A quick editors note up front: I hope you guys will be patient with me when I write about topics outside of music. My strategy here has always been to write about things of interest to me and based on the feedback I get, a lot of you like it when I stray from music. […]
When you hear musicians talking about backbeats, they are referring to accenting beats that are normally considered weak. Most typically, that means accenting beats 2 and 4 rather than 1 and 3 in 4/4 time. Backbeats are a relatively new thing in music. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a backbeat in […]
The idea of “being intentional” is a trendy idea that is floating around out there these days. It is a good idea that is probably a reaction against the tendency of modern culture to be busy but shallow. Here is a quick demonstration. If you ask people how they are, 99% will answer in one […]
All around where I live, it has become customary to host weekend outdoor concerts in the town centers. I enjoy going to them from time to time because it is often a great atmosphere. Nine times out ten, the music is provided by a cover band. A cover band is a group of semi-pro musicians […]
A discussion popped up somewhere regarding my recent article about buying pianos for a church. Someone asked whether it makes sense for a church to just buy a keyboard rather than an expensive piano. Today, I want to talk about that. I am a pianist. I love great pianos. I will take a great piano […]
I spent yesterday looking at pianos–12 hours of looking in fact. Here in Atlanta, we have lots of dealers and we hit them all. The brands we played were Schimmel, Kawai (including their elite line Shigero), Steinway, Boston, Yamaha, Bosendorfer, Seiler, and Estonia. We played a lot of the cheaper brands too (Baldwin, Hailun, Knabe, […]
Twenty years ago today, I woke up at my parents home and went to eat breakfast. Even though I had just graduated from college, the economy was bad and I had been working a $6.00/hour landscaping job. But after breakfast, I did not go to my landscaping job. Rather, I loaded a car with most […]
IMPORTANT NOTE: When I use the terms “normal people” and “average people” in this post, that is not in a derogatory way. I am just referring to people who are not musicians or high art lovers. I had an interesting week last week. I started at a Christian music industry conference and toward the end […]
I was watching an argument a few days ago about a guy who is sort of a religious extremist. His fans and detractors were bickering back and forth about how to deal with him and I kept hearing the “smart” label thrown around. Apparently since he is smart, some think that we all need to […]
The topic of weddings has been coming up a lot lately and I want to write about musician wedding pay today. I did an informal survey over the weekend on my Facebook page as to what musicians were getting paid and the results sort of surprised me. There were a lot of musicians getting paid […]
One of the challenging things about music theory is the fact that it is a moving target. In other words, it is not a clear cut discipline in the way that mathematics might be. In math, 2+2 will always be 4 regardless of the time period or culture. That is not true with music. I […]