Music is not just a young person's sport 05/08/2012
 Jamie Moyer is the oldest man to win a Major League Baseball game. He will continue to break the record each time he wins a game, until he retires. Jamie turns 50 in November. I'll reach that same plateau 1 1/2 months earlier. I still remember getting an invitation to his wedding and sending he and his wife one to our wedding. It seems like his first season, 1986, was a short time ago. But, a lot of the players he plays with were born after 1986. He is an "old man" in a world of youngsters (but still holding his own quite well!). The music business is, primarily, also a young persons world. Sometimes, in the Pop World, someone is perceived as "old" when they reach 21. Inspired by Jamie's determination to continue with what he loves doing, I have committed to finally complete an album of my own songs. Started an album several times before. Helped many many people with their albums. But, I just never have quite completed one. The nice part about being in music for so long is that I've made some incredible friends that want to help me on this process. I'm thrilled about getting this going and will have more details in future blogs. So, what about you? Think you're too old to learn music? Think it's too late to start playing an instrument? Know someone that thinks "only young people can learn"? Wrong!! Music is an ageless hobby/pursuit/activity. Anyone can do this. Everyone can learn and enjoy playing n instrument at any level. There is no "best" age to start and no "wrong" age to begin. We've had people start at anywhere between 4 to 85. Making music is something you can truly do for the rest of your life. I had a friend ask me to join a Rugby League a few weeks ago, made up of mostly 20 year olds. While, starting on Guitar or Trumpet at 49 is a great idea, joining a competitive Rugby League at 49 would be a huge painful mistake (at least in my mind it would be). Always wanted to play when you were younger, and didn't have the time or money to do so? Follow your dream, and start Jealous of your kids learning to play instruments? Join them and make some life-long family memories Have a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/neighbor/best friend that is afraid to start, but always wanted to? Buy them an instrument, buy them some lessons. Maybe even join them. Now, becoming a professional musician may be a reach and impossibility. (though you never know....) you can definitely enjoy the music you make, enjoy sharing it with others and have fun playing with other musickers whether young or old! As for Mr. Moyer He's been called "the slowest pitcher in history". Everyone in the crowd is convinced they can throw faster than him and easily hit off of him....... be careful...... A minor league team in the Twins system had a promotion offering free tickets to anyone who could throw faster than 78MPH. They set up a radar gun outside of the stadium. 85 people attempted and failed to throw a baseball as fast as "Old man" Moyer. Don't underestimate what us "old folks" can do 1 Comment Playing music, either on an instrument or by singing, is an incredible experience. Everyone has the inherent ability to make music and to enjoy playing and listening to music. It's fun, it's easy. We've all seen the ads Learn to Play Piano in 30 days Learn all of the Guitar Chords in an hour Master the Sitar in 10 minutes No doubt, making music is fun. But you can't even tune a Sitar in 10 minutes. Learning music takes time. You have to learn the musical language and vocabulary. This takes review and repetition. It takes study time away from your instrument. Trying to learn something and apply it to your instrument at the same pretty much guarantees you'll run into trouble. Many learners will then, improperly, attribute this failure to their lack of ability. What they don't see is that it's the learning method that's wrong, not them at all.  The team of professional educators here at DSM and DLP have taken what we've learned through the years in teaching well over 250,000 individual music lessons to establish the DLP curriculum. We've broken music learning into an easy and logical 3 step process; 1- Discover 2- Learn 3- Play This expedites the learning process and assures music students, and parents, that they are learning the musical language as they learn their instrument. This is not always the case, in music education. But, this is no magical musical mystery short-cut. That does not exist. Learning the musical language and building the physical skills to play your instrument, takes time. But the great parts of music are: - there's no finish line - you can enjoy the music you make at any level in your development. Playing an instrument is fun. In this blog we'll discuss STEP 1, Discover, learning the musical concepts. Click on 1 DISCOVER (circled in RED above) to get to STEP 1 for your lesson. You will then, see this;  Click on INSTRUCTIONS and listen to a walk-through of STEP 1. These instructions are at the top of each page, and should always be the first thing you do when you get to a new page. The first thing we do is to encourage you to take your time and spend a lot of time on STEP 1. It takes time to understand and remember the concepts for each lesson. Lesson 1 has the most concepts to learn because we are introducing you to the basics of the musical language. But, know that the educators at DLP have placed the concepts for the Kore Series in a logical and sequential order that, we feel, is the best path to follow in learning the musical language. Take the time to read and review all of the text in STEP 1. Review the diagrams. You can even make flashcards, if that helps you to review. Learning the concepts is the most important part of learning music. You need to understand before you can apply it. We also know that it's the step that most people want to spend the least time on, because it takes you away from playing your instrument. But this is, without a doubt, the step that you should focus the most time and the step that will help you see faster development on your instrument. You should also continue to review this material with any questions you run into on Quizzes (STEP 2) or problems you have with Songs (STEP 3). Learning music is an incredible journey. We're glad to help you with that. Follow our road map, avoid skipping steps, don't spend too much time on scenic routes and you'll get there in good time. Happy musicking! 20 Years 02/06/2012
