 Anthony Braxton was speaking for me when he said, “The word music is a convenient way to talk about what I'm interested in, but actually, in some ways, it's a limitation.” A lot of the time, I take in the world from a perspective comprised of twelve tones as well as all frequencies in between. Organized sound. It’s convenient. It works for me. But the world isn’t always diatonic, chromatic, or convenient. Sometimes, it’s a Henry Cowell kind of world. It’s a cluster. About two weeks ago, it was a bit of a cluster in my world. I started walking at 6, got home at 8, hit the gym at 8:30, picked up groceries for my mom, and headed over to her house. About five blocks away from her place, I got a catastrophic flat, the kind where my air compressor could not do its magic. I have no spare, because that's how Kia keeps its new car price down by a few bucks: they don't include spare. (And of course I have one sitting in my basement that I've neglected to put in my car - crucial mistake.) I contact the Pep Boys that’s a mile away from my mom's place. Yes, they have my tire. Easy peasy. I call AAA at 1 and they say it will be 75 minutes to get a tow to PBs. That means 2:15 p.m. At 2:30 still no sign of a tow truck, no verification from AAA that I even called them. No phone call or text. I get them on the phone. There's been a delay I'm told. Now, the new time for the tow will be 4 p.m. And that's three hours after my initial call which seems a little excessive in wait time to me. Unfortunately, PBs is now booked up and they can’t fix my tire. I call the PBs that’s about five miles away. A service guy named Don answers and says he has the right tire and might be able to get it on before seven when they close but they are very busy. The tow truck shows up at 4:30, and it takes him 30 minutes to hook up the car. We're now at 5 p.m. I get to Pep Boys at 5:20 and find Don. I make and sustain eye contact with him as I give him a fist bump. He's approximately my age. I say to him, “For a while I didn't think I'd get here because AAA was so slow in picking up my car.” He says, “Yeah that's been happening a lot these days.” I respond with, “But I just want you to know that I really appreciate the fact that you actually answer your phone and talk to a customer.” And as I'm saying this I'm giving him a folded twenty dollar bill. I’m still holding his gaze. It was as if I was willing him to think “Come on, Holmes, give me a reason to squeeze you in when I have so much already on my docket.” He responds in shock and quickly puts the bill in his pocket saying, “Oh, you don't have to do that, that’s very kind of you.” In my mind I'm saying it actually is important to me, Don, and I do have to do this if I want my car done today. (I also slipped the mechanic a ten at 6:55 when he completed putting on the TWO new tires I bought.) The lesson that is lost probably on many people is I that I did have to do it this way. If I wanted to get my tire fixed that day, that is. By giving Don that twenty, I shifted the fulcrum that resides under the Seesaw of Life a little closer to me. What I'm ensuring is not that I have a new tire. What I’m affirming is that my life will be convenient. Or at least more convenient than the previous five hours. As much as we all hate getting flat tires in life, it's best to find a way to keep smiling, confront the cluster, and facilitate as much convenience in the resolution as possible. For instance, when my school district, principals, and department head would not spring for the cash to buy pianos and guitars for my students, I made my 7.5 hour job more convenient by purchasing them myself with profits from my 16.5 hour business. Was there some initial financial inconvenience? Yes. Did that resolution made teaching music so much more convenient and rewarding? Yes. Was it a wise investment that paid exceptional dividends? Most definitely yes! Tips I've read that the word “tips” stands for “to ensure proper service” and that in medieval times, tips were extended to the server before the order was even taken, primarily to ensure proper service. Think of it as a thank you in advance. Was I doing that with Don? To some degree, yes. I was looking in his eyes, thinking about the great service he was going to give me, and the fact that I would be so happy afterwards that I would want to give them twenty dollars. So why not give it to him right now? Why not convince him that he wants to help me? The Convenient Music Room Make your music room convenient. As I’ve advised up-coming teachers, “If you’re going to work with little kids, you might as well train them to work for you.” You need the room to work for you, too. As in, “We can do this the hard way or . . . the convenient way.” It’s much easier putting a few hours of thought and design before kids come through the door than after they arrive. And just like a good song, you will edit your ideas until they drip of feng shui simplicity. Draw your plan on paper. Identify where you want your kids to affix their gaze in any teaching situation. Design your room so the kids are always looking at you, so that you have a bland background behind you when they're looking at you, like a smart board for a chalkboard. Keep visual