arrange • compose • conduct
When I’m adapting to a new schedule, the third week is when I figure it out. The first week is about reacting, moment to moment, to the demands of the schedule. The second week is about noticing the waves, taking care of the most important tasks, and starting to go […]
Adam Neely is a bassist and YouTuber who makes outstanding explanatory videos about music, especially understanding contemporary music (jazz, rock, pop, etc.). His most recent video is a must-watch. Please watch it to understand more about the cis-white-male-centric world of traditional music theory. I’m teaching a Jazz Theory course at […]
I personally think it’s good for students to see their teachers and leaders figuring it out. The idea of the teacher/leader as a fount of knowledge, issuing decrees from a position of authority and wisdom is tempting, but it isn’t very realistic. We are all human, we are all figuring […]
I taught myself to use a new notation software today, and I did it by being almost completely uncreative. I use notation software throughout my creative process – to complete scores, but also as I am composing and arranging. It is a creative tool. But when you’re using a new […]
The worst lesson to learn from six months of a pandemic is, “it’s always like this.” It’s hard, at 43, to learn that lesson. Your sense of normal does evolve over time, but I have had enough life experience to know that it’s not always like this. In the nearly […]
Early correctives are so much more effective than late ones. It’s the beginning of the year/semester/trimester/quarter. Now is the time to make gentle correctives. A small, gentle corrective of a student in the early weeks can profoundly affect their trajectory. A much bigger correction at the end of term will […]
I heard auditions today for the Rockford Aces – outside, distanced, masked. They were auditions – nerve wracking in the best of times, and probably doubly so when the singers haven’t had sung with a choir since at least March. So I simplified my audition protocol, I removed aspects, and I tried […]
“In preparing for his oral qualifying examination, a rite of passage for every graduate student, he chose not to study the outlines of known physics. Instead he went up to MIT, where he could be alone, and opened a fresh notebook. On the title page he wrote: Notebook Of Things […]
Nobody knows how Greek Fire was made. Nobody quite knows the recipe for Roman concrete, or the process for Damascus steel; nobody knows the smell of silphium. There are countless examples of past knowledge lost to time. It might be reassuring to think that knowledge builds on knowledge – that […]
Host Drew Carey began episodes of the improv comedy show “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” with the tag phrase, “the show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.” If there ever was a phrase for the utter reinvention of education in 2020, that’s it. And if we recognize […]