1992, 20 Years ago... - Google did not exist - The current president of the US, Barack Obama, was a law professor at the University of Chicago - Super Bowl MVP, Eli Manning, had just turned 11 - Lana Del Ray was 5 years old - there were no smart phones - Princess Diana was still alive - the term World Wide Web was just starting to be used, but most people had no access to it - my son, Max, and Parker Cantera (Eugene's son) were born The Dallas School of Music, Inc. was founded The world has greatly changed in the past 20 years. We'd like to think that music education has grown and developed because of our efforts. We were the first professional music education firm in the world. What began as Robert Lawrence's thesis project has become a company held up as an example of what is possible, by both educational institutions and other tech companies. The idea that, "no piece of music is more important than a person" has been embraced by the DFW community. We are thrilled to still have so many long-term families with us, some that have remained here since the start 20 years ago. It's also wonderful to see adults that started here as 2 year olds and were part of the DSM family all through their High School time, come back as successful adults who still keep music in their life. We look forward to seeing many of these DSM old-timers at our 20th Anniversary Concert this Saturday, February 11th. Our core group, Bob (founder), Tamalyn (founder), myself (1993), Eugene (1994) and Gary (1994) have been together for most of that 20 years. That is testimony to our dedication and to the tremendous culture and environment that has developed here at DSM/DLP. It's a rare thing in business or any type of group, to have people continue to work together and get along for that long. I'm proud to be part of this group, and still look forward to coming in every day. If you're in the DFW area, please come to the concert this Saturday. Open House starts at 6 and the concert begins at 7 featuring all of our staff. It should be a great night of a variety of music. Thanks to all of you for supporting us and keeping us going for 20 years! We could not have done this without all of you. Re-program Your Life 01/16/2012
 One of the first questions that music students and parents ask is: How Long Should I Practice Every Day/Week etc.? and my answer (and my colleagues at DSM would answer the same) is: I Don't Know because time, in itself, is not the answer to progress, growth and development in anything. But knowing how to use that time, establishing habits/routines to be productive, planning what to do before practicing will help assure that you're moving forward in your musical goals. 1) ELIMINATE WASTED TIME- Isn't the Internet and this vast social media world we live in wonderful? If you're like most people you get up first thing in the morning, open a browser and check-in. You browse your social media sites, check your email, maybe send out a few tweets and email replies. It's your routine and you enjoy it....and in most cases, it's a huge waste of time that starts your day out on the wrong path. Do you really need to: know what your old college roommate had for dinner last night? know what bar your local Batista partied at, with complimentary photos, last night? See photos of a co-workers dogs sleeping? Probably not, in most cases. Do these things get your brain warmed up to being productive? Does this time help you reach your goals? Do you ever feel fulfilled after 20-30 minutes of this each morning? I'm willing to guess NO, to all. Write down your musical goals. List both short-term and long-term goals. They can be simple things like finishing a song or longer and more involved things like understanding Chord/Scale relationships or writing a song for your wedding. Having these goals and reaching them, helps you see your growth. How about starting your day, after your morning Coffee if required, with 20 minutes working on steps to help you reach these goals? Maybe, you can't play your instrument because everyone else is sleeping when you get up. Great, spend some time studying the musical concepts that you're working on. You have to understand concepts before you apply them. Go through some of our Quizzes. Re-read the Lesson area, read an upcoming lesson. Write lyrics. Do something to truly wake up your brain and get it thinking. There's no benefit to having your brain in neutral for the first hour of every day. This will become your routine. Your brain and body will expect it and look forward to it. 2) THINK BEFORE YOU PRACTICE- Your music educator should help you be aware of your musical weaknesses and the trouble areas of the music you are working on. These are always the things we should spend the most time on and start our practicing with. Everyone, no matter their skill level, has weaknesses and things they don't do well. Plan your practice sessions to work on one of those, each time before you start. Human nature is to play/sing the songs/material we know and do well. But, in order to get better and move forward we need to address and focus on our weaknesses. 3) MAKING MISTAKES ARE PART OF LEARNING- Even the greatest musical performers make mistakes. Most likely, all of your favorite recordings have mistakes or things that the performer would like to fix. Making mistakes and having trouble with, both, technical and knowledge issues is part of moving forward and learning. Accept; that you will make mistakes, that there will be concepts you don;t understand at first, that you will need to ask for help and guidance from people. This is all a natural part of the learning process. Making mistakes means that you are moving forward and not just staying with the familiar and comfortable. 