Finally the students started to play our open stage, one after the other after the other. Awesome, as I had hoped. Some are more primitive, some are more sophisticated … […]

I ask the students to keep a journal. I tell them it’s valuable for songwriting and it’s just for them and nobody is expected to show it. The down side […]

when starting my masters, a friend told me not to bother reading theodor adorno or the frankfurt school. but recently i did and it was impressive. i wonder what about […]

Heard about two students discussing Thelonious Monk’s compositions. One said those tunes integrate dissonant melodic gestures and through their repetition, position the brain to accept sequences that aren’t necessarily sweet […]

Heard about two students discussing the music of John Cage. One said did you know he didn’t write anything? The other said yes he did, lots of things. The first […]

Groups of two or three students get into seven groups and each selects one record from a list of twenty. There are seven presentations to schedule between now and Christmas. […]

Listening to Cecil a Cecil Taylor record from Japan. The concentration the variation. Listening to what isn’t happening. There are no scales in the ordinary sense being played and yet […]

For an ice breaker I asked each of the new students what person, alive or dead, they would invite over for dinner. Their list included Jesus, Frank Ocean, Einstein, Drake, […]

Couple games I like to play with an eight year old. 1/ how long can you go without complaining? 2/ how long can you go without thinking? I try to […]

New people enroll in the songwriting class. Some write similar sounding letters apologizing for their lack of talent or lack of experience or just go on about lack of everything, […]