When marching band season is over, it may be time to consider refreshing your ensemble’s concert black. After all, the first thing judges see at band festival is your students' appearance.
The word selfish gets a bad rap. By definition, it’s “lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.”
Saying “no” may sound easy, but it’s really very complicated. “No” is one of the shortest complete sentences, but it carries significant emotional weight for some people.
Ah, rebranding. There’s a powerful emotion that used to be called “the sublime.” That idea first burbled up with the Greek philosophers, and then resurfaced later with the 18th-century art movement called Romanticism.
Teaching music is a creative job that relies heavily on human interaction and personal connections with your students. While this profession is immensely rewarding, it is also very challenging, and if you don't take care of yourself, you run the risk of burnout.
I once heard a music professor say, "if everything is accented, nothing is accented." We've all seen a 16-bar phrase of music with every note accented. When we play the ink precisely as it is written, the music sounds like the teacher from Charlie Brown — monotonous, boring and predictable.
Time is a precious commodity. As music teachers, we not only have to protect classroom time, but we have to carve out a few minutes (or hours!) here and there to take care of our must-do, non-negotiable tasks.
Autism (or autism spectrum disorder) is a pervasive developmental disorder that affects 1 in 54 children in the United States, according to a 2020 report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
After the first month or two of the school year, it can be very challenging to keep your elementary students engaged. Here are five lessons that I have used to keep my students motivated and excited about learning music, even on a Monday morning!
Ah, if only motivation came in a bottle, and you could crack open the cap and chug it down like a sports drink. Suddenly, you’d be motivated to rocket through tasks that previously seemed daunting or tedious, like entering 194 students’ midterm grades into the system or trying out a new program for teaching chording.
Picking out new uniforms for your marching band can be an overwhelming task, especially as a new band director. There are so many things to consider. You want something that is universally flattering for every member of the band.
Chances are high that either as a student or teacher, you've attempted to sell cookie dough, chocolate, wrapping paper, popcorn or coupon books in order to raise funds for your music program. As tasty or handy as these items are, have you ever felt like there must be another option?
Over the past 20 years, careers in music have become as varied as the numerous musical genres. The music business is a fast-paced, competitive and ever-changing landscape, which requires specialized tools and knowledge to survive.
“Nerv-i-cited” is how my daughter describes the feeling of being simultaneously excited and nervous.
Mirian Conti is part of the faculty of the Evening Division of The Juilliard School in New York City.
Frederic Chiu is an Assistant Professor of Piano at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Andrea McAlister is an Associate Professor of Piano Pedagogy at Oberlin College and Conservatory in Ohio, the Director of Digital Content for the Frances Clark Center and the Senior Editor of Piano Magazine.
World-renowned composer and pianist Phillip Keveren is the co-author of the Hal Leonard Student Piano Library.
Once only used by remote work teams, video-conferencing services like Zoom, Skype, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams became lifelines for people in all walks of life during the pandemic.
