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​First Reality Check: “I wasn’t trained to be a _____ music teacher. I’m a ______ music teacher!”

6/1/2021

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First things first.

Congratulations, you are – or are soon to be - a music teacher!

Not many people can say that.  The world at large looks at you and assumes that when you hear someone say, “Hey, music teacher” and you turn to look that you must be a music teacher that teaches music.

Is that too much of a stretch?

Reality check: Administrators don't see you as a chorus or an instrumental or a general music teacher. They don't see you as an elementary, junior high, or high school music teacher. They see you as a teacher of music.

In the immortal words of my father, “Do you need a straw because I think it's time that you suck it up”.

No one really cares – except you.

Not only do administrators expect you to be able to teach “soup-to-nuts” music to all ages, they expect you to do it flawlessly with no issues of discipline in your classroom. While it's always important to build on your strengths, administrators don't see it that way. They think your strengths are already developed when you show up.

I always wanted to be a music teacher that could fit into any music teaching situation. I wanted my gig bag to look like MacGyver's, ready for anything musical that a school could throw at me.

I graduated from college hoping to teach in college.

First gig? Teaching four to nine-year-olds. No problem.

Teach guitar?

Of course, yes, he said as he went to the pawn shop to buy a guitar to learn how to play.

Teach piano? Play piano?

Me: Just listen to the songs I've written for the kids to sing.

Admin to me: Incredible! Let's make a recording, a record, sell it, AND MAKE MONEY FOR THE SCHOOL!”

And then I was fired, with a side helping of divorce and all-you-can-carry debt. More on that later.

Even though I was at the top of my game in music, at this point in my life, I was emotionally and financially fragmented.

My next job was at a school for kids with severe and chronic orthopedic and cognitive disabilities. I had a ton of music therapy homework to do. Thankfully, I hit this job at a point in my life where I was not only finally understanding what life was about: I was able to live it and put my beliefs into motion.

I was now teaching music in a public school district in a school where every day was a soul-crushing reminder that we don't always get to pick our circumstances in life.

Every day, my guitar and I drove to multiple schools including Christiana Hospital’s “First State School”. It was only in my last two years of teaching that I was finally in one school every day of the week.

In every music department meeting that dissolved into petty gripes about “I’m not a chorus teacher, I’m a band music teacher!”, or “I’m not a band teacher, I’m a chorus teacher!”, or “I’m not a piano player, I’m trumpet player!”, and a million variations on said complaint,  I had to silently frame the whining in the context of my entire student body who didn’t choose the life they were living but were giving the best they had to offer in my classes. My students had limited choices. My peers had unlimited possibilities.

Hearing professional music teachers complain about not getting the exact music job they wanted always made me picture a lunatic cafeteria lady screaming,

“I don’t do hot dogs, only pizza!”


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Really? Tell me more.

​If any of your college instructors gave you the impression that it is a lock that you will get your dream gig, a perfect placement, and that you will teach happily ever after, they lied to you.

If they didn’t address this issue while you were an undergraduate, it was a lie of omission.

And if they told you that you could be offered any music position and you chose not to hear or believe that, then it is on you, not them.

Any day that I could say I was a music teacher, even during the worst of circumstances, was a day that worked for me.

In the immortal words of Peter Hill, ”You picked the ax. Cut the wood.”

If you wanted to teach music then teach music. Don’t let a preconceived notion of what “teaching music” actually slow your progress or stunt your professional growth.

Embrace change – and be thankful you can make music.

​Think of the MILLIONS of people who wish they could do what you do.
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If none of this works for you, there are other options you may pursue.
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​Top Five Realities All Music Teachers Must Embrace.

6/1/2021

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We all have realities that we don’t like looking in the eye.
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Like a year and a half ago when I was weighing in at 251 pounds and buying my first pair of 40 inch Levi’s. Not exactly where I wanted to be. Six months later, I was at 198 pounds and wearing in my 36 inch jeans as well as suits, tuxes, and pants I wore when Bill Clinton was still governor of Arkansas. And I haven’t looked back.
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My plan had no room for procrastination, excuses, lack of reality, or whining.  

