Welcome to season 2 of Common Time Podcast. I'm David Clemmer.
And I'm John Pasquale.
And we're back to inspire and empower music educators with practical advice, thought provoking conversations and stories from some of the best in the business. Let's dive into another incredible episode. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our final episode of Season 2 of Common Time Podcast. We are so glad that you're with us. Gosh, time flies, John. Here we are. And two, Season 2, how about that? We've talked to a lot of people.
Yeah, we really have. So now we're at — this is our 32nd episode.
It's amazing. Yeah, it's really great. I get excited every time we take the opportunity to do this. Obviously I get to see you, John, which is fantastic. But the guests that we've had the pleasure, the honor really, of bringing on and getting to talk to — I walk away learning something every single time. Which has somewhat reinforced the idea of why we're doing this. We're wanting to give back to the profession, but also — well, we are lifelong learners and we have to grasp that and hold on to that and send that out into the world. So that's kind of what we've been doing. And last season we ended by answering questions from all of you that are out there — listener submitted questions — and I think we have a few that John and I are going to do our best to answer. So, John, why don't you get us started as usual?
Indeed. So our first question is: what's one thing that you wish you had known your first year teaching?
What a great question. Do you want to take it? Do you want to take it? You want me to take it?
Please. You go ahead, and then I'll follow.
One thing I wish I had known my first year teaching — man, that's a huge question. That's me thinking about when I first — like the first time you jump into that. I felt — I don't know how you felt, John — but I felt like, if there's a big bucket of knowledge that's out there, I had like a thimble size of it that someone had poured on the top. So I was on the other side of that bucket — if there was a bucket, I was in the other room from that bucket.
Oh, that's so funny.
So to look at that and go, OK, what's the one thing I wish I had known? I think that would probably be it — that there is so much walking into it. You graduate with a degree and you've gone through the coursework and to some degree you do feel empowered, like, I can go do this now. And then you're into it and you realize, oh, oh yeah. I don't know that I really did. And I made mistakes in my first year or two. OK, this is it then — I wish that I had been told and embraced the idea that I needed to ask questions constantly of everyone around me. Not just the people that I worked with, but to be in other people's band rehearsals, go to contests and listen and ask questions, see who's being successful, and then hunt them down and corner them and ask them questions about, hey, how did you do that? And I started doing that a little bit with Janine Belcher. Janine was the sister to Greg and Jerry Hull, and she taught in my district. I was in North Dallas and Carrollton Farmers Branch when I first started teaching. Her brothers were over in Haltom, and I had taught privately for Jerry, so I kind of knew the family. And then obviously Greg at Haltom High School was sort of a perennial — just an incredible program, and it still is. To Donnie Hall, you're out there — thank you. I had started having conversations with Janine, and I remember her asking me questions about, well, what do you think about this on clarinet? And my brain's like — trip, trip, silence. But those conversations were helpful, and that was just sitting around at all-region auditions or in a break room within the district. I wish I had done that more, because I learned more in probably 10 minutes talking to Janine than I did — and I'm sorry, this just happens — college tries to put as much in as possible and it's just not enough time. But in 10 minutes with Janine, I really learned a significant amount. We were talking about clarinet articulation — I remember it specifically. And then across town was another fabulous clarinetist, Sherry Miller. I had questions for her about, OK, I have these clarinets and I can make a good sound on clarinet, that's it, but I didn't know what I needed to be doing. And you can't see this unless you're watching on YouTube, but I was doing pinky exercises — here are the things that she was doing with younger clarinetists that they would need to be able to do down the road. We were starting with these pinky exercises you do with the F and C key and all that. I didn't know that. I am a trumpet player — I used three fingers and my slide, that was it. So I did learn from those conversations, but I didn't aggressively go after knowledge then. Over time I did. I think after my master's degree I started to realize, man, I really have to learn more, read more, study more, talk more, ask more questions — and then ask better questions as I got older. So that's a long answer, but that's my answer.
