Tag: music education

SubscribeStar Saturday: SCISA Talk 2: DIY Garage Band Music Ensemble

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Yesterday (Friday, 18 September 2026), I attended the SCISA Teachers’ Conference. I presented two sessions, one about creating a “DIY Garage Band Music Ensemble” from scratch, the other about teaching private music lessons to supplement your income.

I always like to have prepared remarks for any public speaking, so I’ve put together the following. The slides for this talk and the one whose text I shared last week are linked above.

For now, here’s “DIY Garage Band Music Ensemble”:

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New Music Tuesday XXIV: “Weird Doll”

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While I was looking for an image to accompany “Lazy Sunday CDV: Music Lessons” I found the manuscript for an old piece called “Weird Doll.” As far as I can tell, I never did anything with this piece, so I decided to slap it together yesterday morning. I based the doodle on this creepy old doll my Mom had growing up, which is made out of some kind of strange rubberish polymer. It was so creepy.

Indeed, it was two dolls: a boy and a girl. I’ve depicted the boy in the doodle seen in the video below. The doll had these weirdly articulated eyebrows that were made from the same sculpted polymer as the rest of it.

As far as the mixing and such, I just added a “Ambient” reverb effect and turned the “room size” down from 100 to about 75 in Audacity, then a “Firm Bass” preset that I turned all the way up. I also applied a “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect.

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Lazy Sunday CDV: Music Lessons

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Now that yours portly is essentially semi-retired (although maintaining our household is a full-time job in its own right), I have more time to work on music for my private music students. It’s really broadened my students’ repertoires with some fun pieces, and it gives us some recital-style work to do outside of the usual method books (although we still work from those, too).

Ergo, I’ve been writing more about lessons and such, so I thought I’d share some recent posts that relate to the teaching of music lessons:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

The titular “Will” loved his waltz!

SubscribeStar Saturday: SCISA Talk 1: Supplement Your Income with Music Lessons

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This Friday, 18 September 2026, I’ll be attending the SCISA Teachers’ Conference. I’ll be presenting two sessions, one about creating a “DIY Garage Band Music Program” from scratch, the other about teaching private music lessons.

I always like to have prepared remarks for any public speaking, so I’ve put together the following. I’m building a Google Slides presentation to go along with the prepared text, but it’s not quite done at the time of writing, so I’ll share that later.

For now, here’s “Supplement Your Income With Music Lessons”:

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

New Music Tuesday XXIII: “Will’s Waltz”

The Portly Politico1 Comment

One of my favorite ways to write new music is to take ideas that pop up in music lessons and turn them into something fun. One common counting issue that turns up without almost every student is the tendency to rush a sequence of quarter notes when they come right after a sequence of eighth notes.

Something like that happened with one of my students, the titular “Will” of today’s piece. There’s a piece called “Waltz Time” that features a sequence of descending quarter notes in 3/4 time. For whatever reason, students tend to rush those quarter notes, even though they’re not preceded by a sequence of eighth notes. Good old Will was doing it consistently enough that I pointed out he was essentially turning every other measure into 3/8 time and/or a set of eighth-note triplets.

That got us talking about music theory and multimeter pieces, and we started to play the piece wrong on purpose to see what we could come up with (then I insisted he play the piece as written so he doesn’t program his fingers to rush those quarter notes). I floated the idea of writing a piece that intentionally switches between 3/4 and 3/8, and Will seemed very excited about that idea.

So it is that I sat down this morning and put together this little piece, which Will and I will explore during his lesson later this week. It’s a piece that I can use with my other students, too.

As far as the mixing and such, I just added a “Large Room” reverb effect—my go-to reverb effect—in Audacity, then a “Bakelite” preset that I turned down a bit. It gives it that kind of retro, phonograph sound.

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TBT: First Day of School 202[6]

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Yesterday was the first day of classes for the 2026-2027 academic year. It is the first “first day of school” I have not attended in fifteen-ish years.

