The Real Humanities Crisis (Gary Gutting, NY Times)

I've enjoyed/agreed with pretty much everything Mr. Gutting has written in the series "The Stone" in the NY Times.

Pacific Standard: Want Quick, Accurate Thinking? Ask a Musician

From the magazine Pacific Standard:

Want Quick, Accurate Thinking? Ask a Musician

What to say when you're asked to work for free

link

This used to come up for me much more often than it does now, but it is still amazing to me how people find it normal to pay for just about everything other than art.

Why We Like Sad Music (NYT)

Why We Like Sad Music (NY Times Op-Ed)

It boils down to the fact that we are not in fact in trouble. It is more like empathy. I think it's also why some people like roller coasters and scary movies. You know rationally that you are not in danger.

NY Times OpEd: Is Music the Key to Success

hint: the answer is it can be

Although there are many transferable lessons from doing music, the passion/love for music itself comes first. This is needed to unlock the energy to do the work of developing skills. Musical skills open all these further opportunities (collaboration, creativity, etc.). 

Love-->Work-->Skills-->everything else

Article Link Here or read below

Two not to miss

10 Easy Ways To Optimize Your Music Practice

Getting Kids To Practice Music — Without Tears Or Tantrums

Another repost here of two excellent articles (blog posts) from NPR's Deceptive Cadence by Anastasia Tsioulcas. The links are above and the articles are in full below. I do this as a way of sharing, but also as a way of saving things I might want to return to occasionally. By the way, the youtube video included below is from an excellent series of MANY short videos done by David Finckel on various aspects of cello playing, practice, and performance. An excellent resource. Enjoy:

Free and worthwhile!

If you would like to know more about "modern" music but don't know where to start, this free online course could be just the opportunity for you! It is taught by two faculty from The Curtis Institute of Music and starts October 1.

From the Repertoire: Western Music History through Performance

Let the Kid Study Music, Already

I'm not on Linked in, but I did read this excellent short post there after a friend passed it on. Great perspective here by a mom on the value of a music education (in college and beyond). Enjoy.

Let the Kid Study Music, Already!

Two years ago, my eldest children (boy-girl twins) graduated high school. I remember standing in the lobby outside the auditorium after their last high school concert, waiting for them to join my husband and me. I had kept it together pretty well through the concert, letting at most half a dozen tears fall as I thought about all the recitals, lessons, pool parties, science fairs and other growing-up experiences that were now behind us.

On the wall outside the auditorium hung a framed portrait of the senior class. I studied it as I waited for my two performers to emerge.

Here's a kid my son played soccer with, back in third grade. This six-foot-plus beanpole over here used to ride his bike with training wheels down our driveway. Looking at 500 kids about to head off to their destinies, I felt the usual mix of pride, joy and sadness at the end of an era - but mostly pride. A father stood next to me, also surveying the faces of the graduating seniors.

"One of these kids yours?" asked the dad. "Two of them," I said, "this guy up here and this girl, down on the first row." "What are they going to do in college?" he asked. "They're both going to study music," I said. "Oh, no!" exclaimed the dad as he turned and walked away -

"More starving artists!"

How do parents across the country watch their children grow into talented musicians, see the kids' love of and gift for music, beam at countless concerts and marching-band performances, then suddenly balk when the kid says "I want to study music."?

El Sistema in the UK

Julian Lloyd Weber on his involvement with an El Sistema style social program in Great Britten

On fearless performing

Jeff Nelson, Canadian Brass hornist and Indiana University Associate Professor gives ten tips on fearless performing.

Some great advice here, folks.

NY Times: Mozart vs. the Beatles

Another excellent contribution by Garry Gutting in the NY Times philosophy series called The Stone. This one concerns high art vs. low art. Loved it. Link

NY Times article: Why Do I Teach?

NY Times Opinion Piece: Why Do I Teach?

I enjoyed this short piece touching on the purpose of a college education, and a philosophy of teaching. The nut:

"We should judge teaching not by the amount of knowledge it passes on, but by the enduring excitement it generates."

Shortest Tonalization in the World

Turn a feeling into a sound. 

That's it. Pick an emotion; imagine a sound that expresses that feeling; make that sound come out of your cello.

The feeling can be one you are actually experiencing, or one you just pull out of thin air. Print this list out and throw a dart at it if you want.

The sound can be a note, a smear of notes, or just noise, but just think of something that is somehow one sound rather than something that develops into a whole composition or improvisation.

