Boyd Holmes, the Writer - Boyd Holmes

First Gig Back

6/30/2021

This past weekend, I played my first solo piano gig in over a year.

It was an odd feeling, given how many decades I've been performing.

I do not have a burning desire to just go out and gig. It's not about the Benjamins. It's definitely not about the ego. It is a little bit about wondering if the performance mindset will still kick into gear when necessary and I'm happy to report that the pilot light is still lit.

For over a year now I've been playing in my house, performing my one-man show in my one-seat theater. It is primarily with headphones on with my beautiful Korg SV2 digital stage piano that recreates the sound of a six-foot Italian grand. The headphones allow me to play at 3 p.m. for 3 a.m. . There's either a coffee with Bailey's or a scotch within arm's reach of the keyboard at all times. It's a relaxed affair.

It was mildly disconcerting Saturday to hear applause when I was done playing a selection or hearing them shout out positive affirmations in the middle of songs. I even got a few requests for autographs which is something one is never prepared for. I use the old line, “Did you like the way I played, because if you did, I’ll sign it ‘Boyd Holmes’. But if you didn't like the way I sounded, I’m writing ‘Michael Hunter’.”

In many ways, it has come full circle, playing music like I did when I was a kid when it all started.

Me in a room with a piano.

The primary difference between then and now is thatwhen I was a kid, my mom was in the kitchen telling me when I got it right or when I got it wrong.

And back then, no one asked for my autograph, even though I secretly practiced signing it on scrap paper.

Fifty-Five Seconds

6/29/2021

I can recite in thirty seconds the most important things that, for decades, I taught and modeled in the music room:

Big Singing:
No hands on face.
No screaming.
Open mouth.
Move lips.
Move tongue.

Learning a new song:
Read.
Listen.
Sing.
Sing your best.

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.

“If you can’t say it, you can’t play it.

“The music you perform must travel through your heart.”

If you include Dr. Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people, it comes in under fifty-five seconds.

Be proactive.
Begin with the end in mind.
Put first things first.
Think win-win.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Synergize.
Sharpen the saw.

Albert Einstein once said, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

My variation on his theme was, “If you can't explain it simply in fifty-five seconds, you haven’t lived it well enough.”

What do you need to explain to someone?

How many seconds does it take you to do that?

“It Was the Best of Pajama Days, It Was the Worst of Pajama Days”

6/15/2021

When I worked in elementary schools, every year there was a “Pajama Day” where all staff and kids were given the opportunity to wear their pajamas at school. Lately, the tradition is that it's scheduled the last day before winter holiday break.

The kids sing the “winter hits” with their music teacher in the lobby as they trundle off their buses, prance around the school in their jammies and moccasin slippers, sip hot chocolate, watch Tom Hanks’ “Polar Bear Express” movie a la Smart Board in their classroom, and often participate in exchanging small gifts with their classmates.

Teachers were always “on board” with Pajama Day but my favorite teachers never wore anything that was truly “Pajama Day” worthy. They always trotted out a pair of Dr. Denton's on or a baggy bathrobe. I was always looking for those teachers who shopped for nighties at “Frederick’s of Middletown” but sadly, they never revealed themselves either figuratively or literally.

Halloween was a “costume of another cut” but that story will have to wait for another post.

I, the one who always wore a suit to work, showed up on Pajama Day wearing the black three-piece suit de jour. It would be easy for you to classify me right now as a “Mr. Scooge McHolmes” but I am not anything like that. It’s just that I don’t think anyone wants to see me jiggling around in my jammies. The fashion-induced nightmares and court-mandated therapy sessions alone would make it prohibitive.

So Pajama Day was just another dress down day for me: I had my black three-piece on. Less “Ho, ho, ho!” and more resembling “Ho-hum”.

On one such Pajama Day, two pajamad kids addressed me in the hallway early in the day with a question.

“Mr. Holmes, it’s ‘Pajama Day’. Do you sleep in that?”, looking at my black suit.

My dry response was, “Who told you I sleep?”

At which point they winced, looked down at their fuzzy slippers, and shuffled down the kringled-out hallway.

Since adulthood, I haven't required excessive amounts of sleep. A few hours here, a few hours there. Somedays, it just resembles a series of occasional naps. So much to do!

I've said on other occasions that I consider myself a lazy man. In the 16.5 hours that I was not teaching, I was usually pretty busy.