During my career, I worked with some incredible educators who set comprehensive career goals and achieved them.  They not only learned how to go with the flow but how to redirect the flow to their advantage. The daily attitude they projected was one of positivity, grit, and gratefulness. 

I also observed some music teachers who refused to look at the reality of their professional situation. They chose to complain and not face facts. It was not lost on me that most of their complaints were temporal in nature and were a way of sublimating the really important stuff: personal and professional skills as well as not preparing for their economic life after teaching career.

PLC (professional learning community), curriculum development teams, department meetings, and yes, even happy hours often drift into bitch sessions where everyone unloads about what's wrong with their job: lots of venting, nothing is made better or resolved, good alcohol is wasted on bad talk, and in the end, reality is skirted.

American author Willa Cather observed that “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” That applies to my top five ignored realities.

Here’s the list. I’ll explore each reality in future posts.

First Reality: “I wasn’t trained to be a _____ music teacher. I’m a ______ music teacher!”

Second Reality: “How do they expect me to teach with the measly budget they give me.”

Third Reality: “Every year, I get the same terrible schedule. How am I supposed to accomplish everything with what they give me?”

Fourth Reality: “I don’t need to know how to play guitar/piano. My music ed teacher in college didn’t play so why do I have to?”
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Fifth Reality: “Our department head/administrator isn’t a musician, let alone a music teacher. He/she doesn’t understand that teaching music is different than other subjects.”
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​Pilots and Co-pilots: compounded learning

5/30/2021

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  • College educators refer to them as dyads.

Classroom teachers call them pairs.

I like to call them pilots and co-pilots.

It is an often overlooked component of teaching music that adds value by the minute.

Whenever we were doing instrumental work with guitar, xylophone, piano, or recorder, I always had the kids in pilots and co-pilots. You might think of pilots and co-pilots as simply a classroom management technique, but it actually paid incredible musical dividends. Working with a peer partner is one of the greatest multiplier for educational gains in elementary music.

Peer partners see issues of learning with the same nascent point of view. They explain what they are doing to each other in terms and references that are often not valued, understood, or percieved by the teacher.

Each year when I introduced idea for the first time, I would ask the kids what they knew about pilots and co-pilots. They could connect most of the dots on their own - that the pilot flew the plane while the co-pilot helped.

They often had to take turns. Sometimes when the pilot was flying, the co-pilot was taking a nap or eating lunch or going to the bathroom. If they didn’t cooperate, they risked crashing the plane.

I didn’t match the kids – the kids did that. I would quickly say “Stand up, hand up, pair up!” Every student would quickly stand, raise one hand, give a classmate a high five and freeze with their hands still together so everyone could see the partners.  This technique takes three seconds.

I would then say “shoulder to shoulder”, “back to back”, or “face to face” so partners knew how to align as they sat back on the floor.

Pilots were usually on the left, co-pilots on the right.

There were times though, when they would be an odd person out without a partner. That's when I would say, “It's amazing that you were the one that's left without a co-pilot because if I was going to pick on someone who could fly the plane all by themselves, it would be you. Tell you what. I know you're going to have to do some extra work today – you’re going to play on every turn -  so here, take these three Mr. Holmes guitar picks, and you can sit close to me today and be my helper.”

The effect was that the kid that no one wanted as a partner suddenly had more gravitas than anyone ever expected they would have.

One incredible benefit of pilots and co-pilots: After identifying my beta-students, I could match them with students who could profit most from their skills.

What is a beta-student? Sure, go ahead and search it. You won’t find much. I’ll explain the power of identifying and capitalizing on your beta-students in another post.

With the xylophone, there was always only one mallet so the pilot and co-pilot had to share. Whichever partner was not playing, they were not to take a break, or as I used to say, “This is not a time for you to go to Wawa and get yourself a slushie”.

When a partner was not playing, they were a second set of eyes and hands for the playing partner. They were to be watching their co-partner, giving advice, and even more importantly, giving support and praise on a consistent basis.

With the xylophones, piano, or recorders, it was important for the person who wasn't playing to make sure that their partner was controlling it their instrument, because if they weren't, I would take it away from both of them. That definitely gave the non-playing partner a little bit more skin in the game.

