Always A Beginner

GETTING BACK INTO teaching full time has been more challenging than I had expected it would be, which accounts for the large gaps in writing for this site.   Part of that has been incorporating some of the newer software and other digital resources into my teaching, which means I've got to learn that better, myself.   I've also been changing some of my long-established practices in teaching beginners - up to the 3rd grade as that's generally defined.   I've always encouraged experimentation in composing and improvising as well as ear-training but I think it's a good idea, now, to emphasize that even more than learning pieces.   Getting used to changing how I teach has been a real challenge, since I won't teach anything I haven't done for myself, first.   

Every time you touch the instrument or sing you're a beginner if you're still doing it and not just going through the motions.  Betty Carter, not long before she died said that the music has to be new, every day because we were new every day.   That's as good a philosophy of making music as I've ever read or heard or thought of. 

At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very
quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my
dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the
dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the
world. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the
separate selves that ever were separate and isolated
and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds
coming back together into awareness from all distractions,
cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like
the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice
of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last
Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from
death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.

Such is the awakening of one man, one morning, at
the voice of a nurse in the hospital. Awakening out
of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of
sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be
gentleness.

Thomas Merton - Hagia Sophia