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.
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:
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:
- - teaching space one, the orange proscenium at the other end of the room framing the piano
- - teaching space two, the Smartboard with recorder music
- -teaching space three, by the white board and red chair
- students tracking the notes – this started with me pointing to the notes with a stuck as they played and parleying it into “eye pointing”
- The “stop/go” sheets to the right of the smartboard on a music stand
- Bookcases covered with old bed sheets hiding the instruments
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.
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.
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