One of the many things that I do outside of teaching is organize a local race called the Bucket of Blood Races. Great name no? While it is a great name we do not have a great logo... yet.

This year we decided to have a little fun for the start of our annual Christmas Concert. So my top choir decided to make our own music video. It was a lot of fun and while the original idea was to record our own song we ran out of time and decided to just go ahead and make it anyway using an old N'Sync Christmas Song. The concept is the choir is all arriving for the concert in one car and we follow them as they get ready. When you see them run into the auditorium the choir ran into the actual auditorium the night of the concert and interacted with the audience while singing along (David Letterman Style). Then we all gathered on the stage and sang a fun song "One for the little bitty baby" and then went and changed into our formal wear for the rest of the concert.

• Approach the note from above.
• Singing is an athletic event.
• Drink in the breath.
• Listen louder than you sing.

• Let the breathe fuel the sound.
• Stop talking.
• Smile with your eyes
• Sing through it, not to it.
• What are you singing? To whom are you speaking? What are you trying to say?
• 80% of life is showing up. The rest is what you do after.
• Gird up your loins!
• Pitch is not optional or approximate!
• Stand from the waist up.
• Pull the taffy!
• What are you singing ABOUT?
• One more time...
• Make mistakes. Make them boldly. Make them once.
• Lay a big fat green egg, because I cannot fix "nothing."
• Have a love affair with the center of pitch.
• Too much, too soon, too bad. (About a crescendo)
• Once a mistake, twice a habit!
• Don't make it more accidental than it already is.
• The higher you go, the brighter. The lower you go, the brighter.
• No one can smile and sing except Miss America...and she only learned one song.
• Bend your knees.
• Long vowels!!
• Put more space in your face!
• No one note is the same as the other.
• Everything we do, we do together.
• Never sing louder than beautiful.
• Look up here!
• Do not take steps backwards!!
• I own your eyes.
• Pretend there's a string being pulled out of the top of your head.
• What does [accel./rit./fermata/etc.] mean?" After various mumbled responses with the actual definition, "No, it means to look at me!"
• There's a reason God gave us two ears and only one mouth.
• The arch of the eyebrow governs the shape of the tone.
• Honor the rests, please.
• Look up and live.
• Miss a note. Get a rhythm.
• Enjoy the process not the product.
• Ok we're going to go from the top to the end. I promise I'm not going to stop.
• All music must dance.
• Watch!!!!
• Better to be confidently wrong than wimpily right.
• One more time.
• Let your head rule your heart and your heart rule your head.
• Never louder than lovely.
• They who cannot spread light, are content to generate heat instead.
• It's a SONG, so SING it.
• Sing through your eyes.
• Good is the enemy of excellent.
• Fish lip and rabbit teeth.
• We want bel canto, not can belto.
• I coach choir.
• I'm tired of that mistake, make another one.
• Do we sound like one?
• Do as I meant, not what I said.
• Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable.
• Look #, don't b flat, and act natural.
• Make it interesting!
• The eyebrows matter - it's hard to look interested and sound dull and equally hard to look uninterested and sound engaged.
• Look up and live!
• Sing as if you were fatter stand as if you were taller.
• Strong and wrong is better than feeble and right.
• North-south vowels rather than east-west vowels.
• One more time...
• If the basses are bad, the choir is bad.
• Sing on air.
• Sing from your toenails.
• “What's your favorite piece?" Students: "The one in our hand!"
• Men - sing like football players in tuxedoes.
• Vertical vowels, please.
• Breathe in the shape of the vowel.
• Sit tall.
• Don't 'sing the voice - - sing the phrase.
• Don't land hard on the last note of the phrase just because you've got extra air to spend.
• English is a second language for conductors - Sarcasm is first.
• That vowel sounded like a cat being pulled through a keyhole - backwards.
• That sounded like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!
• “How do you Spell Monodynamoc?" (Choir starts to spell) -interrupting- "Wrong! It's B.O.A.R.I.N.G!"
• Vomit out the air.
• Breathe as if you have 20 noses around your waist.
• Don't let the consonants contaminate your vowels.
• This is a Chor"us" not a chor"me"!
• Use your "Disney eyes"
• Sometimes it's more beautiful when you DON'T sing! (Rests)
  

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You know, I never thought to mention this, but I am left handed. Now this may not seem important to most, because there are certainly a lot of guitar players our their who are left handed, but most left handed guitar players who are capable of great technique and guitar speeds, typically choose to string and hold their guitars completely opposite.

