Boyd Holmes, the Writer - Boyd Holmes

“It Don't Mean a Thing . . .”

4/25/2021

The way I see it, xylophones that aren't chromatic should be kept in a closet. Always opt for chromatic xylophones .

If you don’t have chromatic instruments in your elementary music room, sure, use the diatonic models – but make plans to replace them with chromatic instruments.

I know many elementary music teachers rely on those Orff xylophones. They were a very popular purchase decades ago. They have that “musical Ikea” vibe which was I always felt made them more subliminally attractive to a more hipster teacher set.

My experience with how I taught was that if it doesn't have chromatics it's like having the top half of a clarinet and not the bottom. It's like having one drum stick and not the other. It's like having a bugle instead of a trumpet.

It’s like having an elementary music teacher but they don't play piano and guitar.

Kids love exploring the chromatic nature of the xylophone just as much as they like playing every note on the piano from the lowest to the highest over and over.

I use xylophone as a gateway instrument for piano. It’s crucial for kids to be casually exposed to the “two blacks, three blacks, two blacks, three blacks” pattern on xylophones when they are first introduced and to make the connection to the same pattern on pianos. Transitioning from the large motor skill targeted mallet work hitting notes on a xylophone makes the transition to the fine motor skill of “five-fingers-on-five-keys” with piano much easier and natural for even the youngest elementary musician.

To paraphrase Cab Calloway, “It don't mean a thing if it ain't got those black things.”

Pianos, Guitars, and Chocolate Bars – Part Two

4/24/2021

I constructed a plan to purchase the guitars and keyboards for my students.

First, I explored what was free. I knew our district had at least a dozen upright pianos in storage that werereferred to as “surplus” so I got the five best of them into our music room. Once word got around town that I was looking for pianos, families were making piano donations to the school. I drove my van to a house in Newport where an old lady with twelve cats wanted to donate here 1950’s Sears Silvertone organ. I sneezed all the way back to school (That organ quickly got “surplused”) Eventually, we hit a total of nine up-right pianos in one music room with additional keyboards I purchased coming in every month.

If the school district wasn't going to buy these instruments, if they were going to rely on charity to provide for them, if what they really wanted was for me to go out and sell more candy bars to provide for them, then I was going to start a financial plan of playing specific gigs to buy pianos and guitars for my students.

Once I played the gig, I made a purchase. When I bought a guitar, I always bought a stand. I didn’t buy keyboard stands until I had purchased all the keyboards. I kept the boxes all the instruments came in for summer storage so I saved by not buying cases.

I would provide these instruments and they would be mine to own when I was done purchasing them.

I could also tell my students that the school didn’t want to buy these instruments for them so I did – these were my instruments and anyone of didn’t treat them properly or respect them was not going to play them.

At the coda of my career, I had 17 guitars in 18 keyboards, all with stands. I literally taught thousands and thousands of children piano and guitar before I left.

I definitely knew the value of establishing piano and guitar skills at an early age so they can take off as middle schoolers and high schoolers, and eventually adults. If the school district, principal, and music department head did not see the value or priority of having guitars and pianos in our classroom, then it was impingent upon me to provide those instruments.

Almost every adult that I speak to on a gig will often say to me, “Gee, I wish I learned how to play guitar when I was a kid” or “Man, I would really like to be able to play piano now, I wish they taught that when I was a kid.”

I knew the importance of these instruments and was determined to provide them as I moved through the end of my sonata allegro form. On my last day on the job, my son-in-law, Ryan Connell, showed up with his Toyota pickup truck and along with Ty Tedrick, we loaded all the keyboards and guitars in his vehicle and mine. I took them to a charter school, the Odyssey Charter School of Wilmington. I flat-out gave everything to them, no questions asked.

I've never heard from the music teachers.

I’v never heard from the principals, I've never heard from The school board president or any board members.

I don't know if they like them or hated them.

Or if they're sitting in a closet.

But on the day that I packed them up and donated them, I felt weightless. It was the feeling that we had just finished the coda.

Two years before I retired, after I had already amassed my collection of instruments, I suggested to the music department that since the district invested in science kits that traveled around in plastic boxes from school to school, the least the district could do could be to create a traveling set of keyboards as well as a traveling guitar set that could be shared in a similar way among all the district schools.

Admin followed up on my suggestion. I like to think their decision might have had something to do with my successes over the past fifteen years teaching piano and guitar. But I’d probably be wrong.