Pilots, Co-pilots, and Proximity Effect

A crucial part of teaching is something called proximity effect: the effect that your distance from the student affects their success. Some teachers have to be very close to their students or else they lose the class. I was always working on extending the proximity between myself and the students - the farther away, the better.

It paid off when the last row of chorus was thirty yards away from me.

When I taught at the Leach School with children who had severe cognitive and orthopedic disabilities, some of the kids had extreme proximity needs. As a teacher, you had to measure the distance between teacher and student in inches, not yards. It required me to be up close with my guitar.

In a general music class, having the co-pilot sitting closely to the pilot is sort of a proximity “cheat” for the teacher. The non-playing partner is doing a bit of my bidding and carrying more than just a little bit of my water. The time they were in dyads was minuscule in comparison to the time they were simply on their own it didn’t bother me that much – but it had a significant positive effect on management and peer reinforcement.

This is a picture of pilots and co-pilots very early on their journey with the guitar. As you look at this picture, observe how each child’s ability with the guitar is at a different place.  The non-playing partner is engaged and doing work that would be impossible for me to do simultaneously with all the guitarists. This is teaching gold.
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By the way, the boy in the far left bottom corner was a beta-student.
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I kept things at a fast pace. Co-pilots and pilots quickly learn that their turn is always coming up before they knew it. There's not a whole lot of waiting involved. We would switch from pilot to co-pilot in very short bursts of time; sometimes once every one minute, sometimes every ninety seconds.

Take away: If you don’t have a deep and wide understanding of the power of compound interest and have applied it to your investments, you probably can’t accurately visualize or appreciate the value in pilots and co-pilots.

For that matter, if you are fuzzy on compound interest, you are also likely on shaky ground with why a Roth IRA is preferred to a traditional IRA.

Please: in the career of any public, private, or collegiate school music teacher, that bit of knowledge is waaaaay more important than harmonizing modes or retrograde rhythms.
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You probably know enough music content to teach right now if you had to. Just trust me on pilots and co-pilots – and find a teacher who can educate you in the finer points of the above three paragraphs.

Pilots and co-pilots have a real word association for little kids. It is not an abstract idea – they get the idea that the plane crashes and everyone dies if the two people flying the plane don’t cooperate and work together.

Busy kids have fewer opportunities to be distracted. Pilots and co-pilots keeps kids on their toes when they’re using their fingers.
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Here’s a video of pilots and co-pilots playing xylophones and pianos. They start by "flying" the xylophone  together - then  "parachuting" to the pianos.
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They are playing “Hot Cross Buns in C” (Ionian for all you clever people out there) and then “Spooky Hot Cross Buns (D dorian).

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Possibilities

5/29/2021

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Pilot and Co-pilot
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Sharpen Your Saw: a Seinfeld Story

5/29/2021

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As music educators, our day is made up of classes that in turn are made up of segments that begin to resemble seven-minute snippets of presentation.

There's that “Hello Song”. And the “So Long Song”. And then the xylophone bits, piano bits, guitar bits, and then there's learning new songs and the list never ends.

Dr. Stephen Covey cites “sharpen the saw” as one of his habits of highly effective people. It reminds us to review, renew, and refresh all aspects of our personal and professional lives.

Keep the blade sharp. Don’t let it get dull.

I was always trying to sharpen the saw of my teaching.

Over all the decades of teaching that I’ve done, it all boils down to hundreds of seven-minute anchor bits that presented my content and emphasized my core value system over and over to students.

Years ago, I heard an interview with Jerry Seinfeld and how he got his big break. As his story unfolded, it resonated in my head like an atomic bomb going off. He was telling my story. Let me attempt to tell his story first.

Before all his fame and fortune, Jerry Seinfeld was a working comedian. As his reputation on the comedy circuit grew, so did his bookings and renown. One day his manager contacted him and exclaimed, “You've done it, you've hit it! They want you next week on the Tonight with Johnny Carson!”

At that time, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was the pinnacle of success for any stand-up comedian. It was what you did before you were on the cover of Time magazine.

To his manager’s consternation, Seinfeld told him to postpone the booking. He would tell this manager when the time was right.

