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One thing that anyone involved in arts education should keep in mind is the ancient dictum: When you talk to squirrels, talk a lot about acorns.

The education of musicians (maybe other arts as well, but I only know about musicians) has a number of Mount Rushmore-sized gaps in it that are neither easy to see (tradition and habit blind us) nor easy to fix (Ocean Liner Curricula, i.e. tradition, habit, vested interest, etc).

One gap is the lack of sufficient and useful training (especially early on) in the aural side of musicianship: sound before sign (or symbol) learning, improvisation & composition (thinking in music), and so on, which contain powerful motivators, learning tools, and build adaptability into the musical DNA of the ...

Let’s get this out of the way up front: I’m in love. I don’t know how else to describe my wonderful time last week in Nova Scotia, my first visit to this splendid province.

I was asked by the music educators of NS to give the keynote address at their annual music educator’s conference in Antigonish last week, as well as to do some presentations. The reason they asked me was because they started working on a new curriculum for band Gr. 7-12 about four years ago. Ardith Haley, Arts Educational consultant in the NS Dept. of Educaiton and one of the central figures involved in writing the new curriculum, was at the Midwest Band Clinic at that time and happened to stop by the booth of GIA Music. GIA had just published ...

Any musician or music educator knows the manifold benefits and advantages that arts education of all kinds has for our children (see my earlier posts on this subject). It seems so obvious and proven beyond any faint shadow of a doubt that we all have worn dents in our foreheads from smacking them at the obtuseness of politicians who are determine to ignore the great advantages and joys of a well-rounded education that includes a healthy dose of creative arts study.

Why, oh, why do they think that way?! What is the matter with them? Is it so hard to discern that No Child Left Behind has fostered Every Child Left Behind?!

I may have chanced upon the answer to that question. Let us return now to yesterday for a short peek at a particular ...

A lot has come to light in the past decade since I began looking beyond tradition and started thinking. Thinking about different ways to learn the instrument, more efficient ways, ways that are more now and less then. At some point we have to move beyond the 19th century… I have done my best to steal from many other fields (i.e. climbing over the apparently high, barbed-wire rimmed walls of the box for a new go at thinking) to bring back stuff that works for others and try it on the horn. There is a rich realm of possibilities lying glistening and unattended for the determined idea thief. First, from other brasses. What do trumpets do that we don’t that we might try? Low brass? Over more walls: what about ...

[A revised version of an earlier article. -J.A.]

Memorization is the difference between performing a solo with the mind and ears totally focused on the flow and expressive qualities of music versus the eyes and fingers being consumed with a note to note response or other technicalities of notation. The mental connection made with the fine detail of musical phrases and listening is far more discriminating than the visual or sight response to notation. – Edward Lisk

I have seen some astounding live horn performances in my day, by Arkady Shilkloper, Douglas Hill, Peter Damm, John Clark, Frank Lloyd, to name just a few. But if I were forced at gunpoint to select the single most electrifying performance I’ve ever experienced, it

Classical musicians sometimes miss terrific musical riches and resources right under there own noses: plenteous, powerful, familiar, and fun. I’m referring to familiar tunes and songs. We just harnessed their power in creating the Song-O-Nome – quick & easy ways to come up with a fairly accurate metronome marking using familiar tunes. Now we are going to use these tunes to help our ear training and memory in another way: using the first (or prominent) interval of the tune to help us hear and be able to sing and identify all of the simple intervals. This list is incomplete; there are many other such lists on the internet if you care to pursue it further.

Using Familiar Tunes for Interval Recognition

Ascending:

Minor 2^nd:

Tom Tresser is the author of the article around which I based my recent post on supporting arts education. We’ve exchanged some emails and he proposed that we bounce some ideas back and forth on our respective blogs on the subject; you Dear Reader are of course invited to add your comments any time. Here’s his first one:

Richard Florida and others have written extensively about the “Creative Class” and the role of creativity in America. Given that some 30 million people make their living from their brains (creative workers) and some 55 million people identify strongly with freedom of expression (so called “Cultural Creatives”) – the question is – Is there a Creative Class consciousness? Are

Time for a little levity… Lifted from the UI horn studio web site, shamelessly adapted from a viral internet post on jazz band fines…

Orchestra Fines for Horn Players

Coming Late to rehearsal: $100

Coming Late to Performance: $500

Not Showing up at All: $400

Forgetting music: $50

Forgetting instrument: $100

Bringing wrong instrument: $150

Not noticing: $250

Not warming up: $50

Obnoxious show-off warm-up: $500

Playing highest note possible during warm-up: $107

Warming up with Principal Horn’s solos: Lethal Injection

Staring at Principal during solo: Burning at stake

Emptying water during Principal’s solo: Electrocution

Giving advice to principal after a clam: Hanging

Playing principal’