What I knew for certain was that I made the right decision, created a solid financial plan, critically timed the purchases, and successfully executed the curriculum I devised linking xylophone, piano and guitar together for optimum impact.

If you’re interested in developing a piano and/or guitar program the way I did, drop me a line. I’ll be more than happy to share what I’ve learned.

Have a plan. You're a musician. Those thirteen and a half hours that you're not in school, maybe teach some music lessons, play a few gigs, work in a music store, put some money aside.

Take it from me, just about any thing's easier than selling those chocolate candy bars.

As for me, I’m the luckiest guy I know.

I’ll leave you with some of my favorite guitarists and pianists. I miss them.

Pianos, Guitars, and Chocolate Bars – Part One

4/24/2021

I'm partially the product of twelve years of catholic education.

During those twelve years, I was exposed to some incredible teachers and role models. I was also exposed to nuns who horse whipped me as they said “in the name of Jesus Christ”. I dodged a few priests who thought I looked cute in my altar boy outfit and would have been more than happy to corner me alone in the sacristy.

Through it all, I never saw any authority figure but one stand up against the insidious things I experienced. Maybe they stood up for me behind closed doors and fought my battles, but I saw nothing in real time in front of me.

The one thing, though, that all these educators had in common was they all wanted me to sell chocolate candy bars.

Every year. For twelve years.

I was introduced to the CBC (candy bar cult) in first grade when Sister Elizabeth Mary brought in “Uncle Bob” who showed us how we would all get a box of twenty candy bars that we would have to sell to our family, friends, and neighbors. We would then bring the money back to Sister Elizabeth Mary at which time we would celebrate with a coloring paper of – wait for it - a coloring paper of a picture of a kid selling chocolate candy bars!

By the time I hit high school, it was high stakes. The class that sold the most candy bars got a day off and the homeroom within the school that sold the most candy bars would receive an additional day off. The one kid who sold the most got an additional day off. Usually that kid’s father was a DART bus driver hitting up his passengers for a bar or two.

Even as a kid, I thought it was disconcerting that I was selling candy bars and raising money for people who I knew, for a fact, had taken a vow of poverty. I mean, they wanted to be poor. What's up with that? I wanted to be rich. Not poor. Let them sell their own damn bars I muttered on my way home from school.

Despite my history of selling candy bars, being whipped into submission by nuns, and sexually approached by clergy, who would have thought that I would gravitate to the field of education.

Once I was on the other side of the teacher’s desk, I quickly learned that schools, be they private or public, were businesses and budgets were often lean and mean.

You always knew a lot of money would be thrown at athletics, the greatest educational PR machine ever invented. Next recipient of bucks, often times were stage productions, marching bands, and of course the dynamic duo of bricks and mortar.

As far as general music teachers go, though, I never saw a lot of coin come my way. Which didn't make sense because as my personal brand was bourgeoning outside of school and finding some positive traction that flowed back to the school, I didn't feel any love in the budget flowing back into our music program. The exception to this rule was Leach School where both principals I worked under, Dr. Connie Ames and Jack Jadach, proved to be two of the most enlightened, generous, humanistic individuals I ever had the honor of working with in a school.

I often look at my career as if it were designed in sonata-allegro form. After I was transferred by administration from the Leach School back into a general music classroom, I knew I was approaching my career’s “recapitulation” and, before I blinked, it would probably be my “coda”. I wanted to go out strong and I knew what I needed to do.

I had a thriving choral program in all the schools where I taught. I needed to take the next step. And it was a big one.

I went to my principles and my department head and made a strong pitch for a ten-year program of purchasing pianos and keyboards for our elementary school.

They said no. I pitched again. This time I got a resounding no.

Then I went for, “How just about one of each?” Their wry response was, “Why don't you go to Colonial Education Foundation?” which was a charity organization set up to fund teacher grants.

I have a level of pride that neither seeks nor accepts charity, especially given that I had 16.5 hours every work day when I could earn additional money. When my father was short on cash, he would take an extra shift on a weekend, sometimes driving to New Jersey to do an all-nighter at an AM radio station. That's how he taught me how to earn money, to buy things.

It wasn’t going to be “Go Fund Me”. Or sell a chocolate bar.

It would be “Go Fund Myself”.

I was more resolute than ever that my students would play piano and guitar.

I needed a plan. I’ll share that in Part Two.

