Music Teachers Associations: Stages for Showcasing or Hospitals for Healing?

In 2012, I moved across the country and joined two different music teachers associations. One of these associations held certain education and experience requirements for joining, a foreign concept that disturbed and continues to disturb me. Not that I had any trouble joining – my qualifications are more than solid. And granted, […]

Why Rubrics Do Not Work For Competitions & Music Festivals

This article explains why rubrics are not appropriate for evaluation of musical performances, despite the success of rubrics in academic evaluations.

Thinking Twice About Strict Make-Up Lesson Policies

Many private music teachers have harsh make-up lesson policies or policies that deny make-up lessons altogether, and we are told in journal articles, conference sessions, blogs and teacher forums that this practice is a sign of professionalism. This is not true.

We Need More Honesty in Music Advocacy

This article seeks to help the cause of music advocacy by identifying its weakest (and yet most commonly advanced) arguments (citing of secondary benefits, pocketbook bias, and use of anecdotes) and by presenting a more honest way to advocate for music to stay (or grow) in schools.

The Reality of Music and Creativity

The development of creativity is perhaps the most cited secondary benefit of musical study by music advocates, and yet musical instruction as it exists in current public K-12 education is one of the worst ways to promote creativity.

Studies Addressing Piano Voodoo of Tone Production

In July 2010, I wrote about The Piano Voodoo of Tone Production, which demonstrates that pianists cannot control timbre of a single note independently of volume because of the physics of piano escapement/letoff.  There are those who claim we can control the tone of a note without changing its volume, and […]

The Piano Voodoo of Tone Production

Note (6/27/16):  This article, first published in 2010, as well as the follow-up article (Studies Addressing Piano Voodoo of Tone Production), were edited and combined into one article, and published as a feature article in Clavier Companion titled “Tone Production: Doing the Right Things for the Right Reasons” (July/August 2016, p. […]

Expertise Is Not The Result Of Pure Discipline

In my Talent’s Role In Artistry blog entry, I make a case for the idea that talent exists and that it plays a notable role in the development of an artist. Most people probably don’t need to read that blog entry to arrive at such a widely-accepted conclusion. The title […]