And this actually kind of brings up a point. I'm always surprised when I go do gigs across the country where I'm in a room — and it isn't just me, it's people that are our age and older — and there are young teachers in the room and they are at a distance. I find that very strange. When I was starting out, I asked every single person every single question that I could possibly come up with, because I knew that I had a lot to learn. I'm not suggesting that the two of us have all the answers — or any answers.
Oh no.
But I still think it's important for any young teacher — go to region clinics, go to All-State clinics, go to anything where there are people that are older than you and have been teaching for a while, and just listen and ask questions. First listen though, because I think that's an important one too. When I was teaching with Amanda Drinkwater, who is one of the smartest people I've ever known, I remember this vividly — we were at TMEA one time, at a social event, and we were at a table with about 20 people. I was the youngest person. I started to speak and she said, don't speak — listen. I'll never forget it. And I think about that a lot because she was so right. The people that were at that table — I can't remember all of them, but there were some high-profile teachers there who had been extremely successful. The whole point was just listen to the conversations they're having, right? Because it makes you wonder what they're thinking about, what their own questions are. So I would encourage anyone out there to do that. I think that's really important.
Yeah, I would too. And just to add to that — I can't quote it verbatim, but Warren Benson has a quote about wishing he could hear more conductors use language that is conducive to music. It's a long thing, but I'll tell you something I did — and this wasn't until I got to my doctorate, and I wish I had done this earlier — I would encourage everybody to do this: keep a little notebook and just write down what people say in a rehearsal. I was doing that with Steve Davis. Steve was my professor, and he had a way of saying things differently than I would but getting the same result. If he said to the trombones, 'Trombones, can you be more graceful at measure 37,' he's telling them not to kill everyone with sound, to soften the articulation, to start listening around so they're not offending everybody. I would have said, 'Trombones, measure so and so, could you play softer and make the front of the notes' — whatever. I would have been very specific, and that's good if I'm talking to a younger player. But if we could take that and add to it, 'Trombones, this needs to be more graceful' — now I'm talking to the younger player emotionally, and then I provide the specifics. I wish I had written down all of these things over time so that my vocabulary would have been much greater in tying together the emotional side of music with the actual nuts and bolts that we have to teach. That's something I wish I had done in terms of listening more — write stuff down and then try to work it into my own vocabulary in such a way that it helps me be a better teacher on the podium.
Now that I'm thinking about the question more too — I think one thing, not the thing, but one thing I wish I had known or someone had said is: you don't have to know it all right now. You're not going to know it all right now. And I'm a perfectionist — anyone that knows me knows I obsess about every small detail in every possible way. Now that I've been teaching for 25 years — since I started — it's easier now, but I still feel like I'm in a separate room from the smart bucket. I don't see the smart bucket often. But I freaked out about it. I was obsessed: this didn't sound great today, clarinets aren't articulating well, trumpets aren't centering, trombone slides are this — pick your thing. Why didn't I know that? Why couldn't I hear it? Why couldn't I proactively work it out? Finally I would just tell myself, it's OK.
Yeah. It's OK. There's one thing I did do in my first year that was really helpful, and that was Mark Harmon — he was the director of bands at Newman Smith High School when I was hired. During concert season, you get on the podium and there's just so much stuff coming at you, and it's challenging to dissect all of that sound without really having a process for doing that — like the directed listening model. I know I just put that plug in there, but I didn't have that at that point. And Mark Harmon basically said, look, you need to record your rehearsals every day, and then afterward sit down with your score and listen and write down the things you didn't hear during rehearsal. In doing so, it sensitizes your ears to listen for those things more clearly when you're actually on the podium. Because there were times I would sit down to listen to the recording and I could stop and rewind and be like, oh, I totally missed something that was egregious — missed it in real time. But as you do that more and more, it does sensitize your ears to be paying attention to all the different things that are happening, and your brain and your ears begin to work together to help you dissect sound and you get better at it as you practice. So I would say, as a first year teacher, if you're not recording your rehearsals and listening to them — sometimes it's hard, but it's reality.
