Tag: Chicago piano instructor

  • Here is what happened, part 2 (The revenge!)

    So, Bob was not doing good. And we talked. One of the difficult part of being a professional musician is to keep your confidence. By confidence, I mean self love, the drive, the energy to know you can do the job. Bob had to retain a little love and appreciation for his own talent in…

  • Here is what happened, part 1.

    The life of a musician is seen as chaotic, unpredictable, maybe even dangerous. And, although my life is fairly mundane and uneventful, it is common to experience dramatic upheaval as a working musician. A colleague was telling me about his band. They had a lot of gigs, the crowds seemed pleased with their performances, he…

  • Choosing a music teacher

    And here we are in September now, summer almost over, back to school time, the children thinking the fun is in the past, the parents looking to sign up their youngster for different activities. And if one wants to include music in their education, the question comes: how do you chose a piano teacher? How…

  • Drummers enter the academy

    The drum set is a very young instrument. Although there were some forms of dum set at the beginning of the 20th century, the instrument, as we know it, took its modern shape around the mid 1930’s with drummers like Gene Krupa. Little by little, after that, a drum set was more or less composed…

  • Technique 2. The fun part.

    Here is an exercise. You don’t necessarily need an instrument, you can use your voice. First, let’s think about summer. Make a sound, any sound with your voice. The summer gets hotter and more humid. Transform the sound you are making to match the description (don’t forget to breathe). If you want you can make…

  • Technique 1

    Learning music is a strange proposition. Many musicians get lost in it. If someone wants to learn music, surely it is with the intent of extending the vocabulary, the tools in the box, so to speak. And, I suppose, that much is true: if someone studies music thoroughly, they will be able to comprehend more…

  • Cold

    Human beings are always forced to cope with inertia. I’m talking about the object’s inertia. Which, by the way, I interpret as chaos. Take this harmless spoon, grab it firmly in your hand. Oh but, the fingers slip, the spoon lift up four inches from the table, come back down forcefully against the porcelain of…

  • Jet lag

    I just came back from France. We were at the airport yesterday. As I watched the crowd shuffling by, I was struck by all these people, so different, so diverse, converging in the place. Maybe the difference of culture was the most obvious. African women with bright colors clothing, Indian women with their sari, people…

  • The sound of summer in Paris

    When I lived in Paris, people would come visit in the summer and tell me that the city was crowded, impossible to manage with all these people every where. And I remember thinking: “Absolutely not! Listen to that! The city is empty, or, at least, running low on people.” It is because during the summers,…

  • All music in a kitchen

    Music is fun! I would even argue that music is the most fun a human being can have. I give you a kitchen with standard equipment. I give you a bunch of kids from 3 to 77 years old. I give you the will to make something happening that is not cooking and, cataclop-cataclop! we…