As I’ve noted before, there are two kinds of times in the day: the first one, when you are involved with your job and second, when you are focused on your business. Those first 7.5 hours, you are involved with your job, working for someone else's business. The other 16.5 hours are when you are involved with growing your business.

During the 7.5 hours, your employer (and in your case, that’s your private school or school district) dictates how much money you are going to earn at your “job”. But during your 16.5 hours, the sky - or bankruptcy court – is the limit.

I’m betting that you have to do lesson plans for those 7.5 hours. While you may only do them as religiously as a lapsed Catholic, you still do them. How about for the 16.5 hours?

Have you made any plans?

The informed teacher is

“makin’ a list,
checkin’ it twice,
gonna get some
financial advice”.

Whether you’re in your jammies or not, develop the habit of making the most out of those 16.5 hours. Don’t tempt the Fates.

You don’t want your slumber interrupted one night by the “Ghost of Pajama Days Yet To Come”, the spectre who depicts a grim a tableau of what a lack of financial planning looks like.

The Things That Make a Difference: Superhero Trading Cards.

6/14/2021

I was now in my forties, teaching in a school system for children with severe cognitive and orthopedic disabilities.

Just learning the nomenclature was daunting, let alone developing and implementing strategies for musical accessibility and communication.

My new principal did not want to hire another therapist as in a “music therapist”. As she confided with me, the kids were being “lab coated to death” with therapists and doctors. She knew of my past experience as a general music teacher, choral director, and performer and wanted some of that vibe in her school.

Unbeknownst to me when I signed onboard, part of my assignment was to teach one half a day at the Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware at the First State School. In that the First State School was a public school, it received additional funding and support from the feds, the Colonial School District, John G. Leach School principal Dr. Connie Ames, Leach assistant principal Jack Jadach, and generous philanthropy from then-MBNA president Charlie Cawley.

I was the first music teacher my administration had sent to the hospital, primarily because they said “you get this”.

I'll go into my initial experiences at the school in another post.

In this chapter, I want to tell you about the hardest kid in the program to turn around and pull into our music program.

Nick was a sixth grader with a blood disorder that could kill him within minutes if it got out of control; therefore he was eligible for enrollment in the First State School. All the enrolled students had life-threatening chronic illnesses that, should they be in attending their normally assigned public school and had an episode, they might not survive the trip to the hospital from school. The kids ranged in age from four to twenty-one.

It was either my seventh or eighth week there when I had finally gotten my program off the ground at the hospital’s fourth floor school. I had one student holdout. Nick.

Nick was a junior high “Sk8er-boi-kind-of-kid”, usually dressed in Goth, and way into the Marvel Superhero Universe. I was no stranger to comic books: I started collecting them as a kid. I lost most of my oldest books during the “Great Comic Book Disaster of Fifth Grade” when my mother, in a pique of rage, threw away all my comic books away over something I did that really ticked her off.

I noticed that Nick came to school every day with three-ring binders of superhero cards. He collected all the sets and treated them with more respect than anything else I saw in his life. Nick was a bit of a superhero and role model to the younger kids in the program. He was edgy, had a lot of James Dean and Billie Joe Armstrong going on in his persona, and had a “I-don’t-take-crap-off-of-anyone” attitude.

For seven weeks, Nick didn’t participate or make a sound in music class. Instead, he sat off by himself reading comic books.

The day before my eighth session at the hospital, I went to Walmart and bought a full box set of Topps Marvel cards as well as a few extra single packs. I took the full set out and wrapped them with rubber bands and opened two small packs of cards and scattered them on the bottom of my guitar case before I put my guitar inside.

The next afternoon when I was teaching my First State School junior high group, I was doing my hokey “Hello” song where I pull my guitar out of the case and throw it up in the air. As I took my guitar out of its case, the static electricity had the trading cards clinging to the back of my guitar and sliding off to the floor. That got Nick’s attention.

“Whose are those?” he asked.

“They're mine. They’re some of my doubles. I guess I must have left them in my guitar case last night.”

“I’ve got more cards than you!”

“Yeah, I saw your card binders and figured you collected baseball cards.”

“Baseball? Are you a freak?”

I laughed. “No, I collect superhero cards too but I also like baseball so maybe I'm a superhero/baseball freak. Do you want to trade some of my doubles?”

“Nah. I probably have them already but I'll take a look.”

As predicted, he had all of my doubles but there were two that he considered coveted and fairly rare so I gave them to him.

I asked “Are there any little kids who would like my doubles that you don't want? You know the little guys better than I do. Why don't you take my doubles and give them to a kid that would appreciate them.”