This is not me. I play guitar the same way that most right handed guitarists play. What is the correct approach if you are a left handed person is just starting to play guitar? well, naturally there is no right or wrong way to go about it. I can remember when I first started playing, for the first 3 months, I couldn't do what most right handed guitar players had accomplished in that same amount of time.

So, if it was that difficult for me, then why did I go this route? because I was told that I had too, and that playing my guitar in reverse would be harder to practice on. What do I think now? its rubbish of course. Just because a right handed guitar player might imagine it to be a difficult task, doesn't mean that a left handed person will have a hard time with it. I mean, asking someone to go against their physical or genetic design, is like asking them to walk on the ceiling.

Oh, it gets better!!

This is really quite fascinating. The other night I was reading about being ambidextrous, because I claimed to be so to a particular person once. She told me that I was not ambidextrous, but that their was a different name for my capabilities, and that I was only "half" ambidextrous. So, I put it out of my mind, but when I read this article the other night, I was blown away by what it had to say about ambidextrous people.

The article explained that basically if you can do one thing that you shouldn't be able to do with your unfamiliar hand, then you are technically ambidextrous. Here's where it gets good. The article went on to explain that most people who are ambidextrous, start out as left handers, and learn to become ambidextrous because we live in a right handed world. Fascinating!

This tells you that what you believe someone can do is only based on them being "gifted", "lucky", or "blessed" is total B.S. I've said it for years, but people just like to make excuses for themselves, I think. I mean that's easier to do, right?

Anyways, imagine that you wanted to become ambidextrous for some reason - could you do it? hell yes you could! When I was six I broke my left arm, and it was in a cast for a very long time. I loved to draw, and spent most of my time doing this. So, I had to learn how to write and sketch with my right hand. I'm way out of practicing now, but at the time I learned to develop my right hand pretty well.

Its typical for any guitar player to want to isolate techniques and work on each one separate from another. For instance, we tend to work on sweep picking, and then when we're finished doing that we'll move on to something like alternate picking. Here's the rub - most professional sounding guitar players will combine such techniques. There are two strong reasons for this. One, it makes playing the advanced stuff on the guitar easier, and two, it gives a guitar player more room for expression.

So in this lesson we're going to work with an outstanding exercise that I use to warm up with personally, that combines two techniques. What are they? alternate picking and economy picking, but with more focus on alternate picking.

One more thing before we get started - I truly believe in the power of limiting yourself to working with just two exercises per technique. One big and one small, and I'll show you exactly how we're going to do that. We're going to build a small exercise, and then gradually turn it into our larger exercise.

Watch the video, then consult the tab.

Its been a little while now, but roughly a month ago I went to the Alice Cooper Theater Of Death show, and I would have written about it then, except that things have been nuts lately. I must say, if you enjoy Alice Cooper's music and you want to go to the best show that you've ever been to in your life - check him out on tour.

I had seen video of him and his famous, eccentric stage shenanigans before, but seeing the master himself live blows everything else out of the water. There was no shock rock vaudeville stone left unturned as he truly commanded the stage like only a mascara running, self resurrecting, bad boy can.

My brother had always described to me the atmosphere of the show so I did have a little bit to go off of, but then when you are actually witnessing the flow of an Alice Cooper concert, you really don't give an F about any other show. Seriously, everything else is just boring to me now, and the man is in his early sixties now, so now is the time to enjoy what he has to offer, because again - his work is made to be spontaneous, or in other words - live!

Don't let the early sixties part fool - Alice is like a fine wine - he gets better with age.

traducido por Angel Chavez Una de las partes más gratificantes de la creación de esta edición de Urtext ha sido descubrir una nueva pieza. Al principio pensé que debía ser un nombre alternativo para Capriccio di Bravura, pero al inspeccionarlo, era una obra sustancial que no había visto antes. A primera vista, la pieza parece […]

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Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

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Room 30, Parliament Buildings

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Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

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Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

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Room 30, Parliament Buildings