Imagine walking thru the hallways of a hotel conference center and around every corner is live jazz. Imagine people of all walks of life – students to the jazz greats and everything in between milling the halls, chatting with one another, smiling. Imagine having your choice of clinics to attend – technology, promotion, practicing, etc. [...]
Welcome to Five Link Friday #3. Enjoy! 1) The 2012 NEA Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony & Concert Webcast 2) One of my favorite videos on why we need to fail to succeed. 3) Think Twitter is a waste of time? Can’t find the point? Here’s a good article explaining how to use it and what’s [...]
First, a little background… I remember learning how to play piano as a kid (and later in college when you have to take 2 years of piano as part of a music degree) and one of the things that stuck with me was the Five Note Scale Pattern where you put your thumb on middle [...]
Welcome to Five Link Friday #2. If you missed the first one, you can find it here. 1) “My goal in life is to play better tomorrow then I did today” – James Moody Check out the other videos from that same interview. 2) At the JEN conference last weekend I met a trumpet player [...]
Inspired by this post from my fellow doubler Bret Pimentel What instruments do you play in your profession, and in what capacity do you play them? I play piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano, alto, tenor and bari saxophone professionally in jazz combos, big bands, rock bands, chamber ensembles, orchestras, as a soloist, and in [...]
“I don’t know what to play” confesses the student when it’s their turn to solo… I’ve heard this quite often from students throughout my years teaching and giving clinics. It is completely understandable, although I suspect that not knowing what to play (in that moment) is directly proportional to not knowing what to practice at [...]
One of the fears that I hear students express often time is the fear of playing a wrong note, or even a series of wrong notes. Sometimes, they can’t even verbalize it and they just sit there, unable to play anything at all. In an effort to eliminate that fear, I started teaching the blues [...]
Bandleading 101 – great advice from the Airmen of Note director Joe Jackson
About 2 years ago, a friend of mine recommended that I read Derek Siver’s e-book to get some ideas on how to promote and connect with an audience. The e-book sent me down a new path in my professional life. Not only did I get a lot out of that e-book, but I signed up [...]
One of my favorite time killers when I worked in the music library in college (aside from intensely studying and rubber band wars) was to play games online. This was before the age of smart phones and Angry Birds. Text Twist was one of my favorites. I love word games and I’m especially adept at [...]
I recently went to jam session for the first time in over a year. In an effort to face my own fears, I’m going to share them with you… in detail. The jam session was on a Sunday afternoon. I think I stressed thru most of Friday and Saturday, trying to find a tune [...]
Subtitled: How I Finally Learned, Really Learned, My Diminished Scales. Diminished scales were always that elusive sound that I wanted to try to understand but could never get my head around. Actually that was my problem. I could think my way through it, but I really didn’t have it under my fingers. My brain kept [...]
For the last 5 years or so summer has meant “summer reading”. Teachers (and students) are quite familiar with this idea and normally this time of year I am starting my summer reading book with gusto and have every intention of finishing it, complete with post-its tagging important pages and notes in the margins [...]
First a little background: I have a little bit of of a RPG background (Role Playing Game) thanks to various ex-boyfriends and over the years I have collected some of my own dice. During my second year of classroom teaching, I was giving a test on major scales. Because the students were supposed to know [...]
Tetrachords – the little pieces to a rather large puzzle A couple of years ago, a colleague told me that she teaches major scales to young students using tetrachords. This approach was eye opening for me and prompted me to try teaching this method to my 2nd level class for a couple of years. [...]