distractions to a minimum. Don't tempt kids to want to pick up and touch things they're not supposed to. If you're going to put any words on your wall, make sure they're in a million point font. The more important the words are, the bigger they need to be. When using the “Stop/Go” techniques I described in an older post, the S and G have to be directly in the sightline of all the students. Make sure you create an easily definable stage, a perceptible proscenium, a performance/audience perspective in the room, where the teacher is the first performer your students learn to observe. Eventually your students will come up and become the performers on that stage for their peers and you. This video shows the three primary teaching spaces in my old room at New castle Elementary. Notice:
And, most of all, develop a 45-minute system for each of your classes that you will do over and over and will become a habit for them that will lead to a convenient an orderly class. Predictability
Convenience is an dependable outgrowth of predictability. Knowing what's going to happen. Imagine how inconvenient your life would be if every day there were road blockage on the way to work that weren’t there the day before. And every day, a different set of roads would be blocked. On any given morning, you would have no way to predict how to reach work or any other destination. As music teachers, we have to find the sweet spot between tension and release that’s found in all good music and apply that concept to the psyche of our students, specifically to their sense of being able to predict what they are going to experience in our classrooms. The more kids can predict these events accurately, the lower their blood pressure, the more they can accurately anticipate what they think is going to happen. Yes, there has to be a predictable pattern but it court boredom. When kids find that sweet spot of knowing what's going to happen but also anticipating that they might be a little surprised along the way, their level of engagement is higher and the probability of their behavior or participation slipping is decreased. When we achieve this Seesaw of Life balancing act in our music rooms, teaching becomes less like one of Henry Cowell’s clusters and more . . . well, . . . more convenient.  (If you haven't read "So You Need a Classroom Guitar - Part One", read that before this post.) Making the Purchase So you have found “the one”. Now what? Before you approach a salesperson, know the price of the guitar with a twenty, fifteen, and ten percent discount. Check on your phone and see if you can find the EXACT same model somewhere else for less. If you can find a lower price, remember what it is and where you saw it. Tell your helper that if you ask them the question “What do you think?” with your arms folded, they are to slowly respond with something like, “I don’t know, man, it seems a little high.” Important Consideration If the sales person has been your friend for some period of time, the following scenario is over-kill. Treat the person with respect no matter what. They are only trying to make a living. They expect savvy customers to try and shave a few points off the price of any guitar. The keyword in how you approach this transaction has to be “respect”. Closing the Deal Approach the sales person. Be holding the guitar. Get the salesperson’s first name and use it often. Don't be afraid to ask if they have teacher discounts or any upcoming sales. Ask if it come with a case. That will probably be a “no”. Look sad. Actually, that’s the answer you want. If the salesperson has to say “no”, he will be incentivized to say “yes” to something else – namely a lower price on the guitar. If he says “Yes”, come back with “Do I get a break if I buy it with cash instead of credit?” That will probably be a “no”. Mention again that you are a music teacher with 1,250 students who are learning guitar with you at _____ Elementary School. Offer them the ticket price minus twenty percent and don’t blink. If they balk, ask why. And shut-up and don’t blink. If there are any minor scratches, flaws in the finish, or severe fret buzz issues, now is the time to use them as leverage in lowering the price. Calmly bring the problems to your attention, repeat the price minus twenty percent, and say something like, “Come on, man, I’m tryin’ to work with you on this.” Shut up and let them talk. If they give you fifteen percent of the ticket price, take it. If they offer something like a five percent discount, offer the price with the twenty percent discount and then offer the price with the fifteen percent discount. If they give you fifteen percent of the ticket price, take it. If not, fold your arms and ask your friend, “What do you think?” They say, “I don’t know, man, it seems a little high.” Ask if they price match other dealers – as in, if you find it listed lower somewhere else, will they match the price. No matter what they say, tell them, “I’m gonna play it some more and think about it.” Go away from the sales person, play it some more, ostensibly to give the sales guy more time to possible check with his manager if he can lower the price. This also gives you time to firm up your decision that this guitar is “the one”. Take