A lot of practice is focused on developing skill. It is nice to start by connecting with expression.

like some help with contemporary music?

great blog series

This is a series by Tom Service, music writer for the British paper, The Guardian. Service features one composer from the last 100 years each week. Each post includes links to youtube clips of the works discussed as well as other relavent and interesting material to explore.

an exhortation to get creative

James Rhodes: 'Find what you love and let it kill you'

sounds like a fun concert

NY Times review

Bach in the Subways

Love this: Link

Happy birthday, Mr. Bach.

Study: Early Music Lessons Boost Brain Development

Early Music Lessons Boost Brain Development

Early Music Lessons Boost Brain Development

Posted on February 12, 2013By Neuroscience NewsFeatured, Neuroscience

Montreal researchers find that music lessons before age seven create stronger connections in the brain.

If you started piano lessons in grade one, or played the recorder in kindergarten, thank your parents and teachers. Those lessons you dreaded, or loved, helped develop your brain. The younger you started music lessons, the stronger the connections in your brain.

RadioLab podcast on Beethoven's metronome

Really enjoyed this RadioLab.






Typical rehearsal arguments about tempo ("too fast/too slow") are usually based on an assumption about what the music should convey. When we have clear (metronome) indications from the composer, perhaps we should rather ask what the tempo he or she gives would convey and give thought to whether, perhaps that is in fact what was meant to be conveyed, even if this is not what we are accustomed to or had previously felt.

Rather than figuring out how to make the music answer our own questions, we can ask if the music as written is already the correct answer to some other question.

Deliberate Practice Described

The term "deliberate practice"  (or variants including "deep practice") is all over. Below is one of the better descriptions I've found of it. It comes from this post on a blog called Study Hacks, written by a computer scientist on the broad subject of what patterns lead to success. Plenty of good, thought-provoking stuff there if you are interested.

Traits of Deliberate Practice:

It’s designed to improve performance. “The essence of deliberate practice is continually stretching an individual just beyond his or her current abilities. That may sound obvious, but most of us don’t do it in the activities we think of as practice.”

It’s repeated a lot. “High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate practice of a task and performing the task for real, when it counts.”

Feedback on results is continuously available. “You may think that your rehearsal of a job interview was flawless, but your opinion isn’t what counts.”

It’s highly demanding mentally. “Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it ‘deliberate,’ as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in.”

It’s hard. “Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands.”

It requires (good) goals. “The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but rather about the process of reaching the outcome.”

Atlantic article on pinky fingers

For what it's worth, here is the article: 

Study: Violinists' Fates Resides in Their Left Pinky Fingers

For what it's worth, my response:

I strongly suspect that this ability to move fingers independently is something that can be developed rather than something that is fixed, and that perhaps it would be useful for a teacher to find little exercises to build this kind of coordination in any student.

Inattentional Deafness?

I heard this story on NPR the other morning. It's about some really fun studies on something called "inattentional blindness" which occurs when you are really focused on something challenging. During this state, it is very easy to miss even really obvious things that are going on but are not part of what you are paying attention to. The NPR story discusses a study in which radiologists (highly trained  and practiced at finding cancer in scans) do not see a picture of a gorilla waving at them from within a scan because they are looking for hard-to-find signs of cancer.

Many musicians will be familiar with the feeling disbelief one sometimes experiences when listening to recordings of oneself. "How did I not hear that?!!" 

NY Times article on royalties for streaming music

link

Classical musicians don't really do recording as a way to make money directly these days. Recording is a way to increase one's prestige, perhaps, and to reach different audiences; As such, there is an indirect impact on one's income over time, but the recordings themselves really are not making the artist any money.

What are you screaming?

I like this. It's a jazz pianist giving a talk to some students. He discusses some really important ideas about playing music. The basic one is that "all music is played by ear" and that what we must work on is how well we hear. We should develop the vividness of what we hear inside. 

When you imagine a phrase, how vivid is the articulation or the color of the sound, or the direction of the line, etc.? If you are screaming it inside, to the point that it must come out, you are ready to play it.

Early Training in Music Affects Brain Development

New Scientist article. 

Study linking music and emotion

Here is a brief LA Times article about a study by neuroscientists showing how perception of emotional states in others is strongly linked to musical elements, particularly pitch. The questions of how, when and why music developed relative to language in our evolution is one that is far from settled, and is one I am fascinated by as a music educator thinking about the role of music in society.
Here is the final line of the article: "The findings, the authors write, "lend support to early speculations by Darwin, elaborated upon by several contemporary theorists, that emotional communication is a fundamental link between these domains [music and language] and reflects their common evolutionary origin."

Top 10 skills children learn from the arts

Washington Post article: 

Top 10 skills children learn from the arts

Education Post: How Finland Did It

Not on music, but still...

Forty years ago Finland revamped their education system. These days they top every list comparing outcomes. Here's how they did it. (really short article)

Link