What I told my students

4/24/2021

“I know there are many things you want, especially guitars, pianos, and all the fancy band instruments. You would like to have all that stuff at your house. Trust me. I know how you feel. I like guitars and keyboards and have bought twelve guitars and four keyboards that I play at my home. I own all the band instruments that I play here at school. I bought them when I was a grown-up.

It took a looooong time to buy them all.

You want to have the fun stuff and maybe your parents don't have the money for it. Or maybe you do think they have the money for but they're not going to spend it on those things that you want.

Remember this.

If you think your family doesn't have much money to spend, then know this: I was like you. We didn’t have much money. I wanted all those things, too.

Just like I always say “First things first”, my - and your - parents have to pay for the most important things first. Things like food, and gas for the car, medicine for when you’re sick.

My father explained to me when I was your age that while I couldn't pay for lots of different things with money when I was little, I could pay in a different way.
I could pay attention.

I can pay attention and by paying attention to the details, to the little things that other kids missed, to the little facts that make you a smarter person, to the lessons Life teaches if only we are willing and able to pay attention, I would become wealthy in ways I wouldn't understand until I was much older. And he was right.

If you do the things that I'm teaching you, how your fingers work with instruments, the different sounds of music you can make, as well as helping others, things like S.T.A.R.: sit like you're smart, know when to start and stop, track the talker, ask and answer questions, do respectable things and people will respect you, as well the important thing my father taught me, namely, pay attention, then you’ll have everything you want when you help other people get what they want.

When you can’t pay with money, pay attention.

Everything you learn by paying attention starting NOW, you get to keep forever. No one can take it from you.

Don’t give up. Pay attention."

Notable Questions I've Been Asked: When Can You Pay It Back?

4/23/2021

When I was in college, I had a cash flow problem my first two years. My parents paid for a five-day meal plan which meant I had to forage for nuts, berries, and beers on the weekend. I still had an apitite supressant habit (AKA a cigarette habit) so that was another drain on my budget.

And then there were the drugs.

Oh, no, not those drugs. I know what you're thinking. College, musician, dorm life. I'm talking about books and the college bookstore, the ultimate drug for me in those days.

And by the way, for your information, I never bought any of those other drugs. They were always given to me for free. I was a musician, remember?

I was in the university drugstore (AKA bookstore) one day and there was a musical score on a shelf to a piece that I loved and always wanted to analyze. There was only one copy – it had been ordered by mistake.

Unfortunately, it had a price tag of $30 and that was way beyond my means at that point. I went to my closet, searched through all my pockets, came up with a few quarters and dimes, but that was it. I was telling everybody who would listen how much I wanted to get this score, how much it meant to me, how great it would be to read it and to understand it, to tuck it in on my bookshelf at night. You get the idea.

I knew I was whining but I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t as bad as a kid on his hands and knees in the Target parking lot screaming at his mother, “You didn’t buy MY toy! You bought a toy for YOU! But you didn’t but MYYYYY TOYYYYY!” but it demonstrated the same want of character.

I was sitting at the dining hall telling people my book story when someone passed by with their tray and said, “You might want to go to 221 Hullihen Hall. They'll give you the money.”

“Huh?”

“Seriously, go, they’ll give you the money.”

And like that tray-guy was gone.

Hullihen Hall was the seat of university power in those days. It housed the Bursar's Office, the Admissions Office, the President's Office, the Dean's Office - if you were important at the University of Delaware, your mailing address was probably in Hullihen Hall. It was situated on the North Mall about a quarter of a mile away from my dorm.

The next day, I built up a little courage and strolled through the doors, up to the second floor, and I found room 221. I had a sudden feeling that I didn’t belong there.

I timidly knocked on the door and someone said to come in. Inside the room was a middle-aged balding man in a suit, sitting at a desk with a newspaper and a phone on it. There were nondescript university prints on the wall and one chair in front of the desk.

“Have a seat”, he said. “Why are you here?”

”A friend told me I could borrow some money here.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

“Thirty dollars?”

“And what do you need this money for?”

“You see, there's this book – it’s actually a score, a musical score, and I’m a music major, and I was thinking - and it's really good and it's so cool and a recording of it was written up in the New York Times and it cost $30 and they have it and –“

By that point I was babbling. He gestured for me to stop talking with his left hand.

NOTABLE QUESTION UP AHEAD!

“When will you pay it back?”

I hadn't anticipated that question as much as I should have. I had never accepted out-and-out charity before and I knew my parents would have asked the same question.

