This is a picture of a Brazilian kid who was part of the “cultural group of reggae”, playing his instrument in the funeral of his mentor who saved him from an environment of poverty and crime. He was rescued from the street.

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Image and text source: Revolutionary Riots

I’m in a state of panic. And not quite sure why some students are not experiencing the same.

I have to look back on the last few months and question what I could have done better:

• was too much lesson time spent on theory? prepping for the theory exam can mean the urgent takes over the important.
• did I give adequate practice instructions and strategies? there were likely days when I just told the student (s) to go home and learn the notes better.
• did I put out enough in the lesson?
• could I have been more inspiring?
• should I have been in closer touch with the parents in some cases?

In the case of the 20-year-old who still thinks he can cram a piano exam, and who misses more lessons than he attends, I refuse to take any responsibility. And some students will do well. They are focused, they practice consistently, they want to do well. But the others …

Step back.

We are not teaching solely to pump out stars who get stellar exam marks. At least, we shouldn’t be.

We are shaping lives. Long-term. Building a relationship between teacher and student, and building a relationship between student and music and, by extension, the whole world of the arts.

So if I spend too much time achieving the light-bulb-moment when they get the sounds of the different cadences, at the expense of nailing the fingering for C# Minor Melodic, so be it.

If I’m on a roll and I see a skill emerging and solidifying, I don’t care if one or two arpeggios are insecure.

If they are genuinely interested and engaged in my tangent about a composer and his influence, I’m going to keep talking.

I’ll do what I can to ensure adequate preparation for exams. Otherwise, let the real education continue …

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Image: by Laura Albin Guillot – Les tierces alternées, illustration pour Les Préludes de Claude Debussy, 1948 © Laura Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet.   Via: arpeggia

“…A strange art, music; the most poetic and precise of all the arts, vague as a dream and exact as algebra.”

Image:  The interior of Hallgrímskirkja church, Reykjavik, Iceland. Photo and more text by o palsson

Biggest musical interest: the classics. Arrangements of all the popular classical orchestral repertoire. (Props to his school music teacher for this!)  Forget the method books. We just learn stuff as we go through books of easy classics.

Biggest problem in the lesson: the short attention span. The usual off-the-bench games are not only unnecessary, they are boring and only make him less focused.

So it’s Youtube to the rescue. Every week we watch a performance of a piece that he’s playing. We name the instruments of the orchestra and talk about their sounds. His goal is to play the French Horn.

Last night it was the William Tell Overture. The first video to pop up after the search was this fun recording by Mnozil Brass, a band from Austria that recently played in a sold-out performance at the Jack Singer Concert Hall. Yes, they’re entertaining. But their musical skill and polish is nothing less than amazing.

This is not your standard performance of the tune.

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Image: Life is a constant crescendo

“You have survived this season’s run of music festivals and competitions. You have your certificate. Maybe you even earned an award.

Perhaps now you’re asking yourself, “Now what?”

Please bring your written adjudication sheet(s) to your next music lesson … Your music teacher can help decipher the adjudicator’s handwriting and discuss with you how to incorporate some of the ideas that you picked up at the music festival … “

My friend (colleague/blogging buddy/coffee pal) Rhona-Mae at The Busted Piano String continues her post with an explanation to students on why we like to see those adjudication sheets. And why we may or may not follow those suggestions.

Read her post here. And brush up on your handwriting-deciphering skills.

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Image: via Madame Scherzo

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it.”

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Quote: excerpted from Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Commencement Address; via Anderson Layman

Image: Balys Buracas (1897-1972) via tytusjaneta

For our students, and ourselves, no matter our profession / vocation / avocation: 

Is Mediocrity really all that bad?

You already know the answer.

Mediocrity is so poisonous because no one really complains about it. It envelops and sucks us in. Before we know it our standards are lowered and it sets us in the death spiral.  

So how can this be when the truth is that we take delight in the amazingness we come across in our daily lives?

It’s because fighting the entropy of mediocrity is hard, and that is what this image is about. 

It’s a reminder about standards. It is a reminder about the extra 1% that will make the difference. It is a reminder that ‘good enough’, just isn’t.

We all know that we have a choice. Do you want to bring light, sparkle, or not?

You already know the answer.

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Image and text: gaping void

Sometimes I just don’t know. Part of me believes that I would have been pretty comfortable living and working in the XIX century, but then I come across horrors like this:

I was merely nosing around for a simple piano transcription of Dvorak’s well-worn “Songs My Mother Taught Me” for use at church this morning. I’ll just play from the original vocal score, thank you, since I was most assuredly *not* after “Songs My Mother Taught Me While Demonically Possessed by Thalberg, D’Albert, and Liszt Simultaneously.”

Arrangements like this can still be heard in some circles Sunday mornings. And some people like them. And I should stop right there …

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Text and image of score: The Leading Tone.

~Duke Ellington

Thank you, Kathleen, for playing the blues. You sound awesome. And thank you for pointing me to San Francisco Bay Blues by Eva Cassidy. Love it!

In the wake of reading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, I posted my list of top 5 favourite classical pieces earlier this week. Here’s the pop version. They’re pretty much all sappy love songs. No pronouncements on how “good” they are. At the risk of embarrassment, subject to change at a moment’s notice, and in no particular order:

1. Simon and Garfunkle – Bridge Over Troubled Water

2. Elton John and George Michael – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me

3. Rod Stewart – Sailing

4. Chris de Burgh – The Lady in Red

5. Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart

All, I’m sure, would be on Rob’s (the character in the novel) List of Horrors. He does reluctantly learn that people can be great even if they have what is, for him, a horrendous CD collection. It’s all so personal.

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Quote: Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

Image: Music The Solution