1. Be better about logging money spent each month. I use Mint for accounts but I also use the Saver iPhone app to keep track of specific expenses on the go. I often forget to do so, which means its analytics are useless if I’m not really making the effort to track what I’m spending.
2. Practice music at least 3-4 times a week. I haven’t yet indicated specific musical goals I would like to achieve throughout the year, and I know that if I do so, practicing in a more focused matter will yield better results, but I’m at the point right now (i.e., I rarely practice and need to more!) where even unfocused practicing will help.
3. Make a more concerted effort to be more practical about my grocery shopping, meal planning, and overall food waste. This is kind of self-explanatory, maybe, but essentially I’d like to be able to make smarter choices in the grocery store and reduce the amount of food that accidentally goes wasted. And, you know, make smarter meal choices in general.
4. Do something active every day. I’m still in the middle of my Insanity quest (I’m going to write more about it next week, when I begin Month 2!), but that is set to end by February 2013. I’m hoping that I will stay motivated to keep up with regular exercise and yoga, as I kind of like that I’ve gotten to the point where exercising 3-4 times a week feels like “slacking.” I don’t know what Shaun T has done to me, but there you have it.
5. Read 150 books, both prose and comic (though I know that including books of the comic type (and I don’t count single issues) may give me an edge on the prolificness here). No, seriously. If you’re on GoodReads, you can set your own challenge and watch your progress here.
6. Be better about maintaining long-distance friendships and other such relationships. Too often I claim being “too busy” to keep in touch. Enough of that.

Did you make New Year’s Resolutions this year? Let me know what you’re hoping for in 2013!

Thanks to all the comfort food I’ve indulged in over the past few days (darn you, Thanksgiving leftovers!!), I’ve been inspired to begin the Insanity fitness program again.

The first time I tried this was in Summer 2010 and while I was able to get through a little over a month of the program (though I alternated some days with Bar Method classes), I had some pressing things on my mind — like, you know, dealing with an irritating bedbug infestation in my New York City apartment. The program definitely lives up to its name, though, as every time I do a work out I think to myself that Shaun T must have seriously been insane when he designed this.

(Fun fact: Shaun T is also a dancer/choreographer, in addition to leading many Beachbody fitness programs. Yay arts!)

Insanity is built on the principle of “max interval training” – prolonged periods of high intensity followed by very small (think 30 seconds) periods of rest before another period of high intensity. When I ran track in high school, I was most definitely a sprinter, and I definitely got used to short intervals of high intensity, then some cool-down or moderate exercise. But now that I’m settling into my mid-20s, I’ve found that I really need to kick it up a notch in order to stay in shape.

While doing regular yoga has been a great way to increase strength and flexibility, I needed a way to get myself to do more cardio — and Shaun T is perfect for that.

As you can see, I’m using FoldingText (read more about my love of FoldingText here) to keep track of my calendar. This time, I plan to go the full 2 months and we’ll see what happens by the end!

Oh, and if you’re curious, try the Insanity Fit Test — take one minute for each exercise listed and see how many of each you can do. In theory, you’d take the fit test intermittently throughout the Insanity program in order to track your progress. Insane, right?

What’s been working well?

So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy it’s been for me to transition from teaching in-person to via Skype. I’ve been lucky that most of my students have great internet connections, so it’s easy for me to see their hand and arm positioning (very key) as we’re playing together. We often can play together at the same time, and I’ve even been successful at accompanying my student with guitar chords while he plays an intricate guitar solo (“Christmas Canon Rock” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra, if you’re curious).

When introducing a new piece of music to a student, I’ve found Skype’s screensharing feature (here’s tips for Skype in Windows and in Mac) to be invaluable. While my students print out their own copies of their music after I’ve emailed it to them, screensharing allows me to ensure that I can guide their first look at the music. I can turn on the screenshare, then open up the music in full-screen. The student can see my mouse pointer so I can use that to bring their attention to specific aspects of the music easily. And, if I use Skitch, I can easily annotate what we’re seeing with text, shapes, and arrows.

