NEA Survey Finds Jazz Musicians Are Largely Male And Well Educated But Many Are Underpaid And Lack Benefits Respondents Call for Affordable Health Care, Pension Plans, Education Programs and More Philanthropic Support From 2003, but still really interesting. Wonder how much has changed in the last 8 years? Read the rest: NEA News – Jazz [...]

Bandleading 101 – great advice from the Airmen of Note director Joe Jackson

Artists, as a species, are amazing people. And America, as a general rule, does not fully get this. Show me a good artist and I will show you a highly educated, highly creative, highly passionate, highly driven human being. If they’re a performing artist, I will show you someone who breathes teamwork. I will show [...]

http://sivers.org/15-years – A great post about remembering that it takes time and energy (practice!) to get good at something. Sometimes we forget what we had to do to get somewhere.

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. [...]

Some great ideas on what to do with your summer downtime (especially being self-employed): http://www.suzemuse.com/2011/05/the-lull

I’ve never really considered myself a techie but somehow in the last year or so I became not only that person that colleagues come to for computer advice, but someone who has created and maintains 3 websites, 3 Twitter accounts, spends more time on her iPad that the computer (and not just playing games), and [...]

All music is played by ear.   This statement is very profound to me. For many years I let myself believe that I had “bad ears” and there was nothing I could do about it. From an early age I was able to “think” fast enough to get by, making good choices often enough that [...]

A few hours ago I returned to Phoenix from the Jazz Education Network (known as JEN) 2nd Annual Conference in New Orleans. I spent 4 days attending clinics starting at 8 AM, watching live music until 1 AM and constantly being surrounded by some of the greatest jazz musicians and educators. I found myself continuously [...]