How much should I charge?
I can’t tell you how many emails, text messages and phone calls I’ve received from a close friend, relative or complete stranger wanting to know the...
You need to sound bad!
I’ll never forget something that the great Anthony Wellington once told me: “If you’re practicing, and you think you sound terrible, then you ...
Broadening your horizons
I’d like to encourage you today to listen to anything and everything that you can get your hands on; all kinds of music, genres, types and styles, whether...
Why you should teach – Part Three
So we’ve talked about some of the benefits of teaching over the past two weeks and now it’s time for this series to come to an end (is it really a s...
Why you should teach – Part Two
So last week we talked about the benefits of teaching music purely from a financial vantage-point, which was a perfectly viable place to start, I think. I’...
Why you should teach – Part One
There are a lot of great reasons to teach music, and in this blog series (this is only PART ONE) I would like to point a few of them out to you. Not only will i...
Practice? Perfect?
I’m sure that you’ve heard it said before that practice makes perfect – and it seems like it should be true. After all, it sounds right, doesn...
Showing some restraint Part Two
So I have decided to give this topic another go-around for this week, not only because it really is that noteworthy, but also because I found some more weight a...
Showing some restraint
I found myself trying something new this past weekend that I had never done before; playing a gig without doing ANY fills. What a challenge! I felt the need to ...
To click or not to click?
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this fact or not, but nowadays it has become common practice to play live to a “click,” or to use a metr...
Who are you?
Here’s something that I need to constantly remind myself of: When someone hires you for a gig they’re interested in you sounding like you, not like someone else...
You never know who's listening
It’s hard to be on your game all the time, and I won’t lie to you; sometimes I just don’t feel like doing my best. Sometimes I’m too tir...
Why do you play bass?
It’s typically the first question that I ask when starting with a new student. He or she walks in to my office and sits down, gets comfortable, we become ...
Is the gig "getting" to you?
So I’m currently sitting backstage waiting to go on in a few minutes. And I’m not going to lie; I don’t feel all that good about the show. I m...
Should I go to School for Music?
I can always tell when I’m gonna get some criticism on one of my blog posts, and I KNOW that this discussion is gonna bring me some slack because of my op...
What are these green boxes?
It’s been 3 weeks since our last update, and for good reason too. There really hasn’t been anything to report. We finished round two of chemo on February 18th, ...
SARA AND I REALLY WANT YOU TO READ THIS (WARNING: IT’S A LONG POST)
Sorry for the lengthy post and the absence of updates. It’s been a week since my last post, and to be honest things have been kinda slow around here, which is a...
Homeward Bound
So many excellent things happened over the past few days that it’s going to be hard to recap it all, but I’ll do my best. First, we’re back home now! Well, actu...
So today we learned that Sara is Batman
Today we received some more excellent news. After yesterday’s chest x-ray our cardiologist informed us that the fluid around Sara’s heart is shrinking (even tho...
She's Looking Good
Not much has happened in the past few days, and in a way that means that A LOT has happened. Sara has been going on walks (and her heart rate isn’t going throug...
Date Night
Sara and I have been dating for almost 11 years and 4 months. That’s roughly 4,080 days, I figure. I’m not sure how many dates we’ve been on, but if we were to ...
The News is Good
It’s been a rather eventful couple of days, and things are looking good. Where to start? I should actually try and do a better job of updating this thing daily,...
Sara Smile
Being a man of my word, I’ve decided to make it a point to sit down every evening and keep you all posted with a quick update on Sara’s prognosis. It won’t be a...
When They Tell You it's Cancer
Many of you have heard news that my wife has been in the hospital for a few days. I’d like to take the time now to officially fill you all in on what’s been goi...
Easter Eggs
So it’s only November 15th and already I’m knee deep in Christmas Crazy. Being the on-staff Music Director at a church I have the lovely responsibil...
Sticks and Stones
So I have a little notebook app on my phone that I use to jot down all of my deep thoughts to come back to later, either for the purposes of further meditation ...
Diamonds and Rocks
It’s pretty neat that we as a species have this innate ability to denote value to different things. What’s even more special is that we have the cho...
Enough
I was working feverishly the other day on a new web site layout for my personal site, partially because I don’t have enough things on my plate already (jo...
Why I started the Ghost of Christmas Pepper
So my wife and I were driving home from a memorial service last week, stuck in very slow moving traffic, and our conversation was very much as you would expect ...
Perspective
I’ve really gotten into reading as of late, which is something that I never thought would be for me. It takes time, it takes effort, it’s a slow and...