Seinfeld went home and poured over hundreds of yellow legal pad pages of comedy material he had written, put together the best seven minutes he could, and started rehearsing them. He went to comedy clubs in New York City every night for months performing the same seven minutes over and over for a different crowd of tourists each night.
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Everytime he presented the material, he kept mental notes of what he changed to make his material funnier and work better. A raised eyebrow here, a hand on a hip there. He dropped words, he added gestures. He got it so those seven minutes were tighter and tighter with each presentation.

The next line from the interview was the line I'll never forget because it's the image that resonated so deeply with me and my teaching.

In a matter-of-fact-tone, Jerry said after doing the same seven minutes over and over and editing them to be stronger and funnier, it got to the point where his routine was so good and the audience was howling so continuously, that a woman could have walked up on stage, slapped him in the face, and no one would have noticed. That's how effective his material worked.

When Jerry felt the seven minute set had solidified into comedy gold, he contacted his manager and told him to book the Tonight Show. He was on the next week, did his seven minute set, killed, and the national and international phenomenon we know of as Jerry Seinfeld was born.

Jerry was describing my life as a music teacher: establishing core material, presenting, taking data, editing, practice, present, collect data, edit, practice, and so on until I found the best combination of content, timing, pacing, and could stick the landing every time at the end of the teaching segment.

I was collecting data on audio and video, looking for what was strong, deleting what was weak, searching for bad – and good - patterns that were in my presentations.

And always edit. Edit, edit, edit.

Take away question: What “bits” of your classes could you edit to make them more effective?

I discovered that one of the greatest gifts you can give your classes is a tightly-edited framework that they can accurately predict from week to week.

I crafted my classes so they had well-defined and predictable beginnings, middles, and ends.

The beginnings of my class we're tightly patterned, scripted, and staged as the kids came in and did our “Hello Song”.   As we transition from activity to activity, the “Go” times, started to resemble commercial breaks.

At the end of class, the “So Long Song”, with my “I’ll see you . . . next time . . . at Music!” was so effective a resolution that the kids would often jump up and just clap their hands, not necessarily for me but for themselves and for what they had just done.

Take a look at your work.

All those seven-minute segments in your 7.5 hour job - could they benefit from an editor’s pen?

Are there phrases you could tighten up?

A lower voice here, a pause there?

A term that we used in my 16.5 hour business (AKA rock band) was a “tight forty-five”, meaning that for a forty-five minute set, every second was tightly packed with music, with very little opportunity for the audience’s attention to drift.

Teaching started to resemble that mindset for me. One gig a day, six sets a gig, forty-five minute sets. My goal during my 7.5 hour teaching day was similar to that of a rock gig: to close even stronger at the end of the day then I started at the beginning.

Jerry Seinfeld’s story was an affirmation, a confirmation that I had been on the right track, that there was always room for improvement and editing, that a tight forty-five minute class had to include some laughs in it, too, because music is nothing if it doesn't travel through your heart and sometimes makes you laugh or cry.

Take away: I love watching teachers who have made the effort to consciously edit their material to make it more potent in the classroom. Conversely, it’s painful observing a teacher who is on “rote mode” or “winging it mode”.

Lesson plans are for admin. Scripts are for pros. I remember showing a brief lesson plan to a principal but then showing her pages of script that I had written in support of the plan. She said she had never seen that kind of preparation before. I told her the Seinfeld story and she “got it”.

My mother had an old note pad. On the top of each page was the phrase, “Don’t say it. Write it.”

When in doubt, edit.
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Let the guy who created the show about nothing remind us that EVERYTHING can get better  . . . with editing.
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Riddle Me This, Batman.

5/27/2021

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​Riddle me this, Batman.

I'm amazed when elementary music teachers spend four to five years teaching kids how to “shake, rattle, and roll” in music class and then can't fathom why their student’s instrumental progress on a band instrument starting in fourth and fifth grade is slow. Shake (tambourines), rattle (maracas), and roll (drums) et al are all great classroom instruments but an exclusive diet of them does not prepare a kid for instrumental studies – or life.

