Tag: Chicago piano instruction

  • Preparation 2

    I talk to musicians. I have a conversation with them. They can chose the subject themselves. It doesn’t really matter. I’m often here to let them know that someone out there understand what they are going through. That someone listens. It’s usually enough to keep them sane. Yes, sane. I said sane. Because practicing something…

  • Preparation 1

    Being a musician is a strange proposition. We are asked to practice. Meaning we have to spend a ton of time alone slaving over scales and rudiments. Then we are asked to go get a job. That part requires to have social skills and interact with the world. We have prepared for the playing part…

  • No woman no cry

    This is a song we recorded with our family band. It will be featured in an upcoming video we are putting together before the end of August.

  • Chunky hi hat.

    In order to make music, you need musicians. In order to get some emotions out of music, you will need some important tools. Dynamics could come in handy. But, since I want to talk about the hi hat, we shall explore the subject of power today. When you play a groove, let’s say a typical…

  • Too controversial 4

    If you ever saw our family band, you will see that it is as much mine as it is my children’s. They each have their own place in it. We also have a lot of love and tender feelings for each other. My children talk to me. They keep me informed of where their minds…

  • Too controversial 3

    I refused to make more money. I was asked to teach in different schools and music organizations around Chicago. Some of them were ready to pay more than what I was making per hour in my own studio. They were proposing a nice schedule, lots of students, lots of money. It would have been a…

  • Too controversial 2

    Parents have been silently pushed towards negligence for a long time. Society doesn’t make a mystery of it. It started with the TV in the 50’s and 60’s.  4 or 5 hours of TV everyday for each child. We are now in a very developed digital era where every young person has things in their…

  • Too controversial 1

    There is, in my life, something exceptional. It has been there for a long time, now. It is one of the most precious thing my family has, and it is extremely controversial. I present to you: our happiness. My children are not the typical children. My son, 14 years old, does not play video games…

  • Music as a hobby 3

    I know someone that eat right, lives in the countryside, has enough money and resources to sustain herself and is athletic. She can’t play no more. Everything in her body hurts. Her joints have locked. I listened to her story. It can be summed up in one word: why? She got out of a show…

  • Music as a hobby 2

    If you ask the musicians that are on auto-destruction mode to explain why they are on that mode, you enter a swamp. A huge swamp. Their story is long. It is complicated. Painful. Sad. Frustrating. It depends how far in their lethal path they are. But, usually, some very powerful and intricate events have driven…