“Well, I have two gigs this weekend at a church and two gigs next weekend and I have another bigger gig in three weeks and . . . . , I know I can do it by three weeks.”

“Fine.” He opened a drawer in the desk, pulled out three tens, gave them to me and said, “See you in three weeks. Close the door on your way out.”

And I left and I went straight away and got that score.

Twenty days later, I went back to 221 Hullihen Hall to pay back my $30.

I knocked on the door, someone said come in, and there was a different man behind the desk, older with a beard and a book. I explained that I owed $30 and that I had it. He took the money, put it in the same desk drawer the other man had taken it out of, and said, “Thanks”.

And that was it.

As I was walking down the hallway, I realized that I never signed anything. That didn’t seem right. They just gave me the money and I paid it back. What if . . . .

Twenty years later, I was playing double bass in a jazz trio at a private high-rise cocktail party in the Brandywine Valley by the Augustine Cut-Off Bridge. It was Doctor Audrey Doberstein’s penthouse apartment. Dr. Doberstein was the president of Wilmington College.

One of the attendees at the party was E.A. Trabant, the president of the University of Delaware when I attended. I knew E.A. and his wife Jerry peripherally from teaching their daughter, Amanda, at a private school in Wilmington. At this point I was in my 40’s.

One of the rules of the road for musicians is that the guests usually don't want to intertwine with the hired help so when you're on break, you find a place far away from the crowd to sit or stand with your tonic water. But I decided to go up and talk to him.

He remembered me from the private school and his daughter.

“Dr. Trabant, I have a question to ask you. It's been nagging me for years. In fact it's gotten to the point where I don't know if it actually happened or if I dreamed it.”

At this point he was already laughing and had just asked someone to bring him another drink. I told him the story of 221 Hullihen Hall.

“Did that actually happen? Did I imagine it?”

By now he was in a full-throated guffaw.

“Why of course it happened. It was the damndest thing. We were having a lack-luster board meeting one day and those things can get long-winded and stuffy. And most of the people at those meetings have very important lives and the time often feels a little wasted to them. This one day, someone blurted out, ‘Enough of this horseshit. What do kids really need?’ and somebody said ‘Well, I bet somedays what they could use is a small loan, a little bit of cash, something to tide them over.’

And all of them started talking about when they were that age and how they ran into cash problems like that. There was an empty box in the boardroom and someone put it on the table and said, ‘Okay everybody, feed the kitty.’ And they started laughing and the bills started flying. Within a few minutes, we had several thousand dollars.

That money was put in a cash box. They asked if there were any spare rooms where they could get this started and I suggested upstairs at 221. So they decided they would all take turns spending a day behind the desk or sending someone from their company to sit behind the desk at 221. They had a sign-up schedule. We didn't advertise it but we did let a few support people student health know about it.

One of the things all the board members were adamant about was that it was to be on the honor system, no contracts, no names, no phone numbers, just give them the money, keep a balance sheet, find out when they're going to bring it back, and it'll come back.”

E.A. saw the look of wonder on my face and said, “And I know what you're thinking: no, we were never stiffed. Every dollar that we sent out - and we gave out thousands - every dollar came back to us. Maybe not always on time, but it came back to us. We did this for a about a year and the need seemed to taper off and the board members decided just to kick the money into a student need fun that was already set up at the Student Center.”

There was time for one more notable question – this time from E.A..

“Now, son, could you get someone to freshen up this Manhattan for me, please?

And that was that.

The Second Dirty Little Secret About Guitar Playing

4/22/2021

The second dirty little secret about guitar playing if you're a music teacher is that you'll never have to be Dan Graper, Nick Bucci, or Eddie Van Halen. It would be nice to be able to play those incredible solos like Dan, Nick, and Eddie but don't fret. It won't be necessary for you to learn how to improvise elaborate single-note lines. It’s an admirable skill but would be misplaced effort on your part – you need to groove, not solo. From where you're going to be standing, it’s all about the groove.

If you need a guitar solo, call Nick or Dan.

Once you can strum in rhythm, down and up, without thinking while you sing, you need to take the next step: make the guitar sound more like a drum set.

Your role as a guitar player will be to provide a steady groove. That could be the sound of two sticks clicking together (dull and simplistic) or like a whole drum set (interesting and complex). The goal is to approximate a sound that simultaneously provides the groove of a drum set and harmony of a piano.

