don’t need to plan all that much. If your goal is novel, or extreme, or very challenging, you almost […]
I’ve written before about how the insufficiency of Roman Numeral analysis leads to problems when voicing chords. But it seems to me that chord inversions change the character of chords so significantly that we should regard inversions as equally important to the the Roman Numeral. The little 6 is just […]
In my daily writing, I tend to focus on what’s next. (Since I write daily, I’m focused on what’s immediately in front of me – I’ve got to write something again tomorrow!) It’s how I live in the rest of my work life, too – pride and very occasional reflection […]
Every activity that we engage in – work, hobby, personal – asks us to prioritize it. But how can you prioritize everything? What does prioritizing look like? As a freelancer, I have a lot of projects I’m working on at any time. For those, I prioritize based on immediate need […]
I have so much trouble playing digital chess. For a reason that I’m sure cognitive scientists could explain, the two-dimensional top-view of the chess board makes me into a significantly poorer chess player. As I see it, there are two solutions to this challenge. First, as current chess masters have […]
I recently started building a Patreon community around new original compositions and vocal arrangements. I am loving the motivation it gives me to experiment and create new music with supporters behind me. Just yesterday, I shared the first fruit of my Patreon project, a set of Six Nonsense Canons – […]
It seems like a daily experience that I hear someone say, “Oh, I just could never get _____.” I want to shout, we are built to learn! We are learning machines! Sure, someone might learn something more efficiently or quickly than you, someone else might have more aptitude than you […]