a picture of the guitar and one of its serial number. Go back out in ten minutes and try to lower the price again. If you found it cheaper somewhere else, now is the time to tell the sales person. If you can’t move them at all on the price, ask if there are any guitars in your price range that they can discount. If he hasn’t moved past a five percent discount, hand the guitar to him in his left hand and shake his right hand as you say, “Thanks for your help.” Turn abruptly to your friend, smile, take out and open your wallet, look at the bills , look at your friend, and say, “Wanna get a beer? It’s on me?” And leave. You have to make sure they know you are willing to walk away. Come back in two days and repeat the process, hopefully with a different sales person. If the school is paying for the instrument, ask if you pay the ticked price, will they give you a break on a case and extras. If the school is buying, it doesn’t matter what their answer is. As long as you are getting reimbursed, buy it. If YOU are paying out-of-pocket, you can continue to go back and forth on the price, continue looking elsewhere, or just buy it. This process is a learning moment just like trying out the guitars was a learning moment, too. As soon as you purchase the guitar, make an appointment with the luthier to have him check it out. Do this ASAP. I bought a guitar once at a retail store and after examining the insides of it with a small mirror, my luthier found several cracks on the guitar top that had been carefully glued together and bonded with chips of wood on the inside. Needless to say, that guitar went back. All The Accoutrements You’re going to need a lot of extras once you have a school guitar. Owning a guitar is a little bit like buying a boat. You're going to need a lot of extra stuff. A guitar strap - It's a matter of taste but you can't go wrong with a six dollar Ernie Ball nylon strap. a strap button for the heel of your guitar - Make sure you check with your luthier that he has a button to install on your new guitar if it doesn't already have one. If he doesn't have one, that doesn't bode well. I consider a different luthier. In any case, if you need it, you're going to have to buy it if he doesn't have it. You can get away without using heal neck strap button by tying the top end of your strap with an old shoe lace to the top of the neck of your guitar. I've never liked this solution because I think it puts unnecessary tension on the neck. a case - If it's a standard dreadnaught, you're going to have lots of options. Given the rough-and-tumble environment schools presents, I would get a hard case, not a gigbag. You can get the case in store or order one on Ebay or Amazon. a guitar stand – The more you spend on them, the sturdier they are. picks - If you drop me a line at [email protected] , I'll be happy to send you a couple of pics. Otherwise, Dunlop Tortex mediums (something .50 or .72 will suffice). strings - This is where it gets interesting. Strings are a matter of taste as well as finding the best match for your guitar. Pick up a pack of Martin light phosphorus bronze strings as well as a pack of D’addario phosphorus bronze light strings. I have found that phosphorus bronze tend to last longer than just about anything else out there today. I'll do another post somewhere down the line about the variety of options of strings for the classroom music teacher, especially options found at www.juststrings.com . a string winder - You want a string winder that has a clipper to trim excess strings after you change your strings as well as an indentation that acts as a peg-puller and will pull out string pegs without damaging the bridge or saddle. D'Addario and Planet Waves make similar options in this category. Think of your new guitar like a new pair of shoes. Wear them around the house and be very careful with them so that if you want to return them, there's no issue with wear and tear. Most big-box music retail stores have their own luthier who are more than willing to set-up your guitar up after you buy it. I would still ask around as to who is the best luthier in your area. Play your guitar for a good two weeks at home before you take it into school. Get used to it. Be able to stand up and play wearing thee guitar with a strap. Find the center of balance on the guitar and make sure you know how to take your hands away and not have it nose dive or tail dive. Fine tune your spidey-sense as to where the end of the neck is at all times. You don’t want to suddenly turn and smash the headstock into something or worse, into someone. The issue of balance is a little tricky because once you put a strap on it, you're going to have to modify the guitar with a heel button and that might negate you returning it should the guitar not have good balance. Hopefully the price point between and online case and an in-store case will not be too great. I hate to take a guitar out of a store in a bag or a box. I will usually buy the case in the store or, if I know I'm shopping for a dreadnought, I'll take one of my dreadnought cases to the store and leave it in the car. It doesn’t matter who is paying – the school or you: get the extended warranty. Even beautiful, melodious tanks