arrange • compose • conduct
Until you learn attain sufficient music literacy, every piece you learn is an island. One of the biggest gifts music literacy can give you is the gift of perspective. That is, the ability to recognize common characteristics from one piece to the next. Imagine you are an explorer in the […]
Having a Plan B is a good idea. Having a Plan F might be self-sabotage. Don’t have too many contingency plans. It can be tempting to spin out many follow-up plans, in the form of “And if A doesn’t work, I’ll try B, and if B doesn’t work I’ll try […]
Here’s a little flow chart for how to interact with your own mistakes. I made a new mistake when I did this chart. And I learned how to fix it for this photo.
The most we can achieve together in an ensemble are the lowest aspirations of any one member. I refuse to use the phrase the “only as strong as the weakest link” because someone with low aspirations isn’t weaker than anyone else. It’s just that their aims are different. It’s okay […]
I attended a virtual session through Sing! The Toronto Vocal Arts Festival yesterday. They, like everyone else, have pivoted to virtual offerings. I admit I didn’t desperately need Anders Edenroth’s session Recording From Home. I’ve done a lot of recording, both in the home and in the studio, and I’m […]
I attended a great Zoom masterclass led by the great Anders Edenroth, of The Real Group, today. He spent the hour talking about his philosophies of recording, and especially about how to adapt to the new normal and make quality recordings in the home. But I also wrote down this […]
I am preternaturally comfortable with silence as a teacher. But remote teaching is challenging me. I like almost nothing better than the 10-12 seconds of absolute silence that it sometimes requires for students to move past the fight-or-flight reaction to a question, think about it, and come to an answer. […]
When I experience the sensation of writer’s block, a good strategy for me is to make it meta. I write about the writer’s block. I write about strategies that have worked in the past to get me through it. I write about the circumstances that might have led to the […]
At a certain point, we all tend to become accustomed to even the most radical changes in our life. The novelty wears off and we have “adjusted.” Usually. I don’t know about you, but in my experience of 2020, the novelty doesn’t wear off. Perhaps it’s because the novelty of […]
The evenings for the past few weeks in my house have been filled with our first read-aloud of The Hobbit. Our oldest had read it last year as a free choice book in English class, but for the other two kids it’s the first exposure to Middle Earth. The interesting […]