Your strumming patterns should always sound like some combination of a kick drum, a snare drum, a hi-hat, and occasionally a crash the primary cymbal. The low strings of the guitar are your kick. The middle strings create more of the snap of the snare drum on two and four while leaving beats one and three for the kick. The higher strings give the sense of hi-hats or cymbals.

Making the guitar resemble the feel of a drum set is an indispensable technique to develop on guitar. Once you can approach that, you start to try and sound like different drummers. Or even a drum machine loop. The possibilities are endless.

Always focus on allowing the groove and the rhythm have something to do with the previous measures. Record yourself often, study your recordings, make adjustments, and make sure that the last measure of every phrase helps lead into the next phrase.

The prime directive is to “Never Let the Groove” die. That doesn't mean you can't pause, thin the texture, or put rests in what you're playing. It simply means that should you modify your strumming pattern or stop strumming completely, the listener can still hear the groove in their head that you just played in the last two measures. When your playing comes in full again, you come in at the exact right time with the exact same point in the groove that you established 10 seconds before.

Once you get the drum set feel going, start moving out of basic cowboy chords and try different inversions further down the neck. Y.A.H.O.O. - You always have options: you can play every chord in at least four different locations on the neck.

Your value as a music teacher will grow exponentially with guitar skills. You’ll be able to “work the room” more effectively if you can make “mobile music”. Don’t put it off. Start today.

I’ll leave you with a great guitar and teaching memory of mine.

In 2007, my principal Jack Jadach graciously allowed University of Delaware Music Department practicum students to study at our school, the John G. Leach School. When I found out the college students didn’t have any guitars, I brought four guitars from my “posse” of guitars at home for them to use – and held my breath that these guitars would hold up under the rigors of both beginning players as well as Leach School.

The ladies were fantastic with our students and were quick studies. The kids loved all of them. Each week, I kept making the U of D students focus on their right hand technique and the groove. They presented me with this “thank you” guitar strap on their last day.

It’s all about the groove . . . and you.

The First Dirty Little Secret About Guitar Playing

4/22/2021

The first dirty little secret about guitar playing if you're a music teacher is that it's not really about guitar playing, it's about singing.

An elementary music teacher will spend almost all their time playing an accompaniment to the class’ singing. Enter: the guitar!

The guitar is also a great instrument to add underscoring to some talking or an introduction to a song. But never lose sight that it will primarily be used for accompanying.

A music teacher playing guitar in class has to multi-task while playing. Aside from doing things like singing and talking, you'll need to play while maintaining eye contact, walking around the room, and transitioning students in and out of a song.

If you are struggling with any of your guitar techniques while singing, such as switching from chord to chord, or strumming a convincing comping pattern, the sound of the guitar will fail. It won't sound convincing.

Your classes don’t want to watch you try to play – they want you to sound like a muse, a rock star, or at the least, a competent musician. Until you synchronize everything, you'll just sound like somebody trying to play guitar and sing in front of a bunch of kids.

While it's important to get your guitar chops up and running, it's your singing that is going to be key to making your guitar playing sound good. Start taping yourself singing a cappella. Study and analyze your recordings. What is your optimum singing range? Are you able to play the song on guitar in your best vocal key? Can you use a capo to move the chords you can play into more vocal-friendly keys? More on that in another blog post.

Guitarists at all levels should try this.

At home, or in your empty classroom before school, or in a practice room in your college music department, pretend you have a class in front of you. Stand up. Visually pick something out that's ahead of you that will be the focus for your eyes – pretend that visual focus is a student looking at you.

The idea is not to look at your fingers when you play; the idea is to make contact with the students’ eyes at all times. Play and sing a song.

If you are just starting to play guitar, before you even try to sing a song with guitar, try this.

Stand up, with a guitar on a strap around your neck, and move your right hand as if your strumming the strings but make no contact with them while you have your left hand up at the top of the neck, close to the headstock where all the basic cowboy chords are voiced. Basically, you are going to pretend to play guitar as you sing a song.

If you can't convincingly sing that song, and by “convincingly”, I mean singing in tune and in time with your eyes focused on a target in the room, realize that you're not doing the song justice, and your guitar playing, no matter how good it is, will not salvage your vocal performance.

As I noted elsewhere in another blog, I didn't play guitar until I got my very first job teaching after graduating from college. Before that, I primarily played double bass. I played bass in orchestras, jazz combos, local and touring big bands, folk groups, Dixieland bands - in short, any ensemble that could take a double bass, I was trying to get the gig.