breakdown in schools. After You Start Playing Your Guitar in School Stuff will happen. I owned two tanks over the last thirty years of teaching. One was an Ibanez Artwood-100 and the other was an Epiphone. Both guitars sustained accidents where the headstocks snapped off and were glued back on. Both guitars required re-fretting after about six years because I simply wore the frets down from playing so much. Both required new bridges. By the end of their run, they look pretty battered. But they had earned the deserved title of “Thor's Hammer” because that's what they were: powerful and mighty. Neither one of them came with pickups - I had them installed. Most of all, I always look forward to playing those two guitars. They felt good in my hands and never let me down with their tone or response. Conclusion I didn’t cover buying a guitar sight-unseen over the net. I’ll do that somewhere down the road. Have fun! If you’re like me, I love buying a guitar. If you have question, drop me a line.   Every elementary general music teacher needs a good guitar. I don't mean just a guitar but a potential Hammer of Thor. Something that'll shake room, something epitomizing the grist of gossamer wing dreams for kids who see themselves playing guitar. You shouldn’t use a personal guitar in school. If it breaks, the school very likely will not pay to repair or replace it. You need the school to see the value in buying the guitar not just for you but for your students and their music program. If your 7.5 job admin says “no go” and you have to make the purchase out of pocket from your 16.5 business earnings, buy the extended warranty when you buy the guitar and be prepared to implement the warranty somewhere down the road. But how does a teacher go about getting a good classroom guitar? To start with, have a plan, a budget, a friend, and about two hours. Rule number one. Always try to pick the instrument up and play it before you buy it. I know you can buy a lot of stuff online at Musician's Friend or Sweetwater but there is nothing like going into a store and picking up a guitar and evaluating it in person in real time. Befor You Get Your Hopes Up Make sure your admin approve the purchase as well as the price range and determine the way the school is going to pay for the guitar. If it has to go through a bid list, it probably negates purchasing the guitar on your own and having the school reimburse you. If that is the case, you need to acquire knowledge as to what guitar you want to buy for school. You’ll still probably be going to a store to try guitars – just not buying one. This is not the best of solutions – because stores are in business to sell and make money – not be a “try me and leave” experience. If you have to buy the guitar you find in a store on-line with a school P.O., make a point of supporting that seller in other ways, including sending your students there for possible purchases or rentals. Before You Leave Home Find out who is the most reputable luthier in your area and talk to them. Tell them what you're going to do. They might have some instruments that they are willing to sell and will work out perfectly for you. Ask for their advice. The important thing is that you're telling them that you're buying an instrument and will be bringing it back to them to do a complete setup. A setup basically involves making sure the neck is set perfectly, the bridge and a nut are leveled for good intonation, and so that the strings are not so high off the neck that they're hard to pressed down or too low that they buzzed up against the frets when you strum aggressively. You'll probably also need a strap button for the heel at the base of the neck to attach your guitar strap. Strap locks are a bit overkill on acoustic guitars in my estimation, but if you're really want to get them, mention that to the luthier. Get a price quote from the luthier on what all that work will cost you when you bring a guitar to them. Take stock on your guitar knowledge base. Know what you're grounding your purchase on. Do you have any teacher friends with an acoustic guitar they would be willing to let you try? How many guitars have you played and what order of playability would you place them in? What was the best instrument you played? What was the worst instrument you played? Maybe you've only played one guitar. If that's the case then that is your baseline and all the guitars you're going to try are going to be measured by that one guitar. Do a cursory check on Amazon and price dreadnaught cases. You want to know how competitive the music store will be with Amazon. On shopping day, make sure you're not wearing any abrasive clothing that can scratch the finish of a showroom instrument. If you’re wearing a belt, loop it from the side so that the buckle rests over your hip and not under your belly button. Take a small container of hand sanitizer and an old clean towel. Have several medium pics. Bring along a good guitar tuner or have a tuning app on your phone. Have thirty one dollar bills and a ten in your wallet. If you already own a dreadnought guitar in a case, take the guitar out, leave it at home, and put the case in the trunk of your car just in case you need a case to put a purchase in. Most of all, take a friend along with you, someone who plays good rhythm guitar. Ostensibly they should play better than you but if your friend has a higher proficiency level, that's okay. Do not take someone who plays with less authority than you do.  When You Get To The Store