It's reality. You press play and you're like, oh, turn that off. It's like when we turn the metronome on and the ensemble's not with it, and then we just turn it off — like, no, the metronome is the police of time, and turning it off doesn't solve the problem. The same thing with the recording. I don't know what we use now to record stuff — tape player?
Tape player — you've been teaching for 25 years, dude.
I know. But this is an important time because we haven't talked about this yet — it's time we need to plug the directed listening model. You want to talk about it?
No, you go — the genesis was with you, my friend.
Well, so for anybody listening — we have a colleague in Germany, Christoph Breidöck, who is a brilliant educator and artist. The three of us wrote a book that is codifying how to take the subject matter of instrument and ensemble pedagogy and create a system to help conductors and players orally analyze sound from the podium. What I was coming to realize in my dissertation was that there's no codified way to teach people how to listen to sound.
By the way, this is not error detection — that's totally different.
Very different. I mean, it's a part of it, I guess it could be tangentially related, but it's not this. Trying to understand how to orally analyze and dissect music is complicated. So much so that I surveyed the top 36 conducting textbooks at the time — this was around 2006, 2007. Of those 36 conducting textbooks, they talked about oral analysis and how to orally analyze sound twice in 36 books. One was in Chapter 9 of 11, and the second was in the appendices, and they were very, very short. From there, I remember talking to you, David, because we've been friends a very long time, and I said there's got to be a system for this — I'm just going to create one. So my dissertation topic started this, but then after that we all taught with it and tried it and we realized that wasn't quite right — that was like version 1.0. Then we creatively came up with this new system that is based on the old one, but it's actually a very helpful tool. By the way, it's currently being used as a resource in ensemble settings and college settings on four continents, and over 20 countries use it. It's actually pretty great. So if anyone's wanting to check this out — this is a very specific resource. And David, I think you have it.
Yeah, I have a copy. I'm just going to kind of show it on screen. There is a glare from my screen, but I was going to show you — I know some of you are listening — but this is what it's based off of. It looks like an atom, and in the center of the atom is what we all strive for, which is the highest level of artistry, regardless of age level. We want them to play artistically, to play beautifully. But we decided, as we're getting on the podium, there are things that kind of create that — it's not automatic, and students don't just arrive with an instrument and have all this innate skill, listening awareness, and so forth. So this model breaks it down into component parts that are very tactile — we can talk specifically about these component parts, whether it's time and pulse, whether it's sound, body of sound, or balance. We title these things a little differently in the book. If you think about an atom, all these things are rotating around and supporting the strength of this molecule, and in the center is artistry. Then we ended up creating a Venn diagram in the middle, which is the intersection of conceptual musicianship — things that are more concrete, like tempo manipulations, stylistic manipulations, dynamic manipulations — and then there's another side which is abstract musicality. Those are the things that are more part of who we are as humans: our life experiences, what we've listened to, all the different things that make us who we are. And the intersection of those is artistry, all held together by time and sound and balance. It is a unique resource because there's nothing out there quite like it, but it's designed to help not only the teacher but the students communicate in the same language, to understand what it is they're listening for and how they're communicating back and forth about the creation of music. We'd love for you to check it out — there's a website, directedlisteningmodel.com. We're currently self-publishing, but very soon we're switching over — and I'm very excited about this — we're going to be exclusively distributing through Coda Music. This is the first time we've announced it, so I'm excited to share that. And this is the English version, so anyone listening in Europe, it's also available in German — we actually wrote it first in German, so we wrote a book that we can't read. That one is through Helbling. And I was just corrected — it's actually on five continents now, which is really great. So if we have anyone in South America listening and you check it out, we would love that because that would add the sixth.
Who corrected you, John?
My lovely wife.
Oh, that's good. Thanks anyway. So no — it's a wonderful resource, we'd love to share it with you and talk to you about it. It's something that we love talking about, and once you digest it — it takes a little time to digest — you can see immediate changes in your ensemble. So yeah, let's go on to the next question. This one is for you, John: how do you balance pushing students while still keeping band enjoyable?