Eventually, I got a gig in “A Touch of Class”, a five-piece wedding band. It necessitated me getting an electric bass rig. I was in what they called the “backline”. I didn't front the band – the leader of the band, Jack Malloy, did that as well as sang a bit, played tenor sax and a bit of keyboard.

Next to Jack was our lead singer, Joe Dombrowski, who did all the introductions and all the lead singing. Our guitarist, Larry Nai, didn't sing. I was in the back by the drummer, Mike Malloy. I had a microphone, but I was only doing backup vocals.

As bad luck would have it, we had a gig one night and Joe was sick and couldn’t do the gig. Jack, who was my father’s age, turned to me and sternly said, “You're a music teacher. You must know how to sing, you're the singer tonight.”

I was petrified. “You really don't want to hear me sing lead and I don't know if I can sing while I play bass.” Jack’s fatherly response was, “Do you wanna get paid tonight? Sing!”

The thing you have to understand is that singing while you play guitar is much easier than singing while you play bass. The bass has such a critical role in a group and it has to lock precisely with the drums in such a certain way that it doesn't lend itself easily to singing at the same time as playing. We call that “playing in the pocket”.

I got through the gig, but just barely. Jack decided I sounded pretty good and that Joe and I would share lead vocals. That week, I went home and in my living room, set up my music stand with lyric sheets on it, my microphone stand with no mic in it, just the mic stand, and me standing there with my unplugged bass around my neck.

I simply practiced playing bass while singing the songs into the microphone stand. I maintained as much eye contact as possible with a clock that was on the wall at the other end of the room.

I quickly learned that I needed to simplify things: just stand up and pretend I was playing bass and really work on the vocals. After I got the vocals down, I played very simple bass parts while I sang. Lots of half notes, lots of whole notes.

Over the weeks I slowly got better but every time I learned a new song, I basically had to do the “empty-microphone-stand-I'm-singing-to-the-clock-in-my-living-room” deal to nail it and be prepared to do it live on the gig.

An ancillary effect of singing with bass was that it became infinitely easier to sing and play guitar.

Depending upon your guitar chops, you might have to do the exact same thing. Whatever you do, make sure that your vocal is stronger than the guitar part because it's the vocal that they will remember.

The worst mistake you can make is not trying. You can do it – but don’t put it off! Make a plan and take action.

And then, share what you've learned - teach your students how to play guitar. You know they want to, so why not teach them.

Lucky for you, with a little bit of practice, the second dirty little secret about guitar playing for the music educator is a bit easier.

Warren Buffett, Martha Stewart, and Cardi B Walk Into a Blog . . .

4/22/2021

So what do you, me, Warren Buffett, Martha Stewart, and Cardi B have in common?

We all operate within a 24-hour day. Everybody’s clock is a little different but all of us have 1,440 minutes each day to accomplish what we need to get done. Within those daily 86,400 seconds in the day, we become the positive embodiment of what John Wooden implied when he said “Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” Or the frustration Coco Chanel alluded to when she talked about “beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ”

Most of us who are music teachers in an elementary school (or most any other school, for that matter) are working a seven and a half hour workday, from approximately 8 in the morning till 3:30 in the afternoon. That leaves thirteen and a half hours before and after school for us to get done what we need to get done.

Our seven and a half hour workday is going to provide a fairly static income. There is no time like the present to do the math.

Got that number?

Is that number large enough to carry you (and a family should you decide to start one) emotionally, mentally, personally, professionally, spiritually, and financially starting today until the day you retire? For that matter, will it establish security as well as sustain those pesky habits like eating and having a roof over your head in your post-employment years? Probably not. So it's what you do in those thirteen and a half hours that will make or break a lot of what you want from your life. You can choose to go home, have a few beers, kick back, attend church, volunteer at a hospital, practice your instruments, take a course on taxidermy, write lesson plans, have a Netflix night, or hit the sack.

And then do it all over again tomorrow.

And then enjoy your weekend with all that money you have left over from your paycheck.

Or maybe you'll be going home to brush up on the talents that you know you need to improve, like your guitar playing skills or your ability to play songs by ear at the piano.

No matter what choices you make with those 16.5 hours when you’re in your 20’s, you must comprehend that they will have a significant impact on your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Those choices and how you occupy those hours 13.5 hours will also have a significant effect on how well you succeed during those 7.5 hours for the next forty-five years.

A Job and a Business

As a music teacher, you have a job and a business.

