Sunday, October 31, 2010

Two Years On

Just completed my second year of blogging and taking the opportunity to do the long overdue blog housework of changing Alex Ross back to The Rest Is Noise over on the Regular Reads and adding Dave Wilken's Wilktone to the Regular Reads: Horn. Also changed both blog rolls to most recent post order instead of alphabetical order.

Adding Dave's blog because in between hard core brass and embouchure posts, which will be of little interest to non-brass players, he's been doing some great posting on the basic issue of how it is we teach others to play music.  

Lately I've been doing more commenting on other blogs than posting here, hoping that over time some of those ideas will become clearer to me and I'll say something more definitive here.

I want to thank all the folks over on the regular read lists, as their blogging has given the context and inspiration for my writing here, at least in my mind. With the exceptions of Alex Ross and Opera Chic, I've been lucky enough to be in touch and have wonderful interactions with all of them, either through e-mail or comments and posts going back and forth, or both. Having for years seen people's eyes glaze over, especially when they were music specialists, when hearing I was a music therapist, these conversations have been immensely rewarding both professionally and personally.

Special thanks to Jonathan West for getting Timepiece performed. The connection was via blogging, a benefit I never dreamed of when starting out. I'm now back to composing a little and having a great time.  Were it not for Jonathan's interest and spending the time and energy to get that performance off the ground, I don't think writing new music, as opposed to learning how to arrange music for small ensemble, would have occurred to me. 

Jonathan has sent an mp3 of the (terrific) performance that, in the fullness of time, I want to put to an iMovie, then upload to YouTube, then embed in the blog. 

6 comments:

  1. Hi, James - Thanks very much. And by the way, still really impressed by the amount of material you put up each week, and the regularity of posting. In general blogging terms I think that make yours more of a true blog than my more sporadic approach. Knowing there's probably going to be fresh material most days keeps me clicking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congrats on two years! That's well past the average half-life of any blog, particularly one as active as yours.

    Thanks for the plug, by the way. I hope that I can end up sending lots of traffic towards your site for lots of interesting discussions too!

    Dave

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Lyle
    Thanks for Timepiece, it was very enjoyable to rehearse and play. And congratulations on 2 years at the blog. I've enjoyed reading and commenting on your articles, and they have prompted me to write a few of my own!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, Dave. Delighted to see John Ericson linking you. Between his project of slogging through the method books to present us with concise comparisons on the various issues and your writing about the teacher/student interface there's a lot to be learned and thought about.

    You and the other educators on the list, in your own ways, all seem to be broadening and deepening how we think about helping people learn to make music, which, as a therapist, I see as a wonderful development. Wishing you all great success!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi, Jonathan - As always, thanks for your comment.

    No matter how long I think about posts before writing them, there's always something left out. In this case I should have mentioned your near co-blogger status due to all the wonderful back and forths we've had, starting with that discussion on musicality. Plus all the specific help you've given me on how to play the horn.

    Over and over again you've made me realize I'm not thinking or writing as clearly as I might. Overall, it's having ideas introduced, challenged and broadened that makes blogging such a valuable practice for me. That feature has dwarfed the original notion of just having a place to send people looking for links to the latest research.

    ReplyDelete