That's a great question. He doesn't. Depends — his students need him.
Tears. And I think this is an important question. It's important for all of us to remember that band is supposed to be fun — it just is. We have a saying in our office that I really mean: it's just band. Yeah, I'm serious. I mean, we are in an extremely visible program all over the world, but at the end of the day, it's just band. What is my job? My job is to make students love music, love art, engage with it in a safe space, a challenging space, in an artistic space. But at the end of the day, it's just band. And it's supposed to be fun. So I approach every rehearsal. I try to have students laugh at every rehearsal. Not that laughter always equates to fun, but it's a pretty good indicator. You know, but are students smiling? Are they engaging? Are they excited to come to your band room every day? And by the way, are they good? Students want to be good. And so how is that done? By having high expectations, by teaching fundamentals. You can then achieve the highest artistic product possible. And by the way, that is for any ensemble that any of us have. And that could be beginning band, that could be choir, didgeridoo ensemble, marching band, drum core, whatever it is. I mean, it's all built on these things. You're trying to achieve the highest artistic product possible. How is it done? Through proper fundamentals. I'll tell you, Nick Saban, I'm a big fan of his and how he leads or how he led his teams at Alabama. It's about the fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. And if you have to be cheesy about it sometimes, that's what the fundamentals today, kids. I mean, do whatever you got to do to make them realize the importance of that because ultimately they want to play well, they want to be good. But I think it's important for us, and I really think it's important for us to create — you've been, you were talking about it at the beginning about lifelong learners. But I also think it's our job to create lifelong consumers of art. Where I teach, in my ensemble, the marching band here at Michigan, we have 400 students and 93.6% of them aren't studying music. So they are doing that just for fun. And those are the people that are going to go and engage in community theater and support community bands, playing community orchestras, do all the things right. And if I teach them every day that art is fabulous, that art is fun, art is engaging, art is life, art is human existence, you know, these kinds of things that aren't platitudes, it's real. You know, I mean, as we've all seen, whenever all hell breaks loose, I mean, COVID, what's the first thing we all did for COVID? We turned to art. You know, that's what got us through it, right? So, I mean, it's real, it's important. So I take this very seriously, you know, but also when I was teaching beginners and I was teaching middle school, I thought it was uber important to make sure that the students wanted to come to band more than any other class. How did I make that environment positive, engaging, exciting, even while we're spending the majority of our time on fundamentals like two quarter notes. I will never forget this. I knew that I had succeeded one time because the students in class couldn't articulate like we would do. We would have a pass off for every single note, right? So you can articulate a quarter note and until you articulated it correctly, you couldn't go to two. When you go to two, then only if the first two are correct, you can go to three. There was one kid made it in February and he was running down the hallway. I got to articulate four quarter notes today. I still vividly remember that. And I'm like, you know what? There it is. And so it doesn't have to be this. Let me just say it this way. Make your students love music. And if you're not, I would highly encourage you to re-evaluate some things. That's just my thought. How about you?