Instead, today is my first day of the school year. I’m now the part-time Chaplain for my school, and I only go in (usually) once a week, on Thursdays, for the morning Chapel service. The new headmaster will be covering today’s Chapel, so I won’t give my first devotional until next week.

It’s a little surreal being “back-to-school” in this new role—and without truly being “back” all the time. But I love it so far.

I had to attend a few of the back-to-school trainings and professional developments, and while my school is incredibly mild with that stuff compared to public schools, it was a confirmation that leaving full-time classroom teaching was the right move. Admin was scrambling to finalize the master schedule (in part because there is a new schedule this year), and one colleague had a substantial, last-minute change to his teaching load (fortunately, I was able to give him all of my materials for the course, so he should be good to go). Everyone is magically expected to be ready for this week, and it’s a testament to the kind of miracles teachers pull off that most of them probably were!

Avoiding that kind of chaos is pretty sweet. I’ve had a small dose of it, as the time for Chapel kept shifting around as the admin continued to make tweaks to the new schedule, but I’ve found that being proactive and trying to nail down details with them in writing and in advance goes a long way in the CYA department. Also, I don’t really have to work anymore, so I have ultimate outcome-independence. Being able to say, “no, I don’t think I will” is pretty liberating, albeit counterintuitive to an innate people-pleaser.

Well, here’s to doing the fun part of education with almost none of the baggage. Woooooooooot!

With that, here is 18 August 2025’s “First Day of School 2025“:

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No New Music Tuesday

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Happy Tuesday, dear readers!

No New Music Tuesday today, I’m afraid.  With the school year winding down, several aspects of the job are winding up as we enter into exam review season.  I’m attempting to squeeze in one last mini-unit covering the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and European exploration in the span of three lessons, so my unstructured time has been spent putting together slides for  those quite vast topics.  We’ll see if I can speed run the biggest events of 1300-1600!

The point is not an in-depth analysis of these major movements, but to keep the students a taste before they head into United States History next year.  The first part of United States History examines the political, social, and religious context of late medieval/early modern Europe, as that context is significant in the exploration and colonization of the Americas.  I’d like the students to finish the “story” of World History in such a way that it dovetails with the “story” of United States History.

I’ve tinkered with my latest composition, “Japanese Trapdoor Snails,” slightly, but have hit a bit of a block with it.  As with writer’s block, the solution is simply to write—in this case, music.  To do that, though, I need to have a bit more unstructured time, and what I’ve had has been dedicated to more pressing matters.

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Lazy Sunday CCCLXXXVI: Spring Concert 2026 Posts

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A quick Lazy Sunday today, dear readers, looking back at the recent Spring Concert.  I’m looking forward to (God Willing) a relatively normal week of work!

Rock on—and Happy Sunday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Concert 2026 Postmortem

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The 2026 Spring Concert is in the books!  It was my “swan song,” featuring  a total of twenty-six (26) pieces:  ten selections from the Middle School Music Ensemble; three solo pieces; one small group performance; and twelve tunes from the High School Music Ensemble.

Before the concert, I estimated a total runtime of about two hours.  It was slightly more, clocking in a bit closer to two hours, ten minutes.  That was a bit longer than I prefer, but it was worthwhile to get in all of the performances.  Yes, I could have shaved at least one tune from each Ensemble (and I know the ones I would have cut), but the sets ended up being very nicely balanced.

My High School Music Ensemble in particular had a good mix between the various singers in class.  It’s a blessing to have several singers, and it allows for the blending of voices in fun ways, but I like to make sure every singer who wants to sing lead gets a roughly equal proportion, with heavier weight towards seniors.  I think I achieved that, with every singer getting at least two songs.  For the Middle School Music Ensemble, I had one young lady who took lead on most tunes, but I had quite a few boys sing solos or with one another.  Another young lady sang our concert opener, “Eye of the Tiger.”

Overall, the concert went very well.  Even with the length, students and parents were thrilled.  Several parents expressed dismay post-concert that it would be my last.  The kids maintained an impressive degree of stamina throughout the experience.  There were naturally a few flubs, but even those the students handled like pros.

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