And that was that. Those trading cards made the difference.

Nick was onboard all because of some trading cards and comic books. He was an expert on comic books and trading cards as well as blood meds. He knew the backstory on every character, in which issue they first appeared, and which artist had created them. I brought my cards in the next week. We traded comics most weeks.

Nick also knew the side-effects of his blood meds and their effect on his body and psyche. We talked about it often. I told him how proud I was that he had his head on straight and had developed the self-discipline needed to deal with his medicine-induced mood swings. He was a brave kid.

We had a good four years together in music class. It started with superhero trading cards and his self-disciplined drive to know all things Marvel. He saved money to organize his cards and books and protect them from everyday wear and tear. In his own way, he was a seventh grade expert.

He became one of the leaders in music class. He loved singing and playing Oasis and Green Day songs. During the holiday season, we caroled at the nurses’ station on the fourth floor.

I remember taking Nick and some of his friends down to the hospital cafeteria to treat them to healthy desserts. They distracted me and emptied a salt shaker in my coffee which was the source of merciless ridicule for months.

The key to exposing Nick’s developed self-discipline with comics and blood meds wasn’t a music strategy or found in an assessment. I was identifying and amplifying the joy that was already making a difference in his life. It was shining a light on that joy and building on that foundation.

Nick passed away during my fourth year in the program. I'll never forget how his burgeoning self-discipline with superheroes, comic books, and trading cards was a way for the two of us to connect and make the time we had together richer for the experience of knowing each other.

The Things That Make a Difference.

6/13/2021

I'm sure you have seen the articles positing that studying or listening to music makes kids smarter. You know, that little bit of Mozart in the morning will get the synapses firing a few milliseconds faster. That may be true. Maybe it makes a difference.

Disclaimer: I ain't nothing but an old country music teacher making docs in Bank Street Writer, typing on his Commodore 64, so some people might say I don't know nothing about nothing.

But what I do know is that after teaching music for over four decades with my eyes watch open, I've observed thousands of students in the arena of music. Some were students in a general music class, some were performers, some were on the sidelines as active appreciators, and some simply wanted to play that one song they loved over and over.

As I taught and took into account my biases, I nonetheless saw a trend. It was that the individuals and groups that developed an early appreciation for self-discipline were the ones where music had the greatest impact on their lives.

Sel-discipline made a difference every time.

Self-discipline leads to happier outcomes. It embraces the concept of beginning any multi-step activity with the forbearance and honesty required to reach a successful conclusion. It doesn't matter if you're playing in an orchestra, singing in a chorus, on the soccer team, or dancing in a ballet troupe. It doesn't matter if you have the skills I have a 10 year old triathlete, if you have a chronic illness, if you're in a hospital bed, or if you’re in a wheelchair.

Of all the attributes that we assign to successful kids as well as self-actualized adults, you can often point to self-discipline as the “secret sauce” that held them together when others would have quit or give in to distraction.

Every year, society slags school systems for not teaching the “important” things, like civics, civility, financial literacy, compassion, manners, or loyalty. Self-discipline barely gets mentioned but is often the one character trait that pays the greatest dividends when embedded with other personal attributes.

As music teachers we need to observe kids and see where they are already embracing self-discipline and then encourage it in a generalized manner to other areas of potential interest or need for the child.

For instance, when I was a four years old, I created and drew a cartoon character named Harry.

I drew Harry thousands of times. Each time I drew him, he was a little different but mostly the same. Think of my thousands of Harry drawings as experimentation, as a theme with a thousand-and-one variations. I created friends for Harry: a dog, a robot, the necessary villain, as well as many other characters but Harry always remained the central orb in this constellation of players.

I continued to draw Harry daily through elementary school until I was ten or eleven. Then I would draw him off and on, often absentmindedly, in the margins of textbooks, or on the pages of notebooks. He was never that far away.

By the time I hit junior high, I was showing some advanced proclivity to painting and drawing. My uncle, who was the draftsman who studied with American illustrator Frank Schoonover, gave me an art book that changed my life - “The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study” by Nicolaides.

It wasn't so much a book about drawing as it was a book about visualizing, practice, assessment, the power of repetition, and - you guessed it – self-discipline.

At the end I was one of the first chapters, there was an assignment to draw shaded spheres and cones. Each exercise was to be done 1,000 times. I remember I showed this to my uncle and asked if it was a misprint or typo. He said I think it might be a mistake.

“I think what he wants you to do is do it ten thousand times, sort of like the way you draw that little rolley-polley boy you made up.”