Plan to spend about two hours at least in the store. This is not a purchase you want to rush. Before you even pick up an instrument, ask what their return policy is. If you don’t agree with their terms, leave and find a different store. If you go to a big box store like Guitar Center, they will have an acoustic guitar room and, slightly beyond that room, another room reserved for the pricier models from Taylor, Martin, and Gibson. I know it's tempting to go in that boutique room and pick up a $3,000 dreadnought but don't. First, you might drop it and that'll be the guitar you'll be buying – because you have to. Second, you don't want to be listening to something that good quite this soon. Save that for another day. You'll be able to find a serviceable guitar for your classroom in the $300-$400 range. Before you even pick up a guitar hanging on a wall in a store, eye-ball it so that there's nothing glaringly wrong with it like a broken string, missing tuner apparatus, or a nasty scratch. If it’s messed up, tell a sales person that you noticed the problem BEFORE you ever touched it. If the guitar on the wall looks OK, as soon as you pick it up, sit down, thereby lowering the odds of you dropping the guitar. Remember that the guitar you're holding might have been already played by a hundred different sets of hands before you. Clean your hands hand sanitizer and wipe them on your towel before you pick it up. Looks Do Matter I've bought guitars that are not necessarily considered beauties but they were incredible gigging/teaching tools. But any guitar that I knew I was going to be playing five days a week, I wanted to be something I wanted to see. If you can’t stand the way it looks, maybe don’t pick it up. The Most Bang - and Sound - For Your Buck For classroom use, stay away from classical or electric guitars and lean toward steel string acoustic guitars, preferably with a pickup and tuner built-in. There will be days when you’ll need to amplify that guitar while you're singing into a microphone so you might as well get the pickup built in. That means you’ll want an “electric/acoustic” guitar – they sound great either way. On the chance that you find the perfect guitar that doesn't have a pickup in it, you can have your luthier install a high-end Fishman piezo pick up. Don't get involved with guitars containing inside suspended microphones. They simply lead to too many headaches. Somewhere down the road you might want to investigate that but for general classroom use, piezo pickups are perfect. Stay within your price range as you're looking at guitars. Sometimes it's a little bit like buying a house. Sales people will try and talk you into buying something above your price range. Don't give in. Stay true to your investing strategy. I always go with dreadnoughts in a classroom. They’re a nice big wooden box and project better than just about any other type of acoustic guitar. A solid top will make it sound even better. Orchestra guitar and “000” models look like dreadnaughts but are slightly smaller and have less inherent projection than a dreadnaught. They sound great but not suitable for the rigors of an elementary classroom. My hands are a little on the large side so the feel of the neck is very important to me and a deal-breaker if it doesn't feel right. If your hands are on the smaller side, you'll want to feel a slimmer neck under your hands so that's going to be a consideration as soon as you pick up that good-looking guitar. How does it feel in your fretting hand? You won't be using a guitar strap in the store so carefully sit down on a bench or a chair to play. Use a pick. Be careful not to scratch the face of the guitar or the pickguard. Have your partner stand about ten or fifteen feet away from you when you play two simple chord patterns as well as a chromatic scale all the way up the neck of each string. You're going to play those chord patterns and chromatic scales hundreds of times on every guitar for the next two hours so this is not an opportunity to strut out the intro to “Stairway to Heaven” followed by a Guns and Roses highlight reel. Just strum and scale, and strum the same thing on every guitar. The chromatic scale will reveal dead spots and fret buzz on the neck. Fret buzz can usually be fixed. Dead spots can be a little more problematic. Does the guitar feel like a butterfly or a tank? If the guitar feels flimsy or any of the mechanical elements like the tuners feel shaky, put it back. It's a rotten egg waiting to be hatched. You want something that feels like a brick house. In summary, stay away from classical and electric guitars and focus on acoustic electric dreadnoughts. What You Hear, What Your Partner Hears You want a guitar that sounds good to you, something that feels good when it's pressed up against your belly as you sing and play. But it's crucial that the guitar sounds even better for your students who are ten to fifteen to twenty feet away. So how you get