I'm Back, Again?

Ok, this is, I believe, the third time I have come back to the blog after a long hiatus here or there.  I've been working at home and practicing while my wife is in graduate school.  She's probably going to get a thousand Master's degrees, but I've started taking control of my career.  The blog is going to become a place to promote my music (which I am in the middle of recording.)  I hope to have six albums out before the summer.  All of them are nice and smooth easy listening tracks I'm recording as A Man Of Few Words.

I'm also going to start a video series on YouTube for band excerpts on bass clarinet, on for basic pedagogy and another series of background tracks that you can listen to while you are working.  I'm going to actually leave the blog up on my computer this time, and I will actually *gasp* reply to comments.  I read a few lovely comments that I had never seen before because I just wasn't looking after the blog at all.

So, I'm back, but this is my career, and I hope to do it full-time from now.  When I get my first two albums done, I hope to have them on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora and the Google Play Store.  So, you'll be able to enjoy my stuff wherever you are.  More updates to come when new videos or tracks are out there.  However, I can't do any of that if I keep yapping on here.  Did you know how much goes into getting your music on iTunes, etc?  Sheesh!  I have to get to work finishing this music, working with an aggregator and get my stuff out there.

That's it for today, hopefully more good news is to come!

Keep Your Practice Journal

I never took a practice journal...ever.  I was never asked to keep one by a private teacher, not even in college.  So, it was kind of a foreign concept to me.  However, it didn't bother me.  I just never kept one.

Well, on January 9th, 2013, I was denied a contract release I had been guaranteed previously.  So, I said "Fuck it, screw it, fuck education...I'm done with this shit."  I took the year between January 9th, 2013 and January 12th 2014 to basically practice at school constantly.  I did a TON of practicing.  I learned all the excerpts I was never taught (which is pretty much all of them.)  I taught myself to play Bb clarinet correctly (which was a major hurdle in my life previously.)  I bought an Eb clarinet, a C clarinet, I had already bought an Alto Clarinet and Leblanc Paperclip BBb Contra in the fall of 2012.  So, I have a full collection of clarinets.  And I learned EVERYTHING.

However, I didn't write anything down until June of 2013.  Then I started charting everything.  I started writing down goals.  I charted my tone for each instrument and took all kinds of notes, set goals for learning solo pieces and I learned about 50 pieces in a year and about 100 excerpts.  Basically, I gave myself a Doctorate in performance in a year.  Most of what I got done at the end of the year was directly tied to what I wrote down in my practice journal.

So, what do you write in your practice journal?  Whatever you want.  If I took pictures of mine and posted it here, you wouldn't be able to read it.  It's scribble scratch, but it works for me.  Do your own scribble scratch and see where it takes you.

On a side note:  Don't keep a journal for every instrument you play.  Let them all intermingle.  You never know what you'll learn about one while you're practicing another.

Next up:  My new Bass setup ;) ... sort of.

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaack!

So, I logged on and realized it's been almost 3 years since I've said a word here.  However, the blog has been viewed like 15,000 times since I stopped writing.  So, I guess I should keep it up.  In fairness, when I stopped writing, I got screwed by my school district and sent to a place I didn't want to go, spent a year there, found my best friend and someone I call my sibling.  Then I spent another year and a half working in an even worse situation before I finally quit.

Now, I'm working at home full-time, writing.  It's great.  I homeschool my kids and I work on excerpts in preparation for major orchestral auditions.  So, I'm doing good.  However, I've made a few...discoveries since I stopped writing.  I guess I should share some of those, but I don't want to write it all tonight.

Suffice it to say, I learned A LOT about playing, and it all started when I got screwed out of a new job.  Now, I'm nearly ready to take any audition on the planet.  This is WAY more fun than teaching, and provides a much higher quality of life.

Stay tuned!