Tag: teaching

Lazy Sunday CDVI: Conference Sessions

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On Friday, 18 September 2026, I attended the South Carolina Independent School Association (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. Paid subscribers have access to my full remarks, but anyone can view the Google Slide decks I assembled to accompany them here and here.

That said, I thought I’d look back at those two talks in this addition of Lazy Sunday:

I’ll have more details on how the talks went soon, but I’ve been all over South Carolina the past few days, so stay tuned!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

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”:

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

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

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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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SubscribeStar Saturday: Chaplaincy

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This school year I began a new role at my school. My official title is “Chaplain and Chapel Coordinator,” which sounds both lofty and bureaucratic. Fortunately, it is neither.

My basic job is to organize the weekly Chapel services, which are Thursday mornings at our school. Initially, I thought I’d be delivering a short devotional or sermonette every Thursday, as our school chaplains have done traditionally. However, right before school began, the new headmaster told me he would like me to invite in members of our community to speak to the students; the Associate Head of School also requested that I invite students to perform music for some services.

Those were both fantastic ideas, and I was beginning to understand why “Chapel Coordinator” was part of my title: beyond merely giving a weekly devotional, I would be coordinating with multiple people from within and without the school.

With that mandate, I set about coordinating chapels for the first semester; at this point, I essentially have everyone scheduled through September; most of October; and most of November. I’m holding off on the two December dates, as those fall around the time of the annual Christmas Musical and the Christmas Concert, and I’m not sure what impact those will have on Chapel services just yet.

Today I though I’d give readers a glimpse into my new role: what I am planning, how it’s going so far, and what I hope to see unfold (lots of salvations, of course).

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Lazy Sunday CDII: Chapel Stuff

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It’s been a Chapel-filled week here on the blog, so I’m dashing off this quick Lazy Sunday before dashing off to play bass at church:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

TBT^16: Chapel Lesson: Listening

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Today is the second Chapel of the new school year, and the first devotional I’ll be giving as the Chaplain! My plan is to play a saxophone rendition of the hymn “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” and to tie that into my brief devotional.

That being the case, I thought I’d look back at this little devotional from a chapel way back in 2022, one that I’ve reblogged several times since then. It’s message is one we all need to hear regularly—especially me!

With that, here is 21 August 2025’s “TBT^4: Chapel Lesson: Listening“:

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Chapel Lesson: “Jesus Is Calling”

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Tomorrow is my first chapel devotional/lesson of the school year! The headmaster took the first one and gave a powerful sermonette to the students. I decided to build upon the theme of his talk while also incorporating my saxophone.

I recently played the classic hymn “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” at my old church one Sunday night (you can hear a bass guitar rendition here), and I’ve grown partial to the hymn over the past few years. I’m going to play my alto sax arrangement for the students before launching into my brief devotional.

With that, here is the text of the Chapel lesson I’ll deliver tomorrow:

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