The “job” is the 7.5 hours when you are working for someone else’s business. Social security tax, federal tax, and state tax will take in excess of 25% of what you earn working at your job. You work for others.

The “business” is you: the career you cultivate in the other 13.5 hours. This is where you are the boss, the owner, and the primary beneficiary of your efforts. Others work for you.

Any money we spend during our 24 hour day comes from either earned income, passive income, or portfolio income. (I am assuming that you are similar to me – I didn’t have rich parents nor was I on a family payroll.)

Each of those three income streams are significantly different from one another and have pros and cons associated with them. In future blogs, I delineate how each are different, and why they are important to you, a music teacher.

I know all this money talk has nothing to do with the modes, recitals, Beethoven, parallel fifths, or eight-to-five marching band, but it is a crucial topic that was missing in my education at all levels. As the Walrus said in “Alice in Wonderland”, “The time has come to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings”. I’m pretty sure one of those things had to be an allegory for finances.

It took me a while to realize that if I was going to succeed as a music teacher, a musician, and a card-carrying adult, I needed more education. And not necessarily in Schenkerian analysis.

I mean, think about it. Maybe you’re like me.

For twelve years, I was taught by people who took a vow of poverty.

That should have been my first clue that I needed to be a more active participant in my financial education.

As the Chambers Brothers put it, “Time has come today.”

One Big Happy Family

4/22/2021

When I was in the first year of my first elementary general music job, we had an evening full staff meeting where the administration was pushing the platitudes of “we're one big happy family”. They were trying to achieve the vibe of tent revival meeting, the air air of rapture, but none of it rang true.

I looked around and everyone who was older than me (that would be everyone in the room) was smiling and seemed to be buying in with the company line.

Our elementary school gym teacher was an affable, avuncular man nearing retirement by the name of Frank Lafferty. He was in his mid-sixties and knew a ton of old songs like “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets” that he would sing to the little kids as he walked them up the wooden steps of Alapocas Woods to the playing field. During the evening meeting, he shot me a few smiles, thumbs ups, and fist pumps. It seemed like he was clearly into it.

After the meeting, most people had left when I decided to get a cup of coffee from the staff room. It was empty except for Frank who was sitting on a small sofa.

He had a blank, despondent look on his face. I smiled at him but got no reaction.

Suddenly, Frank got up and grabbed my arm. It startled me and I got wide-eyed real fast. I thought he was going to hit me. Instead, he gripped my arm even tighter and pointedly said, “Never forget this – this is not a family. You have a family and it's not here in this school. This school is a job and a job is nothing more than these four walls, a ceiling, a floor, and a paycheck. Don't forget that.”

Without another word or a trace of a smile, he left the room. We never talked of it again. The next time I saw Frank, it was if it never happened.

His words that night stunned me and were weirdly disconcerting, especially coming after his “thumbs up” behavior and the forced euphoria of the staff meeting but I learned in coming years how accurate he was in many respects.

Five things that will immediately improve your elementary school students' singing

4/21/2021

I found that introducing school singing to young children is not really teaching singing as much as it is a question of emphasizing a few documentable physical skills and as well as employing the art of re-framing. I keep it basic when it comes to singing with elementary school children. There's a simple list of skills that I use in the classroom, skills that have worked and are tried-and-true.

1 no hands on face
2 no screaming
3 open your mouth
4 move your lips
5 move your tongue.

I’ll take these five points and elaborate in future blogs exactly why I focus on these skills and how stacking those singing habits one on top of the other creates successful and happy singers who can actually hear their improvement.

I would rely on those five points over and over as well as be relentless in calling out “violations” of those five points in class or in chorus.

“If you do those five things, you will sound like Mr. Holmes. You will be a BIG singer.”

Let me explain.

Over the decades, I have seen numerous music teachers admonish their students to sing louder. Rarely do they provide any concrete actions that would achieve their demands. The teacher keeps saying “Louder” and eventually the student thinks, “You want loud? I’ll give you loud.” And then the child proceeds to mockingly scream instead of sing.

All of that is avoided by framing the vocal act as “big”. Suddenly, we’re not focused on loud, or louder, but instead on “big”. By doing the five steps of big singing, a more rounded, musical sound is produced at all volume levels.

When I work with children in a more formal choral setting, I would also focus more on big singing and vowel sounds as well as a flattened tongue and eyebrows up, especially on higher pitches. There's something about having your eyebrows up that lends itself to a good singing physiognomy. I don't know what it is but I know it works.