The three greatest predictors I've seen for instrumental success in fourth and fifth grade are

-a year at least of some instruction on piano

-a year at least of some instruction on recorder

-self-discipline

I appreciate percussion instruments like the next Buddy Rich but the propensity of “shake, rattle, and roll” has really been going overboard the last few decades in general music classes.
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The one sound maker that today’s hip, happenin’ elementary music teacher seems to want to have is a set of Boomwhackers. 
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​The Wackers That Boom are color-coded plastic tubes that are tuned in length to diatonic pitches. They also come in a chromatic version. To my mind, this would be the perfect instrument of choice for the well-dressed Neanderthal.

Lots of gross motor skills going on with Boomwhackers. The emphasis is less on finger finesse and more on booming and wacking. I know there must be incredible lesson plans that people have designed around Boomwackers. What I’m positing is that they singularly provide one more opportunity for hitting large things and using gross motor skills.
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Spending years on percussion instruments and then expecting kids to succeed on wind instruments is a little bit like teaching someone for five years on how to drive a nail with a hammer and then putting them on the assembly line at the Fabergé egg factory. 
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Or training future elementary music teachers and not providing an emphasis on piano and guitar.

It doesn't end well.

Want some successful wind players in your elementary program?

You might want to consider supplementing your clubs and cudgels with some   recorders and pianos.  

If you want to hear something other than the sound of a boom or a whack, pay attention to instruments that develop your students’ fine motor skills.

That'll put a real boom in your music room!
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​We Only Borrow the Baton.

5/26/2021

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The podium was off-limits.

As sixth graders, we knew not to dare step up on that holy ground. That's where our band and orchestra directors stood. We were allowed to walk up to the podium but not to put a foot on it. That was the rule of elementary music on Saturday mornings. Band rehearsal, instrument lessons, and theory lessons. And in between, run and laugh through the dark, empty halls of a deserted high school on a Saturday morning – but don’t even think about that podium.

One day after rehearsal, my band director sent me out from his office to get his Chesterfield Kings off the podium.

The band room was empty.

I stepped up on the podium and it was instant vertigo. I felt like I climbed a mountain and the rarified oxygen had caught me by surprise. The Chesterfield clouds seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The air was thick with nicotine and the POV was one I had never before experienced. Looking down just intensified the vertigo.

His smokes were right where he always left them - on the right side of the podium, next to his overflowing ashtray. I stood on my toes, trying to peek in the window of his band room office. He wasn't looking.

I picked up the baton. It felt lighter than a pencil. I expected it to be much heavier. I carefully put it down in slow motion as I grabbed the pack of smokes and ran.

When was the first time you picked up the baton?

By college, I figured that batons were meant for people with names like Ormandy, Bernstein, and Ozowa – not Holmes. I was destined for the rank and file.

But by junior year in college, I was standing on that first podium and the baton was now legitimately   in my hand. I was the new director of the Saturday morning program and conducting band and orchestra rehearsals. Our program was approximately 200 children that came every Saturday morning and as conductor, I was churning out arrangements for our groups to play.

After I graduated from college, I knew I wasn't going to be touching a baton during my 7.5 hour business day for a while: I was going to be teaching elementary general music.

Things can change quickly, though. Out of the blue, I got a call from my old band director. He had to have some elective surgery and wanted me to fill in as his marching band director for the next three months – starting in five days. Was I interested? I jumped on the opportunity almost as fast as I budgeted the new-found pay check.

I was now conducting an 80 piece Diocesan high school marching band. Our first evening football game was success. The band rehearsals the following week were full of enthusiasm and raucous playing. I had written some pop and jazz charts for the marching band. The kids were pumped and enjoyed ripping through them.

What I did that second week was not expected by the band members. I announced that I was not going to be conducting the Star Spangled Banner any more at pre-game.

You have to realize that when everyone hears the announcer’s command “Please rise for the playing of our National Anthem”, it is the one pre-game moment when all eyes in the stadium are on the conductor. I decided that at that moment, I would hand the baton to a different senior each week to conduct the anthem.

One of our best trumpeters had medical issues with his legs and walked with the assistance of two forearm crutches. He marched with only one support in his left hand while he played his trumpet with his right. The fact that he was a talented musician often obscured the fact that he was a such a profile in courage and ability. Nothing slowed him down.