For example, here’s a screenshot of some sightreading I put together for a student who’s beginning to read music notation after a few years of solely working from guitar tabulature. I took a screenshot using Skitch, then annotated it during the lesson. My student was able to follow along and by the end of the period, we played through a few lines together. The cool thing about Skitch, too, is that it integrates with Evernote - a tool I already use to organize my files, lesson plans, and reflections by student.

What still needs work?

While being able to effectively communicate in a succinct manner, without too much ramblings or insertions of the word ‘like,’ has always been something I’ve worked on since I started teaching, I’ve learned that it’s even more essential while teaching via Skype. Now that I’m no longer able to rely on reaching out to adjust a student’s hand on the instrument, I find myself almost thinking through the instructions I want to convey twice before speaking to my student.

I’ve written here before on how I’ve used Paper.app for iPad as, well, a replacement for paper in the private studio. However, now that my student and I aren’t physically in the same space, both of us directing our attention to the iPad, I’ve needed to find a resource to use to accomplish the same thing.

I tried using Skitch today, spontaneously, to draw a chord diagram for a student. Unfortunately, I’m still new to this product, so I didn’t realize until literally as I write this blog post that you can open a blank document with Skitch to annotate; I thought you could only work with screen captures, so I took a screenshot of a blank area on my computer screen and annotated that instead.

I’m going to try using a blank Skitch document next time, though I’m also on the hunt for any recommended whiteboard apps for Skype (IDroo looks like a good possibility). However, right after I finish up this blog post, I’m going to go make some hand-drawn chord diagrams for a student, scan them, and then email them; it’s just easier in this circumstance. While I love being as paperless as possible, sometimes it still has its place…!

Do you teach music via Skype? Let me know what you think! I’d love to hear your tips and experiences!

After thinking about it, though, and setting it in the context of my own experiences working for a startup, it starts to make a little more sense. The networks above can provide a product or service for free, but they’re also at full liberty to change the way items show up in followers’ feeds, how developers can utilize their API, whether they can utilize an API at all -this article mentions ADN founder, by the way -, or advertise at will (… I couldn’t just pick one link because you see this in a lot of places). I completely get it that it’s their right and really, in their best interests to provide a product or service and expect to recoup some gains as a result. Servers cost money, after all.

So why pay to access a social network?

By paying for App.net, I’ve experienced the following things, more or less in order:

• Fear that my money will be wasted
• Isolation once I realize that I know literally no one on ADN
• Shyness as I fill out my profile and choose how I want to introduce myself to a bunch of people who don’t know me
• Trepidation as I start browsing the global feed
• Daring as I begin to add people who seem interesting
• Brazen, almost, as I think to myself, “Hey, you paid for this… make it worthwhile” and begin to reply to individuals’ posts
• Excitement as I start accumulating followers in this new space
• Curiosity regarding what’ll show up on my feed next
• Embarrassment as I notice that I’ve tried to manually refresh my feed a few times in a row and no new posts have appeared
• Satisfaction once I start realizing, “… I kind of get it now”

I’ve only been on ADN for 2 days, but I’ve already had a lot of fulfilling conversation – and the slightly-longer character limit of 256 characters is great! A series of football-related replies caught my eye so I jumped right in and made friends with an AC Milan fan and have even gotten into some enjoyable chats with a Chelsea fan. This is pretty notable if you consider that us Liverpool fans don’t usually play well with others in the Big 4. (Not that our recent form has really warranted inclusion in said Big 4 anymore…)

It’s also comforting to know that since everyone pays for access, the team behind ADN have a source of income to put towards stabilizing and perhaps improving their systems architecture as their network gains more users. It’s a self-sustaining model, and the fact that I pay for it honestly makes me more driven to utilize the network and reach out to make connections that I normally wouldn’t on other networks. (Sorry if I’ve annoyed any ADN users by doing that, by the way.)

