Dancing masters, music and memory
I’m thoroughly enjoying Eric McKee’s book Decorum of the minuet, delirium of the waltz: a study of dance-music relations in 3/4 time. There are books that you grow up with…
Playing for ballet class tips #24: Speak up – don’t act the pianist
I can’t remember when exactly I discovered this, but it was life-changing. If you’ve got a question in class or rehearsal, speak up, don’t act the pianist. If you’re going…
The problem with reading online
Four years ago, I started an MA in music education at the Institute of Education in London. The first module was on the philosophy and aesthetics of music, and included…
Dance rhythms fight back: the 9/8 hornpipe
A while back I started collecting examples of ‘dance rhythms to annoy your music teacher with’. Nothing makes me more frustrated than the term ‘dance rhythms’. There are several generations…
Change deafness, multi-tasking and ballet teaching
I was talking to a friend recently about scams and conmen. Our conclusion was that anyone who says ‘it would never happen to me’ is deluding themselves. The thing with…
It’s not always the way that you do it, sometimes it’s what you do
Fascinating article from the Journal of Experimental Psychology, ‘I like the sound of your voice: Affective learning about vocal signals‘. We’d all like to think, wouldn’t we, that having a…