Tag: music lessons

Gig Day XI: Spring Jam V

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Tonight is the Spring Jam, one of the two recitals I host on my front porch every year (the other is the Spooktacular, which is in late October).  I’m looking forward to an evening of music, merriment, and hot dogs.

This year marks the fifth Spring Jam, which has become a popular event with my private music students.  These front porch concerts started out as a way for my buddy John and me to play gigs during The Age of The Virus, when nobody was open for live music.  I realized that if I wanted to play in front of a live audience, I’d have to circumvent the hysteria and become the venue and talent.

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Gig Day IX: TJC Spring Jam IV

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s time for another front porch concert!  This event—the TJC Spring Jam and Recital—will be the eighth Front Porch concert I’ve hosted (I think), and I’ve learned quite a bit from the others, including the last Spooktacular.

This year marks the fourth Spring Jam, which has become a popular event with my private music students.  These front porch concerts started out as a way for my buddy John and me to play gigs during The Age of The Virus, when nobody was open for live music.  I realized that if I wanted to play in front of a live audience, I’d have to circumvent the hysteria and become the venue and talent.

Gradually, the concept morphed from a self-indulgent concert into a recital for my private music students.  The Lord Has Blessed me—far beyond what I deserve—with a large clientele of private music students (I’m a bit murky on the number at the moment, as I have several seniors graduating tomorrow, but it’s around fifteen lessons a week), so it made sense to offer a couple of recital opportunities a  year for them.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Jam 2023 Review

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Subscribers:  the annual TPP Summer Reading List will be posted soon (sometime this month—maybe next weekend!).  I’ll also be getting back to my series on Washington, D.C., this month as well.

Another Spring Jam is in the books, and I think it was the best one yet.  I should probably write that behind the paywall, but I’d like everyone to know.

Regular readers will know that in October 2020 I launched the TJC Halloween Spooktacular (I’d done a “Spooktacular” at a coffee shop in 2019, but that was a very different event), a Halloween concert on my front porch.  That first front porch Spooktacular featured two opening bands, followed by a couple of sets from my friend John and myself.  It was a rousing success, but in retrospect, it was too long (three hours!) and needed some streamlining.

Of course, in The Age of The Virus, everyone was starving for live entertainment and social interaction after being cooped up inside with Netflix and takeout for (by that point) seven months, so I could get way with a bloated bill.  It was a success, and most folks stuck around until we wrapped up sometime after 9 PM.

While I don’t think I’ve ever repeated the success of the first Spooktacular in terms of attendance and cashflow, I do think I’ve improved the formula somewhat.

The biggest change came when I made the Spooktacular and the spin-off Spring Jam into a recital for my private music students.  Following the doldrums of Summer 2020, when I had just one piano student every week, my private lessons empire ballooned to around twenty lessons or so each week (occasionally fewer, often more).  That has been a major financial and musical blessing, but it also means I have enough students to put on a pretty good recital, even if some students can’t attend.

With this latest Spring Jam, I think I have gotten it down to more of a science—but a fun science, like playing with magnets in the seventh grade.  There’s still the fun, relaxed, DYI-spirit of the event, but everything seems to be running more smoothly.

Like playing an instrument, practice makes perfect.

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

Open Mic Adventures XXXIV: “Chase’s Dilemma”

The Portly Politico2 Comments

In keeping with the vacation vibes of Memorial Day Weekend, it’s going to be a pretty short edition of Open Mic Adventures this week.  The good news is that very soon I’ll be back to showcasing footage from actual open mics, and not just me noodling on the piano in my school’s tiny music room.

That said, I hastily recorded a video of a very basic piano piece I wrote for one of my students, whose name is Chase.  It was a very quick sightreading exercise for him, and an opportunity for me to write some more student-focused material.

I suppose the “Dilemma” in the title refers to the presence of an F# accidental, as well as the necessity to move the right hand from C to D position and back again.  The left hand is a simple ascending line with that playful F# tossed in the mix.

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Gig Day VII: TJC Spring Jam III

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s time for another front porch concert!  This event—the TJC Spring Jam and Recital—will be the sixth Front Porch concert I’ve hosted (I think), and I’ve learned quite a bit from the others, including the last Spooktacular.

This year marks the third Spring Jam, which has become a popular event with my private music students.  These front porch concerts started out as a way for my buddy John and me to play gigs during The Age of The Virus, when nobody was open for live music.  I realized that if I wanted to play in front of a live audience, I’d have to circumvent the hysteria and become the venue and talent.

Gradually, the concept morphed from a self-indulgent concert into a recital for my private music students.  The Lord has really blessed me—far beyond what I deserve—with a large clientele of private music students (around twenty-two at the time of writing, working out in practice to anywhere from twenty-to-twenty-four lessons a week), so it made sense to offer a couple of recital opportunities a  year for them.

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