So, in short —

Yes, I pay to access a social network that, at first glance, is a lot like Twitter. And yes, I do check other social networks, and I understand that I’ll likely miss out on conversation there while I’m talking to people on ADN. I still think that #musedchat and the rest of the education PLN on Twitter is an incredibly valuable resource.

But am I satisfied with ADN? Yes. Is it still early days? Yes. Will I probably continue to use ADN a year from now? Yes.

1. I’ve been trying out FoldingText for a few days and so far, I really like it. Here’s the description: Plain text productivity for geeks. As you type, FoldingText auto-formats your document into sections, lists, and paragraphs. Fold sections to see the big picture. Focus to see the details.

While the app basically lets you work in plaintext, based on Markdown —

# Streamified

## tasks.todo

- Revise Facebook intro blog post

— I like how it will turn your text into something a little more actionable.

I use FoldingText to create different sections for all of my areas of responsibility (see the “# Streamified” in the example?) I can then add brainstorming ideas, to-do items, etc. I like to use @tags for sorting and importance indicators (!, !!, !!!, etc.) to let me know when something really needs to get done. It’s not just all business, though; I have a wish list in my FoldingText that’s getting pretty long!

As the description states, it’s definitely productivity for geeks. Since it’s based on plaintext, there’s certainly a lot you could do in this app that you can do in anything that edits text. But, if I’m being perfectly honest, it’s the timer that made me hit the “buy” button:

2. Since I use a Windows machine for work, I knew that I needed a way for my FoldingText document to sync between my Mac and my Windows. Enter Dropbox, of course. I’m still amazed at how I can just “set it and forget it.” Saving my FoldingText document as a .txt file in a Dropbox folder did the trick. Now I can open it on any machine and add to it.

3. In lieu of an official FoldingText iOS app, I needed a way to be able to check and edit my FoldingText document while on the go or if I’m choosing to only work with my iPad. iA Writer, my preferred Mac Markdown & writing-anything app, has an iOS app that syncs with Dropbox. (Given my dependence on apps’ dependence on Dropbox, I’m not sure why I ever tried out Google Drive, honestly.)

Everything’s there!

4. I don’t know about you, but I tend to forget some stuff if I don’t immediately write it down — which is why FoldingText is such a benefit, as I can stick everything in it and watch my thoughts scale up and down accordingly.

I often find myself on the go when I think of something that I need to get out of my mind, quick, before I forget. It’s during moments like these that I don’t want to open up iA Writer and scroll to the appropriate section. This is where Drafts comes in, a different kind of note taking app. In Drafts, text comes first – open the app and get a new, blank draft.

It’s easy to just open up Drafts and input my text. If I don’t even have time to share the post directly to Dropbox, Drafts will save it for when I’m ready to do so.

Why a separate Inbox-type file as opposed to just sticking everything to an Inbox section at the top of the FoldingText file? Processing items from a separate file and taking the time to decide whether I want to manually move the item into my FoldingText just works for me. It may not for you. Your milage may vary.

—

I know; best case scenario, I’d be able to use one app for all of this, and maybe when FoldingText comes out with an iOS app I’ll be able to do so. However, this workflow is great for me. Even if you choose not to use any or all of these tools, I hope you’ve been able to find a way to keep track of your thoughts and tasks that works for you!

After joining the San Diego Jazz Collective, a great Meet Up that has a variety of jam sessions, I’ve started working my way back through them alphabetically. ”Alone Together” (wiki link) is the first tune that’s brand new to me, so I’m going to spend a few days working on that one.

I really like this song and I think the relatively slower tempo and repeated chord progression gives the bassist the option to focus more on creating interesting riffs instead of primarily a walking bass line for timekeeping purposes.

