WELCOME

Welcome to my grand experiment. Can I keep a blog? Can I produce music that I want to produce? Can I keep up with my podcast Music for Teens? Can I participate in the Disquiet Junto? Will anyone read my musings and rantings? Will anyone listen to my music?

I am a classically trained violist trying to adapt to the future. The future is electronic music production, when I graduated from my undergraduate degree nearly 20 years ago, GarageBand wasn’t released yet, DAW’s while around were a very niche thing, that as a Music Education undergraduate, it wasn’t thought to expose us to that. I was considered ahead of the curve then because I chose to use Finale 2000 to complete my arrangement projects and my final Theory IV composition instead of doing it by hand.

I teach music production in my current position, and I constantly feel torn between teaching traditional music values and techniques, and dropping the entire system and teaching how I want to teach, after all there are plenty of success stories out there of folks who compose great music without having the formal training.

I firmly believe that computers are the instruments of the future, and while traditional instruments will still have their value and their place, all musicians and music educators in particular need to adapt and embrace the electronic revolution. That might mean abandoning traditional music notation in the future who knows.

I also run a podcast, Music for Teens, which I need to get back to. A few things have been holding me back, first and foremost, the pandemic, which has been a wrench in everyones lives the last year. Second, I was in HUGE need of an upgrade to my home computer, which I finally achieved recently. I am still working through updating ALL THE THINGS, but I hope to get back to my podcast, Music for Teens Soon.

I also write articles for SBO magazine as their Orchestra specialist. Funny thing and in full disclosure, I don’t teach a whole lot of orchestra anymore, but I teach almost everything else.

Anyway, I expect this site to be a holding place for my Blog, which I will do my best to keep to my various projects and activities, and thoughts on Music Education, maybe a bit about my life (I will do an extensive post of my cats at some point I am sure) and stay away from controversy. All views expressed here are my own.