And it made sense.

The areas of my life where I was achieving success, finding self worth, finding value, were the areas where I found myself doing something I could do I repeatedly with an eye toward editing and improving.

That's the way it was with my music as well as it was with my art.

I played songs on my trumpet and piano for hours. I routinely read books from cover to cover in one sitting. For that matter that's the way it was with sports, bouncing a rubber ball off the wall and try to hit the same brick five times in a row to get the same rebound.

Did I generalize self-discipline to all areas of my life as a kid?

Hell no.

I was a kid and kids are designed to push the boundaries as well as stress test the levels of credit cards, bank accounts, relationships, teachers, parents, and progress reports.

But in my “chosen” areas – music, art, books, and imagination - I was like that old baseball pitcher: when needed, I could reach back and find that magical self-discipline pitch and throw it for a strike.

Self-discipline is a muscle, a developing habit to be saved for another post. But it’s worth repeating: self-discipline is a muscle.

Kids develop this muscle without even realizing they're doing it. It's our responsibility as music teachers to observe children closely, see where they're exhibiting this kind of behavior of self-discipline and a love for something, even if it's not music, and make it grow.

And if their level of intellectual curiosity hasn’t bloomed yet, we have to expose them to a world of possibilities that will trigger their intuitiveness and natural tendency to be repetitive with the things they love.

This is how we make a difference.

The Two-Finger Guitar Solution

6/11/2021

Here is an alternative to the basic I-IV-V7 cowboy chord system.

Cowboy chords are the basic diatonic chords that almost always formed within the first three fret blocks.

While it’s important to learn all the chords you can, there is a work-around to quickly and easily play a I-IV-V7 in all the diatonic keys – if you use a capo.

The Keys
The deal is that you learn I-IV-V7 in the keys of A major and D major.

Before I get into the chord shapes, let me lay out the solution:

If you play the A major chord shapes with no capo, you are in the key of A major.

If you play the A major chord shapes with the capo in the second fret block, you are in the key of B major.

If you play the A major chord shapes with the capo in the third fret block, you are in the key of C major.

If you play the D major chord shapes with no capo, you are in the key of D major.

If you play the D major chord shapes with the capo in the second fret block, you are in the key of E major.

If you play the D major chord shapes with the capo in the third fret block, you are in the key of F major.

If you play the D major chord shapes with the capo in the fifth fret block, you are in the key of G major.

The Shapes
There is a way to play these chords with only TWO fingers on your left hand. These voicings have the ancillary benefit of being the beginning guitarist’s favorite friend, namely, more ringing open strings.

The A major shapes

The A chord – There is no major third in this shape. The third is replaced with a ringing 2nd or 9th depending how you tend to hear this sound. Don’t hit the low E string - lightly mute it with your thumb.

The D chord – Again, there is no major third in this shape. The third is replaced with a shimmering 2nd or 9th depending how you tend to hear this sound. Don’t hit the low E string - lightly mute it with your thumb.

The E7 chord – This is the basic two-finger cowboy chord form.

The D major shapes

The D chord – It is the same shape used as a IV chord in A major.

The G chord - There is no third in this voicing. The third finger fretting the low G should lightly mute the A string next to it. The same goes for the third finger fretting the B string – it should lightly mute the high E string so it doesn’t ring out.

When moving to this chord from the D, anchor your third finger on the B string.

The A7 chord - This is the basic two-finger cowboy chord form of A7. Don’t hit the low E string - lightly mute it with your thumb.

Take Away:
These chord forms have a distinct Americana sound reminiscent of Aaron Copland and James Taylor. The simple two-finger forms are non-threatening to the novice guitarist. Advanced guitarists use these forms for the colors produced when you replace the third of the chord with the second.

Next time, we'll examine some simple suspensions to create motion. And let's get crazy and add a third firger, too!

Have fun experimenting with these shapes in your classroom.

The Great Concert Scare of 2025

6/11/2021

Once upon a time in the future, there's going to be a music teacher who shows up for work in late August, incredibly motivated and planning for their December concert.

That teacher will be pulling and buying music, arranging colors on cards for seats, planning soloists, writing a program, marking calendars, getting their MP3 files for accompaniment in order, and psyching themselves up for what's going to happen in three months.

When the kids show up at the beginning of September, it will be full speed ahead, getting all the musical numbers ready for the big concert in December. There will be a million questions from kids, parents, admin – all that will demand that teacher’s attention.