4) STEP AWAY, TEMPORARILY, WHEN YOU GET FRUSTRATED- You've identified your weak areas, you've written a plan for what you want to accomplish this week, you've planned your practice areas, you're getting up very morning and working from the plan. Yet, you just can not master this one thing this week. You feel upset with yourself, you feel like it's a waste of time maybe even. Step away from your instrument and do something else. Nothing else productive is going to happen when you've reached that stage. Do something else. Maybe that IS actually a good time to watch some movie trailers or check where your friends have checked in at. When you come back to it, you may find that the problem has solved itself. If not, and you still have trouble, keep removing things until you find the one thing that gives you trouble. Take away the Dynamics and focus on Notes and Rhythms. Still not getting it? Slow down the tempo. Not yet getting it right? Work on notes only or rhythms only. Eventually, you will find what the problem is. If not, send us a question via your Personal Workspace. Take control of your time or it will gladly control you. "Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time' is to say 'I don't want to.'" - Lao Tzu "Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." - William Penn "Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save." - Will Rogers (image- "The Persistence of Memory"- Salvador Dali 1931) [side note- I have posted details of my dinner and photos of my sleeping dogs on social media sites, so please blame me for your wasted time if you like.] There are no mistakes in improvisation 01/05/2012
Our plans with the DLP Jazz Series are to help you learn the language of music. Music, like all languages, has an alphabet, a grammar and set structures. You need to have an understanding of these concepts to communicate and create ideas in this language. This sounds like a daunting take, but it's not really and we're looking forward to helping you learn to improvise. But then, the next step is.... What to do once you have all of this knowledge. How do I create music that communicates ideas, that reaches listeners, that makes other musicians want to play with me? Listen Listening to what other people in your group play and reacting to that are a key component of being a musician in all styles. Be a part of the ensemble, accept and play off of each others ideas. This is when magic happens on a bandstand. Here's a great TED talk on that topic by Stefon Harris, titled, "There Are No Mistakes On The Bandstand" http://www.ted.com/talks/stefon_harris_there_are_no_mistakes_on_the_bandstand.html Your Virtual Workspace 12/06/2011
Every DSM and DLP student has a private, secure, virtual workspace. This is the hub for your music education. You have access to the entire DSM Staff, who are glad to answer any questions you have regarding playing your instrument or the musical language. Video and sound files, relating to your education, can be exchanged here. Login from the link at www.dsminfo.com.  You should have received information on your username (generally your primary email address) and password when you started at DSM or DLP. Please use our contact form if you are not sure of either. Hopefully, one of the first things you notice is that the entire DSM staff is a consultant on YOUR project!  We're all here to help you with your music education. Submit a question at any time and it immediately goes to all staff members. You may end up with several replies to your question and a few different ways to solve your problem. This is not possible with a traditional method book!  At the top right, you can find another way to access your DLP curriculum material, our calendar of events at DSM and our extensive library of videos for all instruments. These are both videos we have created and ones we have selected as containing good valid information for music learners. Spend some time with these. There is a lot of great information and our library is being constantly updated! If you're a DSM student you will have a project assigned each week. This is the; WHAT/WHY/HOW for your musical week, also known as an II Doc. This is always listed as due at your next session, though of course, some assignments may require several weeks to complete. But, the goals that your teacher assigns should be possible to accomplish in a week. You'll find all of your II Docs in the Project Tracker of your workspace;   Your assignment for this week, and past weeks, appear in the Project Tracker area. This is where you can view all of the comments for your "project". If you hit Reply at the bottom, your comment or question goes directly to your educator. You can also post a message that will go to all of your consultants. This is a great place to post any general music questions you have, or questions on the DLP curriculum.  The message area can also be used to share MP3 files or leadsheets/worksheets for your assignemnts. Simply click on ATTACH FILES to upload or DOWNLOAD FILES to download any files that your teacher attaches. This is a wonderful way to expand your lesson materials. Your private virtual workspace is a unique music education tool and is only available through DSM and DLP. It's personal care and service using 21st century technology. We're proud to be able to offer this to our students and hope this brief walk through helps you have a better understanding of how this educational tool can be utilized. Thanks and keep checking back as I delve further into the DLP Series in future blogs. - Mike | 
Mike FinkelI am the Director of Educational Development at The Dallas School of Music. I look forward to providing you insight to our curriculum and updates regarding future developments and releases. ArchivesMay 2012 CategoriesAll  |
RSS Feed