Over the past 8 months, musicians have been forced to become recording engineers. If you want to improve your setup, this video can help.
recording
It’s been about nine months since I last went over some of my current favorite apps and services. Since then, a lot has changed, so I thought that it might be Apps Some of my favorite apps: Tonal Energy: My favorite tuner/metronome app. I have a full review here. If […]
Stuff I Like/Use: Fall 2020
Some thoughts about how to spend your quarantine time.
Quarantine Projects
This year, pay more attention to what you listen to.
You Are What (and Who) You Listen To
While practicing is necessary to improve, you can only improve what you hear!
You’re Only As Good As Your Ears
In years of working with students on the horn, one of the most difficult concepts to teach (at least for me), has been the idea of musical phrasing. I imagine that this is (at least in part) because getting a strong set of fundamentals took me so long. I don’t […]
Teaching Musical Interpretation: Learn, Listen, Count
It’s getting pretty close to All-District and All-State auditions here in Kentucky. That means that lots of students are starting to feel the pressure to get their audition music finalized. Of course, these students that are stressing most about the audition are the same students that have been practicing in […]
Practice Strategy: Use Ship Dates to Optimize Practice Time
One questions that comes up a fair amount in lessons – especially lessons with younger students faced with new or difficult repertoire – is “can you play this so I can hear how it goes”? Most of the time, my answer is something along the lines of “yes, but everything […]