It's Just What I Do.

Good morning and happy holidays to you all. I hope we all survive Christmas.

Slow and steady. That's exactly how I would summarize the last four months. This school year has hands down been the best school year I've experienced so far. Teaching at three different schools is taxing. It's hard to develop a rapport with the students. I always feel like somewhat of a visitor, especially at Hyde Grove where I only teach on Mondays. The other two schools I've been at for the last two years are experiencing two different situations. My Tuesday-Wednesday school feels like it's on the brink of total destruction while my Thursday-Friday school is trucking along, trying to maintain the "A" for their fourth straight year. While music isn't necessarily considered key in the FCAT preparation, I take what I teach very seriously and I firmly believe that it takes more than statistics, test grades, and results to change a student's life.

In the past, I've had a hard time teaching the primary grades(K-2). Most people think, "well how hard can it be...just sing Twinkle Little Star." WRONG. They must have a concept of pitch. They have to understand that high and low and loud and soft are NOT the same thing, and more than anything they must understand the differences in singing voice, speaking voice, melodic direction, and vocal registers. I've started developing guided listening lessons. In these lessons, I model the differences in tone. I'll have them echo and eventually, once they're ready, sing in unison. We listen to different examples and they must identify which direction the melody is moving. They seem to enjoy it, but the key is being a cartoon and keeping their attention.

With the intermediate grades (3rd-5th), I have a very direct approach. Just like elementary school students must learn to read and write the English language, I've taken up the task of teaching these students how to read and write the universal language of music. Note value, rhythmic and melodic notation, and basic theory-these are the emphasis of my lessons. They learn how to play two-three different rhythms simultaneously while keeping a steady and independent pulse all while playing as a small percussion ensemble. They learn how to take what is written and put it into actual organized sound. I always tell them, "until you take what is written, and put yourself into it, those notes are just symbols on a page."

Since I've taken so much time to focus on my work, Oscar Mike unfortunately fell on the back burner. I've hit a bit of a writers block, but thankfully Daniel has produced two brand spanking new songs. It's not like we haven't been playing, however. We just haven't had any gigs since September. We always practice. We orchestrate new arrangements on older songs, we pay more attention to detail, more muscianship is being incorporated into the material, and we've really started working more with our dynamics. We're always exploring new sounds and listening to find out what we can do better, how we can play tighter as a group, and what we can do to just make good, solid, true music. A splash chord here, a drop in dynamic level there, when to syncopate, when to play it straight...music has no limits it seems.

Thankfully, we have ended our three month gig vacation and have a show at The Pit next Friday. As usual we have to do presales. I enjoy doing it believe me. It's always a rush whenever someone buys a ticket to come watch you play, but after awhile you just kind of start to feel like a cheap car salesmen. It's just how some of these venues here function. It's straight up pay to play, but sometimes ya just gotta play ball. The burden of presales aside, I can't wait to debut the new songs Daniel has written and reveal an even tighter sound with Oscar Mike. Even after only three months gig free, I can feel the lust to perform creeping up on me like a starving honey badger.

Music, music, music. Sometimes it seems that's all I do. I wish it really was...