The stress and tension will build right up to the first notes on that December evening.

In a blink, it will be over.

That concert will come and go, flowers will be handed out by parents, chairs stacked in the corner, props will be pitched, programs picked up off the floor by custodians, and the process will start all over in January for the spring concert.

This teacher will have spent a big part of their 7.5 hour job focused on two 1 hour events. At least let's hope they're only an hour or less long.

Dirty little secret: Teachers often see these concerts at some kind of pinnacle of achievement. Not everyone views them that way.

Principals see evening concerts as a headache. The shorter they are, the better. Admin and front office see concerts as PR opportunities or potential disasters. The kids see them is fun and that's the lane where I tried to stay, in the fun lane. Make some fun music and give away a guitar.

The question remains, though, with all that planning for such a temporal event as a concert, how much planning in 2025 did that teacher do for the year 2065, the year they are scheduled to retire? Is the assumption that those retirement things will just take care of themselves?

Take away point: Just like concerts don't take care of themselves, neither does your plan for financial stability after you’ve stopped teaching.

If you don’t think that 2025 will suddenly morph into 2045, think back to high school. How long ago was that?

In a blink, 2065 will be here.

If you think 2025 was stressful, imagine 2065 without proactive measures in 2021?

I had some buddies who worked for Chrysler who used to joke that Chrysler was a pension company that many cars on the side. And they were correct.

After speaking to the assembled graduate students at Harvard Business School, Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's, was taken out by the kids to a local pub for drinks. After things got lubricated, relaxed, and collegial, Kroc asked the kids if they knew what business he was in. They seemed confused by the question.

No one answered and he asked again.

“Well, Mr. Kroc, everyone knows you're in the hamburger business, right?”

Kroc smiled.

“No, I'm in the property business”. He explained how all those McDonalds were built on property – property that he usually owned. The money was in the land – not the burgers.

Maybe this will help.

Know what you are.

You're not a solely a music educator. For a minute, picture yourself as someone in the pension business who teaches music to children on the side.

That’s not to diminish the importance of music and the Arts in the lives of your students or to imply that teaching is a side hustle. The pension business just emphasizes the importance of not simply planning for December of 2025 but rather for planning for June of 2065.

If you haven't started planning for 2065, now is a good time to start. As Dr. Stephen Covey always said, “If you need a tree today, when's the best day to plant a tree? 20 years ago. What's the second best day? Today.”

Start planning for 2065.

Ready?

Set.

Plan!

Take Action.

6/11/2021

Nothing is achieved unless we take action at some point.

It doesn't mean that we have to climb Everest but we have to take action in our professional, personal, and financial life. Setting aside the 7.5 hour music teaching job, look at your 16.5 hour business.

During those 7.5 hours, you are one of many people working for a school. The larger the school, the more people working in towards a common goal of educating kids. When you get home and look at your 16.5 hour business, you are working for yourself.

Maybe you are responsible for a family, a family that has needs and wants that you either share or are solely responsible for.

You have a payroll of one, yourself. You don't have a staff of 100 or 200 underneath you.

Yet.

Are you generating any income during those 16.5 hours? Teaching private lessons? Gigging? Ubber driver? Bartender?
Great! Put that money to work for you.

Wouldn't it be nice to have that workforce work for you? A workforce that gave you a little bit of everything they earned? Even better, the kind of workforce that pays themselves, that you could hire and then forget about sustaining their salaries for benefits?

Sure it would.

People aren’t the only entities that can work for you. Money can, too. And taking action to make money work for you doesn’t require a lot of extra work on your part. You can do it in a few hours and then sit back and watch them work.

What's the easiest way to get started?

A few suggestions:

Make a two specific low-level investments. I'm not talking about going out and buying individual stocks because most of us don't know how to do that. I certainly don’t – I’ve never bought an individual stock.

But what I am saying is start with the basics: you’re a teacher so open your 403(b) and your Roth IRA as soon as possible.

Have your pay check from your 7.5 hour job automatically deposited to your checking account. Then, make automatic deposits to both your 403(b) and Roth IRA accounts.

Imagine them as your front line managers. You don't have to pay them that much but what you do pay them should be on an automatic predictable schedule. You will reap the rewards of hiring them down the line when you retire from your 7.5 hour job and turn your 16.5 hour business into retirement. Or at least, semi-retirement.

While you’re starting that 403(b) and Roth, why not start something like a Capital One 360 savings account where you can house liquid cash for emergencies or immediate or short-term goals.

