Category: Email Archives
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How I Used to Lie About My Experience With Piano
You don’t have to fit a mold. Most people don’t, you know. And yet, we generally assume that others will conform to our expectations. I used to lie about how much experience I had with the piano. When I was in 9th grade, my English class was studying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I gave a presentation…
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It’s All Side-Effects
I spent the weekend moving. It was far more difficult than I anticipated. I have way too much stuff, and I completely underestimated how much I have. I don’t like to get rid of material possessions. Especially the ones that have sentimental value. Ones that remind me of other times. But, I noticed a few…
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Mistakes Don’t Hurt Your Ears
If wrong notes hurt your ears, good. A student of mine was whining about that once. He was 11 years old, and he had pretty good ears. I was pushing him a little bit out of his comfort zone, and he started complaining that his ears were hurting when he played wrong notes. I didn’t…
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Sight-Reading and Hesitation
Hesitating during sight-reading is a bad idea, and I learned this the hard way. I had been hired to play for voice lessons at a rather prestigious music school. I didn’t know as much vocal repertoire as I would have liked, so a lot of what I was doing was sight-reading. And I thought I…
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How I Learned I Was Bad at Singing
When I was in second grade, my music teacher decided to inform my parents that I was bad at singing. My dad and I were in front of our garage one day. We had a really flat driveway, with a basketball hoop, and I remember standing there as I heard him telling me that according to my recent report card, I wasn’t doing too well with singing.…