To my ears, all singing, especially choral singing, is about vowel sounds. Consonants come and go but vowel sounds are forever, especially at slower tempos. The joke always was after the students sang a passage without paying attention to their vowel sounds, I would stop them and, in mock horror say, “Your vowel sounds! You sound like you live in Delaware!” To which they would all say, “But Mr. Holmes, we do live in Delaware!”

Vowel sounds are so crucial to getting a unified choral sound. When students focus and create good vowel sound habits, their phrasing becomes more intuitively correct.

One of the great resources I found that dealt with vowel sounds as well as regional phonation are the works of Sam Shwat, the dialect coach to the stars as he was often billed. In his cornerstone work, “Speak Up!”, he devised a curriculum to remove regional accents. It was primarily for people in business who wanted an illusory sound as if they were from a typical ivy league school and not East Ja-bip . It's an expensive course but worth the price if vowels and accents are important to you.

Another thing you would have observed and heard in my general music classes and choral rehearsals is I would sing in unison pitch with the children, meaning I was singing way up into my head voice.

I was very lucky to attend a rehearsal session of an honors elementary chorus that was conducted by Francisco Núñez, the director of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. Francesco is an incredible clinician and if you ever get the chance to work with him, grab it. He would sing in pitch with his children and his tone was eerily like Leontyne Price. There was no mistaking his sound, vowel production, phrasing, and breath support when he performed a phrase in rehearsal. Nothing can supersede good modeling.

In general music class, one of the beauties of using the guitar is that children have nothing to rely on for following a melody except listening to you sing and chord pitches. Given that I am a male, that meant that they had to learn to sing an octave above me when I sang in my natural range.

Many teachers have a habit of accompanying children with a melody present at all times in the accompaniment and that becomes a crutch for their ears. Often times, they use a karaoke track that contains the melody.

When I accompanied on piano, I could quickly assess how much support the children needed from the melody line and would always work on phasing it out except for maybe a few crucial intervals.

Using a piano and guitar also allowed me to shift keys by transposing the key center and accompaniment. I did a two-part arrangement of Vivaldi’s “Gloria” which was in D major. When we first started working on it, I had them reading in D major while I played the accompaniment in C major. After a few weeks, they were still reading D major but without telling them, I moved the key up to C sharp. A few weeks later, I moved it into D – and sometimes after that, I nudged it up to E flat to push their range and get a brighter tone.

There was only one time in my career when I used a karaoke backing track, and that was a track that I produced in my studio. It was a big band medley of Vincent Youman’s “I Want To Be Happy” and the Gershwins’ “But Not For Me” and “I've Got Rhythm”. The track worked but there is something about using tracks in concert that always scares me, as in the kids will get off-tempo and not be able to sync again with the track. I’ve seen that happen at so many choral festivals and frankly, it’s embarrassing.

Singing correctly to a track is more of a professional skill. When that skill level isn’t present, it accentuates the disparity between the professionalism of the track versus the more rough vocal performance. I also feel like using tracks with kids is a bit of a cheat.

Two of the reasons why I started writing music right away once I got my first elementary gig was that I had no budget for music and I simply was not finding the arrangements in the styles or keys that I really wanted my children to sing. I came out of college with no formal or informal knowledge of children’s choral literature so it was a steep learning curve that I tried to negotiate as quickly as I could.

If you are focusing on vowel sounds, you can't go wrong with material that you compose where you can control those parameters.

The kids will always request the funny songs, the patter songs, and anything that is fast with a lot of energy. I wrote a bunch of those including titles like “The Good Kid Polka”, “Undercover Kids”, and “The Android Substitute”. But the songs that really resonate with them are the slower pieces, the ballads, where the lyrics truly mean something to them and touch them in an emotional way.

Those compositions rely heavily on pure vowel sounds. “Two Fiends”, “Best Friend”, and “Star” are several that I composed that grown-up kids always want to reminisce with me.

Your hope should be that your students leave with good memories about singing with you in school. Only a few will sing in an organized choral group or in a pop situation – but all of them will sing to their favorite songs when they hear them.

Most of all, we should want them to feel confident about their voice. Their singing confidence (as well as good vocal habits) will spill over into public speaking confidence and pay compounded dividends down the road as they become adults.

Everything that I teach little children about singing - the five things you must do, how vowel sounds are more important than consonants sounds - all these things will hold them in good stead as they grow older and sing by themselves, or even better, when they sing with their children.