Think of your 403(b) and Roth as your long term workforce. These are the folks you want around when you have your retirement party. The savings account is for short term. Hopefully most of them will be at the party, too. Your automatic contribution to all of them every pay day is like an invitation to that party.

Every dollar you put away will be like someone working for you. At first you might only have 50 people on the payroll. But 50 turns into fifty, one-hundred, and before you know it, you’re looking at four, five, six, and maybe even seven figures. And the great thing is this: as your funds grow, it's as if each dollar is inviting some friends to work for your 16.5 hour business and your workforce continues to grow.

The key is to start earlier than later.

Your automatic contribution for your 16.5 hour business workforce should be maxed out each month, especially concerning your 403(b) and Roth IRA. Pay yourself and your “employees” before you pay HBOMax, Apple Tunes, Amazon Music, Amazon Prime, and Netflix.

If that means you have to skip a happy hour because you are paying into your "workforce", so be it. You always said you wanted more time to practice, right?

Always pay yourself first and make it at least 10% of your 7.5 hour job take home pay and 100% of your 16.5 hour business (minus business expenses).

Yes. 100%.

Think of it this way.

You're the boss. While you're changing a diaper, practicing a Bach Cello Suite on electric bass, or reading the Sunday Times, you're 300, 400, 500, 1000 or so employees continue to work all through the night and they aren’t charging you time-and-a-half on weekends and holidays. They are doing the dance of compound interest and making you money.

The more you jettison unnecessary or monthly frills that don’t mean that much now and apply that found income to a financial plan that will be worth tens of thousands of dollars decades from now, the better of you will literally be.

Unfortunately, savings accounts just don't pay the way they used to so you're going to have to find additional avenues that will create a larger and more sustainable financial growth streams for you.

If all of this sounds daunting, it really isn’t.

Find a money manager who is a fiduciary. Go to Schwab, Vanguard, or even the bank where you have your checking account and talk to them about your short and long-term goals.

It is critical that you learn the financial lingo like “mutual funds”, “index funds”, “Roth IRA”, “expense ratio” ( a biggie), “treasury bonds”, “index funds”, “small caps”, “large caps”, among many others. While they are just definitions like the music definitions you learned in school, understanding these concepts and putting them into action will either reap or cost you tens of thousands of dollars down the road.

Just as MIDI hadn’t been invented when I was in college and I had to learn about it on my own after I graduated, I had to do the same with habits of financial stability that would apply to my own personal situation. I had to be an autodidact and learn it on my own with the help of several experts.

You can do this.

Your 403(b) and Roth Ira should be considered “buy and keep”. A savings account is for the year-to-year emergencies and contingencies. Capitol One 360 lets you set up little sub-accounts, name them, and allocate contributions for special occasions. For example, I have one marked “Christmas presents” because I know every year I am going to need a certain amount every holiday season so I start adding to it every month starting in January.

I also have sub-saving accounts titled “My Next Car”, “My Next Exorbitant Vacation”, “Logan’s Computer”, and “My Next Godin”.

Speaking of savings, I also opened four 529 college savings plans for four elementary age boys that I contribute to every month.

Once that money comes out automatically from your pay check and is deposited in your 403(b), Roth IRA and your savings account, the only thing you have to do is determine with your advisor’s help your asset allocation: what kinds of investment instrumets fit your profile and how aggressive or careful you want your 403(b) and Roth IRA portfolio to be. Depending on your aversion to risk, your advisors will pick the right blend of stocks and bonds to put in your portfolio and put them to work for you immediately.

It's a system designed so that you can hand over those responsibilities to a fiduciary money manager, discount brokerage account, or companies like Vanguard or Schwab.

While the market goes up and down in the short term, the long game is what you are playing. And the long game has been proven that it’s the best way to play the game.

The important thing is to take action, to start.

Any procrastination today is a mistake that will negatively compound itself each day forward. On the other hand, any actual today is a step in the right direction that will positively compound itself starting tomorrow well into your old age.

Get your 16.5 hour business off the ground.

Put something to work for you to make some money. No amount that is regularly saved is too small. But if you do start small, make periodic increases in your monthly contributions. Chances are you won’t even notice that you are contributing more each month.

If you get a yearly step increase, increase your monthly contributions.

Believe it or not, there will be a day when your 7.5 hour job will cease to exist. Living on the fruits of your 16.5 hour business requires action today.

It's never too late to start. There's always room for growth.