When I announced on the Monday that Frank was going to be conducting the anthem from the ladder that Friday night, it get very quiet very fast. I wasn’t going to say another word or rob the band of the words that rightfully belonged to them to say.

At that moment, everyone was silently looking at either Frank or the ladder. Then they were looked at Frank looking at a silent me.

Within seconds, his classmates said, “Don’t worry, Frank, we’ll get you up there Friday night.”
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And they did.

That's the way I did my first – and only - year of leading a marching band.

By the ripe old age of twenty-two, I had discovered that the essence of the baton wasn't to hold on to it too tightly for too long. The stick is always meant to be handed to the next person. As directors, we don’t own it. We only borrow and take care of it for a short period of time. It only comes alive when we hand it to someone else.

When I moved over to public school and had a chorus, I routinely had members conduct songs during rehearsal and occasionally in concerts. The purpose was not just to share the baton but to develop a taste in the younger, more proactive kids for leadership opportunities.

If you’ve never conducted a musical group with a baton, I’ll let you in on a little trade secret. Waving the baton is not nearly as fulfilling as looking out and seeing all those kids who want to make music. That’s the real kick. That, and knowing that you were once one of them.

If ever there ever was a reason for not wanting to hand off the baton, that would be it. Because that feeling, well, it's something unlike anything you’ll ever experience in music.

We don’t have a deed for the podium. We only rent.

Just like in a relay race, the trick is not trying to control or own the baton but instead, to do everything in your power to insure that it keeps moving and leading long after you’ve passed it on. 

Somewhere, there is a kid sneaking up on a podium and eyeing that baton.
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Let’s hope she picks it up.
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​How I Ignored My Cell Phone If It Rang In The Middle Of Class.

5/25/2021

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If we were in the middle of a song or an activity and my cell phone rang, I would look at it, drop the call, and tell my class, ”You are much more important than the person who was calling me. I'll call  President Obama back later” which always freaked them out.

In my last few years, I edited it with a different ending: 

“You are much more important than the person who was calling me. It doesn't matter who they are - I'll call  them back later . . . . Unless it's my mom, and if it's my mom, I have to answer the phone. She hasn't been feeling too well lately so if she calls . . . . 

I know my mom. She wouldn’t call me at work unless there was something wrong. So if my mom calls, I apologize in advance, but I've got to take that call.”

That would draw a slew of questions about my mom and what was wrong with her. I would respectfully and gratefully answer their questions.

My intent was to make sure they knew they were more important than any phone call but if my mother called, I would respect her and take the call. I wanted to model that if their mother ever called them, they better answer it.

Years later, kids still ask how my mom is doing.
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​How I Always Answered My Classroom Phone If It Rang In The Middle Of Class.

5/25/2021

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If my desk phone rang, typically I had to run to answer it because I was on the other side of the room.

Suppose I was teaching Mrs. Green's third grade music class.

I would answer like this:

“Good morning, this is Mr. Holmes, PROUD teacher of Mrs. Green's third grade music class. How may I direct your call?”

Years later, kids would tell me how much they appreciated that I answered that phone with those words.
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Amplification and Your Voice: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is – Part two

5/21/2021

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​Mic techniques

One thing you learn how to do singing in a rock band is how to eat the mic. You need to be right on top of it, lips brushing against the grill, and not afraid of it. The position of the mic ball relative to your mouth and nose will give you tons of total variation. In a classroom, if I needed to sing full voice, I simply pushed the mic away a few inches. But normally I ate the mic at all times. It also gives your voice much more gravitas and authority.

After my 600-student school, I took a position teaching general music and chorus in a school with 2,500+ students. The music room was huge with great acoustics, a rugged floor, and cathedral ceilings. The school had a cheap 100w 4-channel powered mixer with two 12” passive speakers – but it was perfect. I used that PA every day, every class - as well as for all my chorus rehearsals. I used my own SM58s.

What Exactly Do You Need?

If you are in a traditional elementary school, you probably have some form of a performing area on a multi-purpose room stage or a cafeteria stage. Many times those rooms have PAs built into them. The problem with these systems though is that sound reinforcement is aimed at the audience and  not at the people on stage – so they don’t help kids a lot in a chorus rehearsal situation.