to hear how the guitar will sound to your students? That’s where your friend comes in. After you've played the guitar, if you like the sound of it, pass it carefully to your friend to play the exact same chord progression you played. Have them play the chromatic scales. Make sure you're listening from ten to fifteen to twenty feet away. The guitar will sound different than it did when you were playing it, much like your voice sounds different in real time when you sing compared to what it sounds like when it's recorded and you're listening to it on tape. A guitar that has a lot of treble when you play it will sound excessively treble-ly when you're listening to somebody else playing it. A guitar with a more boomy bottom end when you play it might just have the right balance twenty feet away. If you find an acoustic/electric guitar that you like, you're going to have to check out the electronics before you buy. If you don't know anything about this stuff, ask if your partner does and have them hook it up to an acoustic amp that will probably be in the guitar room. If neither of you have a solid foundation in electronics and acoustic guitars, ask the salesperson if they can demonstrate for you what the electronic sound like through an amp. Keep mental notes on each guitar. You don't need pieces of paper and pencil to gum up the works and maybe have you drop an instrument. Listen to your partner’s comments. Measure their observations with your data. But remember: you're going to be the one playing it five or six hours a day, not them. While you're in the store, after you've played a guitar that you really like, take a break for a few minutes and check out the reviews online see what people are saying about that model. Find out if there are any documented chronic problems inherent in the instrument that you would not be aware of with a simple two minute play in a store. Check forums and message boards online specific to your guitar and how it balances with a strap. Take your time. Play the best ones a few times and keep a “top five” list germinating in your mind. Narrow your choices from five, to three, to two, to “the one”. After you made your choice, you need to close the deal. We’ll explore that experience in . . . . “So You Need a Classroom Guitar – Part Two”.  When you leave home to go to your elementary school in the morning, you always check for your wallet, phone, and keys. But the keys that you'll need during the day are the different key signatures you'll put your songs in for your students. You’ll need more than one key. Since you're in elementary general music teacher, you'll be playing piano and guitar quite a bit. I had a list of somewhere between sixty and a hundred songs that were in steady rotation in my kindergarten through fifth-grade classes. The importance of keys, as in key signatures, is that we need to be able to play all of those songs in at least four or five different keys. Why? So kids accurately develop their head and chest voices. I was keenly attuned to the instrument we call our voice at an early age and was one of those kids who was always aware of the difference between my head voice and my chest voice. I would look for ways to disguise either of them to sound like the other. Not all kids are like that. You’ll have to teach head and chest voice. Some kids have a deep aversion to singing in their head. Boys are often recalcitrant because they sense a loss of power moving from the chest voice, and, especially in boys, loss of power is not an image they want to project that often. Of course, it's easy to sing in your head voice with power once you know how to do it. I'm not talking about screaming or yelling but actually singing in a head voice with conviction and assuredness. It's best to get kids comfortable singing at a moderate volume in their chest voice because it makes the transition to head voice much smoother. In one of my earlier posts, I listed the five criteria of “big singing”: things I required all kids to do to get a great vocal sound - no screaming, no hands on face, open your mouth, move your lips, and move your tongue. No screaming is a biggie because sometimes when we are passionate about a song, we just want to belt it out. Occasionally, belting out a song is okay but as music teachers, we can't let it become a habit with our singers. A song’s tessitura (range) will determine whether kids sing it in their head or chest. Songs with a range of a fifth can usually be sung low in the chest or higher in the head. Things get interesting when the range is more like an octave or more.  If you take a simple folk songs like “Cindy”, the low note is the third of the scale and the high note is a full octave and a fourth above that!  The verses are primarily high and the chorus is low. When we would sing the first verse, I would usually start it in D, taking the melody down to a F#, which is ridiculously on the low side for elementary voices. In the second verse, I'd move up to Eb or E. On the third verse I go to F, F#, or G and continue to move the keys up with each verse. The effect of ascending keys is that the notes in the chorus section of the song come out stronger but required that the verses are nudged into head voice.