Goals:

• While I’m starting in the key of D minor, I’d like to be able to play this chart in a few other keys, like A minor. Any suggestions?
• Based on the chart I have for this song, “Alone Together” is a great opportunity to focus on half & fully diminished 7th chords and 7b9 chords, which I’ve never really played through before.
• This song seems like a good venue to use for practicing ‘minimalist’ solos with held notes and silence – something I tend to shy away from in my own playing.

I primarily use my iPad as a teaching tool for private lessons. I actually rarely use paper (I do make an exception for two students who prefer paper for chords/tab); many of my students prefer being emailed links to tabs and chord sites, and a lot of them also have iOS devices of their own and have invested in the same apps that I primarily use.

Today, I was working with a student who stated that she learns better when she can visually see rhythm patterns. I looked through my selection of apps for something I could use to draw and modify patterns easily, and found Paper!

I’ve used this app before, but mainly just to create “art” that should probably never actually see the light of day (like my fail attempts at quarter rests in the pictures above). However, today I was able to use it successfully for music teaching. Not only was my student, a beginner to guitar and overall concepts of music notation and reading, able to play new rhythms when presented with them, she was able to describe what elements of notation (half/quarter/eighth notes and rests) needed to be used in order to notate the rhythm we were playing.

I used a series of 3 rows today:

1. We were working with 4 beat patterns, so I wrote “1 2 3 4” at the top of all of these.
2. Using X’s and O’s, I wrote the pattern down below. The X’s went underneath the downbeats and the O’s were used to represent upbeats. After this row was added, we sounded out the rhythm verbally (e.g., “1, 2, & 4 &”) before playing it on the guitar.
3. For the first few rhythmic patterns, I would write down the corresponding notes and rests for the bottom row, talking about why I made those choices and reviewing how long each note or rest’s duration was. I then started to ask my student to help me to fill in the notes and rests (e.g., “what kind of note would we need here?” “do we need a rest or a note here?”).

I’m really excited about this and plan to use Paper.app in teaching in the future as a component of my almost-paperless studio. I would love to hear your feedback about ways in which this could be improved, different lesson plans involving this app, and more.

In the last issue of Leading Notes, Joe Guarr wrote in his piece:

If we can find some time during the year for chamber music, our students can take control and make their own musical decisions. This will help them grow into independent musicians, which will in turn improve the ensemble as a whole.

In his book Drive, author Daniel Pink lays out evidence showing that autonomy is directly correlated to job satisfaction. Having the ability to perform even menial tasks in whatever manner one sees fit gives the worker or student some sense of control. The authors of Love and Logic, Jim Fay and David Funk, argue that giving up some control in the classroom leads to a better classroom environment. Chamber music is one way in which you can give your students a chance to explore independent musicmaking.

I had the honor of editing Joe’s article earlier this year, and after I read the first draft I knew I wanted to experiment with chamber music in my ensemble.

I had already incorporated sectional rehearsal days into my classroom, and this seemed like a good next step. The students were already used to working in small groups with their peers, primarily independently, to problem solve playing tricky areas in their concert repertoire. After almost a school year’s worth of the instructor (me) directing how the musicmaking process would go, they were now given a new problem to solve: learn a new piece of music and execute it by themselves.

At first, I thought about giving each group a different, self-contained piece of music to work with. However, I found my music library’s selection limiting (and if anyone has any great recommendations for chamber music, please send them my way!). I eventually settled on arranging a simpler version of the “Prelude” from Grieg’s Holberg Suite (here’s a link to the piece on Spotify), dividing it up into sections. Each group got a different component. A group of students who were entirely new to their instruments, in the meantime, is working independently on a beginners’ piece that is more up to their speed; they’ve come a long way over the year!

The students are playing their brief excerpts for each other tomorrow and I’m excited to see the results. No matter what, I was glad to give them the opportunity for independent learning, playing, and musicmaking. Next year, I hope to incorporate more activities like this throughout the school year and not solely at the end, in May/June.

What are you doing to encourage creative and musical independence in your classrooms?