Laurel Black Music

The last weeks have been incredibly busy, as evidenced by my absence. I had this grand plan to release a new essay every week, but life decided I needed to be more realistic. Luckily, my reasons for not having as much time to write are good ones, from finishing a kitchen renovation (yeah, I'm an ADULT now), to have family come to visit, to having enough accompaniment work to keep me busy, to writing my first published article (!!!), and finally to the publishing business doing well. In this time I've also been brainstorming about a non-profit organization that I would really, really like to start. I don't feel like I can share too much about it yet, but I have already bought the domain name and am going to purchase web-building software today or tomorrow. (Those that know me can attest to how serious I must be about this project.) :) I'm incredibly grateful for finding accompaniment work. Everyone said I wouldn't have a problem, but it's nice to see that com...

When we think of and talk about the back, we're talking about a huge  percentage of the body.  It forms the entire posterior region of the torso, and is responsible for the monolithic task of helping us align upright.  For that reason, I'm going to talk about it in two posts, one on the spine, and the other on the muscles around it. Here We Go The spine, one of nature's many miracles, is made of 33 vertebrae: 24 are stacked and separated by discs, and the last nine (at the base of the spine essentially "inside" the pelvis) are fused together to form the sacrum and coccyx.  The 24 movable vertebrae are divided into regions, each of which slightly different characteristics and obligations. source It is particularly important to notice the shape and location of the natural curve of the spine. The thoracic region is responsible for a great deal of the flexibility, mobility, and rotation we can accomplish; this region's  accentuated curve is well-suite...

A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are...that is snobbery... Now, the opposite of a snob is your mother. When I sat down to write this post I had originally planned to make a case for the detrimental effects of competitive environments on learning and performance. I've been searching through articles that cite case studies and listening to dozens of interviews by behavioral psychologists. But then I found this TED talk that basically sums up my philosophical questions about judgment and how the very nature of it sorts people into those that are successful and those that are failures.  Perhaps it is not so black and white, or so final, but there is a very tangible feeling of failure when there isn't a full scholarship with the acceptance letter, or an elimination in the competition, or a barricade presented from an audio round before  the actual competition takes place. (Yes, I've experienced all of thes...

In keeping with the idea of getting grounded from my last post in the Marimba Body series, let’s talk about hips and the sciatic nerve.  Hips are the joint where the leg meets the torso.   They're easy to find because they’re the widest part of our lower half, beneath the belly, but above the knees.  We use them to walk, run, dance, and reach the extreme ranges of the marimba.  Our hips make it easy for us to step far to the right to reach a high note or squat low so we can reach the extremes at the same time.  Without them, we couldn’t do either: we could play about a 3-octave range in the middle and that would be it! No, thank you! Holy Ilium, Batman! Just as there is no bone in the body actually called the “neck bone” or “knee bone,” so the name “hip bone” is a colloquial misnomer. (I know, who knew??)  What we refer to as hip bones are actually part of the pelvis: the ilium. If you’re like me and carried some kind of drum for yea...

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Next week on @ percussion we will chat all about competitions.  For episode 6 we invited Liz Galvan and Matt Penland in on the discussion, as they have "successful" competitions under their belts and, naturally, had different experiences. This session is well-timed - we recorded a few weeks ago - as it was right when I was in the midst of trying to figure out how to articulate whirling thoughts about competition, and more specifically, judgment.  We had great thought-provoking discussion, and decided, after an hour of talking, that judging is hard . Posts 1 and 2 of this Judgment series center on why that may be true, especially when our amazing brains work against us, shortcutting to biased pathways and rushed, incomplete opinions.  But what happens to our domain of classical percussion as a result of competition and the difficulties of judgment? From a practical point of view, judgment in music allows us to select the best players for orchestras, scholarships, o...