Kids start to learn the difference in voice placement primarily from the form of the song as well as the different ways their voice feels as they hit those different parts of the song. When we first sang “Cindy”, I would always be at the piano. Eventually I would do the tune on guitar. Given that it's a basic I-IV-V7 song, romping through ascending keys on guitar is very easy. On piano, you have to be able to know how to put the melody on top, a bass part on the bottom, and some kind of inner moving voices in the accompaniment in all the keys. That's not to say that you play the melody all the time. Including the melody in the piano accompaniment is sort of like training wheels on a bike: you only employ it when they are needed and removed the rest of the time. Otherwise a ubiquitous melody line will function as a crutch and inhibit the young singer’s ability to independently carry a vocal part. If you are limited on guitar, get a capo to mechanically transpose your comping. More on using a capo will be in another post. If you're not that proficient on piano yet, start with the basics. First, be able to play the melody in all the diatonic keys. Then play the melody while adding a simple bass ostinato consisting just of the root of the chord. After that, work up to a full throated arrangement. If you are going to have your kids learn that their voice is an instrument that is just as complex and demanding as a flute or trumpet, you've got to give them the opportunity to visualize and objectify the difference between the techniques and visceral feelings of their head and chest voices. In the end, one of the greatest gains you'll make is developing a group of confidant, happy singers. The biggest bonus will be empowering boys who know what it's like to be a tenor, especially a boy tenor, who can let those higher notes ring out with no self-conscious fear.  “You know, you were right and I was wrong.” Those are some of the most powerful words a teacher can say to a student or a class. I didn't say them often but when I did, the recipients were usually taken aback. If I was anything as a teacher, I was decisive – and correct 99.9% of the time. I kept ambivalence in my demeanor to an absolute minimum. One day, after playing something pseudo technical at the piano, a kid asked, “Do you ever make mistakes?” “Of course”, I responded. “Why, back in 1982 I made a mistake playing a piece by Bach.” Trust me, they got the humor, especially after I explained to them that I make mistakes all the time just like they and their parents do, that I rarely call attention to a mistake or dwell on it, and that I try to make the mistake work in a positive way in whatever I next did or played. When you tell someone that you made a mistake, pause a bit, maybe three seconds, and apologize sincerely. Let the receiver savor the moment. You never know how much impact that admission is going to have on its benefactor. As an incoming freshman attending college band camp, I made the imprudent move of referring to my band director as an asshole while he was standing right behind me on the field. I apologized profusely but he did not forgive me. He held it against me for the next four years. From that day on for four years, he took just about every opportunity to deride me and ridicule me in public with my peers and teachers. Once, he interrupted a conversation I was having with composer Vincent Persichetti and said to Persichetti, “Don’t bother listening to him. He doesn’t know anything.” It was like that until midway through my senior year. I had just completed my student teaching at Christiana High School. My college band director was also in charge of student teacher observations and had watched me teach and lead a band several times. When he called me in for my final conference after I completed my stint of student teaching, he started with silence and stayed with that for about thirty seconds. I thought he was going to yell at me but what he said was this:  “You know, I was wrong about you.”
