Blog Posts in October, 2011

• Posted By Mark's Posts 27-Oct-2011

  Who is your Audience?

  Deciding who your audience is may be the very most important decision facing a musician. If it's anyone other than yourself, you must do all musical things well AND adjust what you're doing to match and excite your listeners, whether ...

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• Posted By Mark's Posts 24-Oct-2011

  Don't Mistake Interesting Arrangements for a Good Song

  Don't mistake excitement or interesting arrangements for a good song. Good songs sound great in the simplest arrangements as well as when intricately arranged (arrangement being the specifics of how the song is presented, solo piano, big band, a ...

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• Posted By Mark's Posts 19-Oct-2011

  Playing With Both Hands

  For pianists, the idea of always and forever having to work a piece by separately practicing the right and left hands is absurd. What excellent pianist have you ever seen sight-reading first the right and then the left hand? The skilled player uses ...

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• Posted By Mark's Posts 17-Oct-2011

  Science and Art

  Mark Black’s distinction between a science, an art, and a craft: an art is a discipline that can be described only in broad principles which, while correct in themselves, are useful guidelines, not unbreakable truths. There can be no formula ...

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• Posted By Mark's Posts 11-Oct-2011

  Growing as a Musician

  Your growth as a musician is an upward angle as you reach forward to learn more and play and sing faster and better. Periodically, though we have performances and then we cease trying to grow (other than as a better performer, a better communicator ...

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