Solution: go to Musician's Friend or Sweetwater and pick up some kind of four-channel powered mixer speaker package. It will be the best several hundred dollars you spend and your voice will thank you. You'll be able to use it in your classroom, too. With that one small PA system, you'll be able to cover all your general music classes as well as your chorus rehearsals.

Make sure the powered mixer is Bluetooth-ready. If you have an old amp, Bluetooth receivers are fairly cheap and east to retro-fit to your needs.

The crucial thing is to have the speakers at least three feet off the ground. Tabletops or Ultimate Support stands are fine.

If you're working in a school that has no PA system in its auditorium or performance stage area, you need to find something fast. Lots of principals don't think PA systems are that important. How many times have you heard the principal bellow “I don't need a microphone, my voice is loud” and then within 90 seconds they've gone back to typical room conversation levels. If you need a PA for a large performance space, get some advice. The best person I could recommend is the soundman and drummer in our band, Bob Brown. He's kept up with technology and would be able to put together an affordable bid list for your school to pursue. Let me know if you want to consult with him.

Don’t share your mic.

Every music teacher needs to have a personal microphone. You need a cardioid dynamic microphone. Get one without a cord – buy that separately. It will require an XLR mic cord to plug into a professional mixer or amplifier. If you plan to plug it into a line mixer, you’ll need an adaptor  - female XLR to female ¼ inch.
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As far as which mic you should buy, go with the industry standard and get a Shure SM58. Purchase one without an “on-off” switch. If you really want the ability to turn it off and on, buy an XLR cable that has an “on-off” switch. Pick up a replacement screen, too. You can clean the original with an alcohol-soaked cloth but they eventually get to the point of no return. The best part of this: SM58s aren’t that expensive and last for a long time if you don’t abuse them that much.
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​If the budget has room for them, buy two extra SM58s – one for solos and one for announcers.

Wireless mics are an option but I wouldn’t strongly recommend them for class or chorus use. I used two high-end rack-mount Audio-Technica units – one headset and one transmitter for my guitar and bass- on gigs. While they sounded great and took a beating, I rarely used them in school. They can be finicky and are delicate compared to the tank-like SM58.

While you can get a SM58 for close to $100.00, a decent wireless will cost about four times that much. Their batteries drain very quickly, especially if the transmitter is far away from the receiver. When batteries go on wireless, it sounds like a static storm. If you are in a school and inherit a wireless system, go for it. You might like it. Before you spend any money on a wireless system, see if can borrow one and try it out.

Get To Know Your Voice

If you were an instrumental major in college, you probably got up close and personal with your instrument. You knew all its idiosyncrasies, which notes were intrinsically flat, sharp, or spot-on. You knew the effects of heat and cold on your instrument and took all the adequate precautions and performed all required maintenance.  If you’re teaching elementary general music, not only do you need to master piano and guitar: you have to get your vocal instrument up and running.

Universities skimp on vocal pedagogy with instrumental education majors and they typically teach nothing about using amplification and proper mic technique. The most vocal instructions I had in college was one semester of class voice with the incomparable Marvin Keenze. What I learned about my voice, singing, public speaking, and mic techniques came from on-the-job experience in the classroom or on gigs.

The best paying you can do when learning about your vocal instrument is paying attention. That’s what I had to do once I started singing back-up in a rock band and eventually became the lead vocalist fronting our band.

Singing in a rock band can be a lot of fun but there are many pitfalls. First, you are typically singing rangy music that are probably covers that your audience is familiar with. No pressure there, right?

Next, if you are being drowned out by drums, guitar amps, or poorly placed main speakers, you can't hear yourself on stage and you push your voice to the point of hurting it. It’s easy to sing out of tune if you can't hear yourself or the reference pitches. Early on, you figure out the value of monitors. If you’re singing in a band, use Hot Spot monitors for vocal reference. Stay away from floor wedges if you can. Get the mix right.

Let the mic and amp do the work. Focus on your tone at first, not power. Attitude and aggressiveness can be achieved through big singing technique.