Don't rely just on what I am saying here. Get some advice from an expert. Talk to the CFO in your school district. They’ll have great info and point you in the right direction. They know much more about these things that I do.

When you approach a money manager or broker, always ask if they are a fiduciary. Do a little research on fiduciaries and you'll understand why.

And just in case you are one of those people who deep down harbors the fantasy belief that someone's going to leave you a ton of money, or that are you going to hit the lottery, or you're going to hit a jackpot insurance claim, that ain't going to happen.

Don’t wait for something to happen to you.

Become the true owner of your 16.5 hour business and start hiring (AKA investing and saving) today.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a senior music major graduating from college embarking on your first teaching gig, or a music teacher with five, ten, or twenty years under your piano bench.

Make things happen.

Take action.

The. Best. Pencil.

6/8/2021

Once you write music with a Palomino Blackwing, you’ll never want to use another pencil.

Soft, dark, flows like a $100.00 osmiroid pen.

They’re not cheap – but I always budgeted money for them and I’m glad I did.

I’ve written some of my best music with a Palomino Blackwing.

And I’ve written some of my worst music with a Palomino Blackwing.

When it comes right down to it, I’ve written almost all my first drafts with a Palomino Blackwing.

Novelist Bernard Malamud said, “The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.”

Well . . .

What are you waiting for?

How I Taught Elementary School Students To Sing a New Song - Late Kindergarten to Fifth Grade - Part Two

6/8/2021

How I Taught Elementary School Students To Sing a New Song - Late Kindergarten to Fifth Grade.

LATE KINDERGARTEN to FIFTH GRADE
After several months of always watching my mouth when I sing, we became such big singers that we were able to use a music sheet like the big kids do and sing a song. The initial modeling period was crucial in developing the preferred physical singing habits yhat I would expect to see when working with a lyric sheet.

By the time kids are in the last months of kindergarten, I was giving them 8.5 by 11 sheets of lyrics. The font size was as large as the page would permit.

Before the kids came into the room, I listed the four steps to learning a song (Read, Listen, Sing, and Sing Your Best) as well as the five components to “big singing” (No Hands on Face, No Screaming, Open mouth, Move Your Lips, Move Your Tongue) on the chalk board.

One of the first songs we used a lyric sheet for was the “Alphabet Song”.

Read
I would tell the kids “We're going to sing the song but before we sing the song, I want you to read the words with me and then listen to the song. I'm going to say ‘Finger in the air’ and then you are going to put your pointer finger up in the air. Then I’m going to say ‘Title!’ and you to to put your finger on the title and say it.

Then I’ll say ‘Composed by?’ and they will say the name of the person next to the title. His name is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He’s the man who wrote the melody to our song.

Then I will say ‘Composed in the year?’ and you will say ‘1781’, the year that's next to Mozart’s name. That's the year that he wrote the song.”

Every song we sang had a composer and a composition date. I find it invaluable for children to understand that songs were composed by real people at a certain time in history.

Then I would say, “Ready, Read” and they would move their finger across each line and say every word of the song until we got to the very end. When they hit the last word, they were to take their finger off the paper and look at me.

I would model the same with my finger and paper – but I watched the kids like a hawk – not my paper.

“OK, let's give it a try.”

I'd say “Finger in the air? Title.”

Inevitably there would be someone they didn't get that so we would stop and I would do it again. If a child did not have their finger on the paper, I stopped, corrected it, and started again.

Their attention is focused on the paper and my attention is focused on their eyes and their index finger.

After reading the lyrics and dealing with any vocabulary questions, we would move ahead to “listen”.

Listen
“Now what I'm going to do is play the song for you. I know many of you know this song already but I want you to listen to how I sing it because there are certain things I do that are a little different than the way other people do it. While I'm singing it, you are going to keep your finger on the paper and follow along with your finger looking at the words as I sing them.

Finger in the air?
Title? The ABC song.
Composed by? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Composed in the year? 1781.
Ready, read!”

Then I would sing and play the single line melody at the piano. I watched the kids – not at my hands or at a paper.

Inevitably, there would be kids who would start to sing along and I would stop and remind them that their sole job is to listen and be ready to copy how I sang when it was their turn.

They were allowed to move their lips if they wanted to lip-sync while I was singing but no sound was to come out of their mouth.

We go through the whole system again.

Sing
“Okay, now it's the time we've all been waiting for, we all get to sing together. We're going to keep that finger on the paper though, even if you have the song memorized. Here we go!

Finger in the air?
Title? The ABC song.
Composed by? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Composed in the year? 1781.
Ready, sing!”

