comfort zone
if i said its been a tough year it probably wouldn’t be quite exact. i guess its more accurate to say it feels like its been a tough year. the biggest problem with working in higher education and the economy going to crap is that you feel pretty good about having a job for about [...]
the trees without the forest
well i made it…
as i’m starting to wade through the piles of paperwork i have to grade i’m slowing down enough to finally start to reflecting and assessing this fall. as semesters go it was one for my record books: 3 schools, 19 units, and 2 new classes.
its not that i haven’t been here before. [...]
balance
teach, grade, eat, sleep is about all I do these days.
this summer it looked like I was going to be seriously underemployed so I am very grateful and lucky to even have the option of paying my bills. things are better now and i’m glad the sky didn’t completely fall in.
last spring i knew things [...]
two out of three (what a racket)
after spending one class lecturing on the modes, doctrine of ethos, pythagoras and aristoxenes (i can’t skip pythagoras’s main rival, it was a steven colbert/george bush relationship) and the middle ages, mass, machut, perotin, leonin and bingen is crazy. once we got around to singing the perfect intervals and connecting the solfege to the doctrine ethos i was ready to pull out my primary source greek texts of the aristoxenes “yo mama” jokes. unfortunately to “keep on schedule” i have to finish up with medieval and move on to the rennaisance if i’m lucky i’ll get maybe two weeks on baroque music.
iphone in the classroom
just a quick friday post on using my new iphone in the classroom. its already become indispensable for teaching music related classes and lectures. here are a few of the new apps that i’m already using on a daily basis.
remote
like it says its a remote in your hand. i can walk around the room and [...]
learning is doing
learning is doing
which means I have spent most of my years trying to avoid teaching music appreciation. on the face of it what could be wrong sharing the joys of listening to music? unfortunately to me teaching people how to “listen to music” is like teaching a math class without doing any math. no matter [...]
it was my third year
as i said before requiem for a high homicide enclave is my attempt to make sense of the latimes homicide report. i first encountered the blog, comments and maps reading about the death of los angeles high school band member michael pena and reading his story it brought back a lot of memories that i [...]
musicianship toolbox, part 1 building sightsinging fundamentals
musicianship toolbox part 1, building sightsinging fundamentals
so you want to improve your ears? what to do? where to start?
here is a simple exercise to get you started
the first skill you to develop is the ability to sing all the diatonic intervals
(2nds-8ths, ascending and descending)
by being able to sing these intervals you are building a foundation [...]
carrot or sticks?
on august 16th 2007 michael pena was killed.
the police still don’t have a suspect or a motive in his death, but what is clear in the la times article by sam quinones, is that michael led a double life as a los angeles high school music student and tagger who recently dropped out of school [...]
congestion pricing
my late summer read was james surowiecki’s the wisdom of crowds which describes how crowds (large numbers of independent people who share a common interest or goal) when left to their own devices seem to make pretty intelligent decisions and how gives some descriptions about they arrive at them. also later in the [...]
how to pass sight singing and dictation
i think i almost gave this speech word for word last week in my both my musicianship classes. here is a few excerpts (with comments) from johnathan filbert’s blog, sound on. i’m sure many of you probably haven’t encountered edwin gordon’s rhythmic solfege system (du-de’s). i use it to introduce rhythm to younger [...]
why can’t you hear that??????
think about this for a moment…
in college which students have usually have the best ‘ears’?
i bet your thinking about the jazz musicians. ok now think a second about the classes these students take; do they spend hours on interval drill or taking dictation? no. i bet if you followed your favorite jazz musician around [...]
"best practices"
during the long drive home from the california music educators (cmea) conference in ontario, the ever present saturday freeway traffic gave me a lot of time for contemplation. although only a few sessions are hits and most miss, all i need is one or two good ones for fuel until [...]
monday mid-day musicianship gripe
why are we still teaching four part dictation?
to answer this i think you first have to ask where did it come from. after two years of trying to teach the “traditional” musicianship curriculum (and failing), i thought a little research on the history of these classes would be useful. from my brief survey [...]
quandry
as you can see the blog is mostly empty these days, but its not because of a pause in my schedule, but mostly because i like to write to help organize my thoughts. these days most of my pbe time is taken up recording and mixing which does not lend itself to blog friendly posts. [...]
sprint to the finish
yesterday i hit burnout.
it was the first day since last summer that i did nothing. no writing, lesson plans, or practicing… it’s probably a week too early, but i need to get in the right frame of mind so the thanksgiving break isn’t a waste. i need to finish up the retrace cd, start [...]
busy fall
things are going well but by this time on tuesday nights i can barely think straight. this fall has been moving so fast and i’m really excited about it except one problem…
i’m too tired to keep this blog updated.
the biggest change is that the wife has started her internship as a therapist. the short [...]
back in the thick
being back in school is great, but it comes with all the cuts, scrapes and bruises that go with taking long summer breaks.
somehow the first day i lost my wallet, luckily i cancelled the cards before they were used. it could still turn up, but these things always seem to happen when i radically change [...]
a heathly respect for the job
its my first day back to school tomorrow and i can’t sleep. right now those who are sleeping like babies are probably have no idea what is in store for them or too burnt out to care. someone once told me its the last bit of our animal instinct trying to ‘keep us on [...]
band night?
i just finished my first week of classes and so far i am really happy with my classes.
last semester is another story.
i failed 11 students in my eartraining/dictation class. i didn’t feel good about it and spent much of the break trying to figure out if it was me or them. i decided [...]
designer education
for those of you who think private school is worth it, read this.
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status quo?
over this break i have been doing lesson plans for my spring eartraining and theory classes. as i sketched my classes out i realized that my goals were becoming much different than in the past. i wasn’t worried about what i am supposed to teach, but really concentrated to what skills i think our students [...]
finals
the end of the semester is finally near, i think i have just survived the transition from secondary ed to college. i’m sure over the break i’ll be able to process it.
overall its been pretty jarring. some my biggest mistakes were giving my students too much credit. i assumed that they would read [...]
back to school
the last couple weeks i have been gearing up for my return to teaching, although this year is much different. class starts in 2 weeks and usually time of the year is all stress. part of it is worrying about the simple things, did they screw up my schedule? how many of [...]