Any PA that I set up in my classroom or on a stage for a chorus rehearsal had two speakers slightly behind me and pointed away from my mic to avoid feedback or unwanted resonant frequencies. They were primarily functioning as mains for the children singing but also provide some monitor sound for me.

Learn Your Voice Like You Learned Your Instrument.

Which are your best vocal notes? What is your actual range? What happens when you move from your chest voice to your head voice and vice versa when you sing? Who do people tell you sound like?” Is your sound coming through from your throat or from your chest? What songs do you perform best? Do you know the best ranges for the elementary voice and can you sing in those ranges?

How open are your sinuses? They act as resonator cavities in your head. If they're clogged, your sound production will be diminished probably in the area of 75%.

Keep your sinuses clear! More on sinuses in another post – it is a critical issue.

People will tell you that if you sing you shouldn't consume any dairy products, or you shouldn't smoke, you shouldn't drink alcohol before hand. That depends.

First off, a non-negotiable: stay away from tobacco and drugs when singing. As somebody who played years in smoky clubs, ate whatever was put in front of me on a 10-minute break, and took all the free drinks from customers I was offered, I never found those rules to be non-negotiables for me. They might be for you, but they weren't for me.

I always had water, a diet tonic water, or diet coke handy on gigs or in the classroom. Coffee will dry out your system so it will work against keeping your cords lubricated. When I was doing 4, 5, or 6 hours singing gigs, I also used sugar-free cough drops.

A word of warning against cough drops: I always was mindful that I could choke on a cough drop but I never did. I'm not recommending cough drops in your mouth while you’re singing. But they did help my voice and kept it well-lubricated.

Take Away Point: You can always go out and buy a new guitar or piano, but you can't buy new voice. First things first. Put your money where your mouth is. Pay attention to how your voice works. When in doubt, use amplification. Spend some money on decent sound reinforcement equipment. Convince your school that they need to pay for it.

If your schools are as cheap as some of mine were, find a way to finance it with money from your 16.5 hour business and look for ways to turn that expenditure into a new renewable asset.

Let the mic and amp do the work.

DO NOT push your voice if you get laryngitis, a bad cold, or post nasal drip. Take a sick day and sleep. If you have to go in, show movies. Have a listening day. Play the classical hits while kids either color, draw, or read quietly.

Singing or teaching with no voice can damage your voice – sometimes irreparably.

Once you get a handle on using a mic, buy some cheap mics and teach kids how to sing into them.

I’ll close with a cautionary tale.

There was a period of time where I was singing all day at work and singing about twelve hours over the weekend. Toward the end of one late night gig,  I was singing a song and suddenly notes were not sounding. It just sounded like air. Not a Rasp. Not a cough. But air. My initial fear was that I had screwed myself by singing too much and developed vocal nodes – scars theat develop on your cords from singing too much or incorrectly. I checked in with my ETN specialist.

He had experience with professional opera singers and was knowledgeable about singing in relation to the vocal apparatus. The first thing he did was ask questions and listen. Then he asked me to sing a few songs a capella.

​From there he examined my mouth and nose with a tapered flashlight and moved to an endoscope.  It involved sending a tube with a camera at its end up each nostril to check out my throat, esophagus, vocal cords, and much of my sinuses. We could see what the camera saw in real time on a TV monitor as he focused on my cords and had me sing scales to see how my cords reacted to changes in frequencies.

Thankfully, there were no nodes. He said my vocal technique was excellent (whew!) but I was spending too many hours singing and not enogh hours resting. He described my dilemma this way:

“Think of the notes you sing as water in a pitcher. As you sing, you are pouring water out of the pitcher. Resting refills the pitcher.

Eventually as the water get lower in the pitcher and you don’t refill it to the top, you will start to lose notes. Once the pitcher is empty, you cannot sing. You can make sounds but they will only hurt your vocal cords and prolong the recovery. Stop singing and talking. Rest.”

Good advice!

This  covers the basics - more in-depth info will follow.

If you have any questions, send them my way at [email protected] .
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    Boyd Holmes, the Writer
    musician, composer, educator, and consultant

    An unapologetic blog for unrelenting music educators.

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