From there, he went on to rattle off a few things that he considered were my strengths. I never expected him to say anything like that to me, not after the past four years. We went on to be the best of friends for years to come. I remember telling somebody about it later that day and they asked if he apologized for holding a grudge and treating me like garbage for four years. No, he didn’t apologize. Nor was one expected by me. I was the one who initially offended him. What he did do was admit that he had been wrong. So if you make a mistake with your students, first things first. Own it. Then say, “You know . . . . “ Pause. “You were right . . . .” Pause. “And I was wrong.”  It was 2 p.m. as I sat in a dark screening room with a production team and a rep from an international bank, watching a thirty-minute industrial video that I had completed a full orchestral score for about a month before. The video narrative consisted of lines like, “Hi! Now that you're a member of the Bank of __ ___ team, we want to go over some of those great options we have in your benefits package.” After the presentation, the lights came up on the $1,500.00 suit that had to come to town to OK the completed production. He started off with a series of pompous, trivial questions for the production team and producer. All of his posturing and puffery was skirting around the edge of “iffy”. As he droned on, the biggest “if” in my mind was if his observations were indicative of his video production acumen, then he should just smile, take the DVD, and go home. “Who did the music?” he blustered. At this point, the producer’s angina started to kick in, realizing that there was no telling what was going to come out of my mouth in the form of an answer to his pending question. Mustering all the tedium coursing through my veins, I made no eye contact and slowly raised my hand. He leaned into me and said, “Can you make it more purple?” Without missing a beat, my ennui eyes turned into a heat-seeking gimlet glare. “Magenta or eggplant?” I asked. The verbal volley stunned him and literally sent him back about six inches. He did a pretty good impression of the infamous five-point buck confronting the Oldsmobile headlights. He froze. He had no answer. After about five seconds of mumbling, he said, “Well, magenta, of course!” I immediately responded with, “I'll have it for you on Tuesday with an invoice.” Always be prepared. Postscript: So, I know you have an inquiring mind and you're wondering right now, “How did Holmes make it magenta?” I went home and, after I opened the Scotch, I opened the session I had composed in Pro Tools and Propellerhead’s Reason, added a few measures of English horn and bassoon, rolled off some of the top end, and saved it as an mp3.  It took all of about eight minutes and even less time to print the $500.00 invoice.
Always be prepared. Post postscript: Of course, the best option would have been mauve – but I knew that mauve wouldn’t fit in his budget, given that twelve-minute mauve option starts at $1,000.00. Know your customer and anticipate the customer’s financial ceiling. Be the mail carrier. Deliver.  As we approach the advent of a new school year, it's always good to remember that it is better to give than to receive, especially when dealing with your principal. Before you send off that email or stroll into their office and ask for those Boomwhackers that you so desperately need, it is better to offer something. It can be framed as a simple question, as in, “Hey, boss, is there anything I can help out with today?” If the principal is planning opening staff meetings with a particular theme, think of ways you can musically enhance and support their vision. For instance, if the principal is doing a tropical island theme, brush up on your “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys and maybe write a new set of lyrics that contain flattering references to your school or district. If it were me, I would be willing to wear a dollar-store grass skirt over my daily three-piece black suit and do a parody on Elton John's “Island Girl” if my principal wanted. I would also make sure that the moment was well-documented with a few jpegs of the principal standing next to me, holding a ukulele as I played guitar wearing the aforementioned grass skirt. All of this is to solidify the idea that you are on the principal’s team. You are there to contribute and support in any way you can. After you've done a few things like this and the pleasant aftertaste of your good works are still ruminating in your principal’s hippocampus, then and only then do you ask for something. On every in-service day that really didn't pertain to me, I always popped my head in the principal's office and asked, “Is there anything I can help with today?” The range of answers I got was often telling.
On one such in-service day, there was nothing for me as the music teacher to participate in so I asked the question of my boss and he had me stuff some school mailers for about two hours. Our dismissal time was 3:30. I stop by his office at 2:30 to report the mail job had been completed. I asked if I could leave 30 minutes early that day because I needed to pick up some guitar strings at a music store and after I picked them up, by the time I got home it would be 3:30. “No problem.” And I checked out at 3:00 and headed to the music store. On a subsequent Friday in-service day, I pop my head in at 10 a.m. and again asked my boss if there was anything I could help with. “Don't you need those guitar strings?”, he asked. I was confused. “You know. the ones at the store that is far away from your house?” I realized what he was trying to say. He leaned in and whispered “Go home at twelve noon, take the rest of the day off. Stay off social media until 3:30. Have a great weekend.” I don't know about you but that's what I call leadership! Anne Frank said, “No one has ever become poor by giving.” Always offer before you ask.   So when was the last time a music educator surveyed 100 adults who aren't in the field of Education or music about their experiences in music education as well as the impact their music teachers had on them?
Questions like . . . . “What exactly did you learn in music class?” “After twenty years, what's the big takeaway from your music class?” “What do you wish you had learned on music class when you were ten-years old?” “What was the most important thing to your music teacher?” “On hindsight, what was important to your music teacher that really didn't have it impact on you? |
AuthorBoyd Holmes, the Writer Archives
February 2025
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