Usually someone starts to sing over the intro so I explain what an intro is and that the best thing they can do is watch my lips during the intro so they will see when it’s over and its time to sing.

We try again.

Within a few letters, I stop them again.

I sternly call up a student who has proactively demonstrated “big singing” techniques, specifically his hands were not his face, there was no screaming, his mouth was open, he moved his lips, and he moved his tongue.

As I talk with him about all the “big singing” tricks he was doing,

I also quietly say “I bet you were looking at my mouth a little bit and copying me when your fingers were on the words before, weren't you? Because that's okay as long as your eyes go up and down from the paper to my mouth oh, that's fine.”

I ask the student if I may give him a Mr. Holmes guitar pick for his excellent big singing. After he accepts the pick, I always tell the class ”Let’s give him a big hand!”

We then sing the song again and miraculously, I have a room of big singers. After a few letters I abruptly stop them, beaming with the biggest smile I can muster, and boom, “Did you hear that? Can you hear how good you sound now? Let's do it again, even bigger, not louder but bigger!”

After that, I typically gave them a couple of pluses on the board and ask them why I am giving them. I make a big deal out of kids who remember any of the components of ‘”big singing” – or find them on the board - and then give them a little bit of “go” time where they could blow off energy.

Sing Your Best
Once I go back to “stop” time, I say, “Now we have the most important step of all, the most important step to learning a song, sing your best. A lot of people learn how to sing but they never whisper to themselves ‘this time I'm going to sing it my best’.

Unless you say that to yourself, there's a good chance you're not going to sing your best. So if we're doing a new song and we get to step number four, sing your best, I need all of you to whisper to yourself ‘I'm going to sing my best this time’ and then I want you to do your best, biggest singing ever! Sounds like the angels you are!”

After singing their best, I tell them that they sang so big that they will be permitted to keep their song sheet and take it home.

Expanded Big Singing
As kids got older, ‘singing your best’ often led to the discussion of how many times do you have to do step number three – sing - before we can sing our best.

“We have to practice several times before we can sing our best. For some people they might need to sing a song five times, for some people it might be singing it fifty times.

When you hit our number, that's when we say ‘Okay, now I'm going to try my best’”.

With older kids, it would bring up the discussion of “When you go to the doctors, do you want them to try their best? Of course we do and we want them to try their best all the time. Part of learning to ‘sing your best’ is learning how to do your best at anything you set your mind to.

When you take your car to the auto shop, you want them to try their best, you want them to get it right the first time. Does anyone here have a mom or dad who had to take their car back because they didn't fix it right the first time?” and of course a slew of hands go up.

“The more you practice the habit of trying your best, the stronger that habit will be. The more apparent it will be when people look at you, they will see someone who tries their best. And that's the way you want people to look at you.”

As children progressed to more complex and extended lyrics, phonation fatigue would often set in during the “read” step. I would immediately stop the class and ask “If you don’t have enough energy to read the words, how do you expect to sing the song?”

I’d explain that “big reading” and “big talking “ were second cousins to “big singing” and that they should watch their favorite newscasters and see how they do “big talking” for hours at a time.

Feedback
It is CRUCIAL that you give feedback every ninety seconds at first and extend the duration to two minutes after the first fifteen minutes of learning a new song. Use the “plus and minus” chart I described in another post. Every time you put a plus or minus on the board tell the class WHY they got it.

At the end of class, recount how and why they got their pluses and minuses with a hope that the next time there will be more pluses and fewer minuses.

Closing Comments
As always, it comes down to skills, self-discipline, precise modeling, practice, and establishing good strong habits. I would have kids do the finger point on the paper all the way through fifth grade. We would use the same system – read, listen, sing, sing your best - with every song we learned.

When we worked with sheet music, sometimes the direction was to finger point to the words and sometimes it was to point to the notes.

If I was going to play guitar as accompaniment, I would do the “listen” step by playing the single line melody on the guitar while I sang the melody in their octave.

If I was accompanying on the “sing” step and the class was less than solid on the first pass of the melody, I would go back to the piano and sing and play the single line melody.

The idea was for the piano reinforcement to fade as their skills improved. More on that in my post on “the Hierarchy of Prompts”.

There are other systems to learn songs but this is the system I started and it worked like a charm for years at all age levels in elementary school. It doesn’t matter if you do it the way I have described here. The important thing is to find the best system that fits your students and schedule needs.

Be consistent.

Have some fun, give it a try, and make some music!