PA Shorts: Rules
How do we learn the rules of the game? Some of us get right in there, roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty. We figure out the rules…
PA Shorts: 42
Years ago, I was giving a workshop on encouraging musicality and creativity in elementary students. The teachers were interested and very eager to learn. It was a great group, but…
Review: Tales of a Musical Journey
Irina Gorin’s Tales of a Musical Journey starts a young beginner on a trek through an enchanted musical land called The Magical Kingdom of Sounds. Along the way, students meet…
Finding Inspiration
It is human nature to have a gut belief that everyone finds musical inspiration just as you do. The way we operate is just so intrinsic to who we are…
Artist Portrait: Sarah Fimm
Last week, singer songwriter Sarah Fimm and I chatted via Skype about what drew her into music, her teachers and mentors, helping young artists, her new album Near Infinite Possibility,…
PA Shorts: GIGO
Over the last few days, I was part of an interesting Tweetversation with Robert Oliver and Joe Guarr about whether the powers that be think that mandating technology can replace teachers.…
Creativity, Luck, and Inventional Wisdom
There was a super post on creativity by Wendy Stevens at Compose Create this week. In it, she linked to the article, 10 Creativity Tips by Donald Miller and highlighted the…
Make New Friends And Keep The Old
A student once told me that he couldn’t possibly have anything to learn from a certain piece because he could sight read it, and anyway his brother had played it…