I was thrilled to see that my new friends, the White Oak Trio, now have two videos up. This is exciting, because now every Good Musician can hear what a piano trio is supposed to sound like. Not only that, one of the videos interposes an interview with the group and live performances. Listen, and you’ll learn oodles about what goes in to making good music, and good music being made! This is a group to follow closely…
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If you take musical instruction, here are five tips to keep your teacher happy.
1. Show up. This should go without saying, but you’d be surprised at how ditching just one lesson can mean the difference between a so-so musician and a good musician. Even if you can’t play or sing, you can talk through the music with your teacher.
2. Be prepared to play or sing on the dot. Arrive early enough to soak your reed, warm up your instrument, or vocalize–whatever you need to do to be prepared to get right to the music. Make the most of your …read more
The Texas Choral Directors Association publishes the member magazine Texas Sings!. The latest issue features an article by Dr. Debbie Rohward from the University of North Texas on the importance of clear, attenuated, immediate, and appropriate feedback to further improvement. We all know that negative feedback results in negative understanding and growth. Rohward suggests that the good music teacher focuses student attention on specific and attainable goals on which to build musical competency.
Examining a musical component such as pitch, tone quality, dynamics, and the like helps build an aural framework that the musician can build on, and leads to …read more
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Image details: Girl playing piano served by picapp.com
Here are a couple of sites that will help you drill for those end-of-year theory finals. These sites are free.
The Music Theory Minute is a super guide to the fundamentals of music theory, demonstrated in one minute tutorials. Features video/voice-over clips of Dr. Jack modeling the lesson. You’ll hear what a diminished chord sounds like, as well as see how it is constructed.
Western Michigan University School of Music offers a no-frills theory site that contains two rhythmic training programs you can download: Diktus allows you to practice one- and two-part rhythmic dictation and …read more
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The Internet Archives music collection has mp3 recordings of everything from Enrico Caruso and Galli-Curci to Laurie Anderson and the Grateful Dead. The sub collections go all the way back to cylinder recordings.
You can also find old radio show archives, such as Fibber McGee and Molly, the Whistler, and the Bob and Ray show. I remember hearing all these on long car trips when I was a child. Bob Elliott is comedian Chris Elliott’s father.
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The University of Texas at Austin recently received the largest gift to any public higher ed music department in history. The school will be named the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music to honor their 25 year support of music at UT-Austin. More than half of the monies will go toward students’ needs. This follows a $2M endowment from the couple for the music school’s opera theater. Aptly, Dr. Butler is a retired otolaryngologist, or eye, ear, and nose specialist–the singer’s best friend.
Even though this is the largest endowment for public music schools, it bears noting that gifts to …read more
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