Yeah. Well, you know, it's so interesting. You said something a second ago that resonated with me is that students don't want to be bad at something. They want to be good and part of that — we know that they need the fundamentals. We know that they need to learn what posture looks like and what it feels like. They need to know what — I talked about brass pedagogy last week on a project John and I were working together. We talked about what the face looks like and I have a brass face checklist and my students, we would go through that checklist and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I'd have them do it down the road. It was a game of like how fast can we do our checklist? We had a posture checklist. It was all a game. So I think for me, I know that I want to achieve and I think about with everything musically, what does the end look like? And I have to keep the end in mind so that I can then plan for what now needs to look like. And for a young kid, like they need to be engaged more quickly, like change gears very quickly. And I've seen John do this in a middle school rehearsal, very, very — where, well, they're playing and you can see they're checking out. Everyone raise your right hand. And then they raise the right hand. And then, OK, put your left hand down. Put the right hand down — like they're all, and they all kind of have a good time. And it takes about 10 seconds. And then they're back to playing music because they just needed that quick change and then back into the thing that he needed them to do. And I did the same thing with fundamentals and finding ways to create that energy within a rehearsal because I wanted the little kids to enjoy playing their instruments. And I'll tell you, I did an oboe bassoon class my — I guess it was my second year to teach and I'm not an oboist or a bassoonist. I didn't know the things I didn't know about those two instruments; I could write volumes about now. And I mean, it was a quest to figure out how to do this. And I knew that I wanted them to be able to sustain a sound with no bumps. So I wanted their airstreams to be — I would use the term constant, steady, and smooth. How did I do that? I had a specific way on trumpet, like with brass I have a way that I do it with. I didn't know how to do this on this. I did know how to make their embouchures — like I could get the embouchure. We got that. We practiced with the reeds and then I decided I had this tuner that had a needle. Back in the day they had needles. I don't know what they have now, but they had a needle and it was a very sensitive little needle and I would have them crow on their reeds. And on an oboe it should be a C — should be octave C's. So could they hold that needle steady? And the contest was how long before the needle moved? So now we're working on getting air to move at a constant rate through the reed and them understanding what that feels like and then watching this little needle to see if they win or not. And I'm not kidding you, I just made this up on the spot because like, I need them to do something that before I put this thing in the instrument, I need them to understand the fundamentals of how their air is going to generate sound in this instrument. Like if I get their embouchure, great, but their air doesn't work well and I didn't know how to do it. And I don't know that's the right way to do that, to be honest with you.
Well. But it's an important point to me, and I'm going to pause you just for a second because this is so important. Get it right now. Get it right at the beginning. Oh, I'll fix it later is not a good system. Sorry. Keep going. I just want to — I want no, that's significant. That is significant.
That reminds me, we had Lynn Jackson on this season and Lynn, she teaches at SMU, which is Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and she does music ed courses there. And she is, I mean, she is a lifelong music educator and she taught in the Richardson School District and just a phenomenal person, phenomenal musician, but a phenomenal beginner educator. Like she knows the instruments better than anybody else that I know. It's true. And what I remember specifically, one thing she talked about was like, the embouchure must be correct at the beginning. It must be — everything else is second to that thing. And I didn't know that at first because, you know, sometimes we — and I taught trumpet — we opened up the method book and on all band method books, recent method books, it's either a second line G or C below the staff. And it was funny because she and I joked about if a student plays a low C on a trumpet, they aren't — I can tell you their embouchure is done. Like they will not play above an A in the staff anytime during that year. That's it. The problem with that is the range of the trumpet goes significantly higher than low C. So like really third space C is the sort of center point. If you think about trumpet range from low F# up to high C — well, that's really double G for thinking about total literature. And what's interesting about that, none of the books start there. And I'll tell you the reason why the embouchure has to precede all of the other things. If I can get a kid — this is on trumpet — to do correct embouchure. So correct face. They show me their brass player's face. We go through that checklist, boom. And then I had them blow air against my hand. And I am now not only feeling whether or not they're using constant, steady, smooth air, I'm looking at the jaw placement. Where's the air on my hand? Is it hitting down lower on my arm? Is it right in the center of my hand? But I'm taking all this information and knowing that if I can get their embouchure and their air to do the right thing before I ever put the trumpet on their face, they will play a great sound. And they'll do so in the middle range of the instrument. And they won't play a low C. That's a long story to say, if I had just said, look, make a buzzing sound on the mouthpiece, stick that on the instrument, they're going to play a low C probably 5 out of 10 times. And now I'm going to spend the next — well, if they don't quit band — I'm going to spend the next six years trying to get them up to a high C. So I'm not setting them up for success, which is something I think we really do have to think about. Keep the end in mind. Do we want our students to be able to play a high C at the end of their first year? Yes. OK, what does that look like? How do I get them there? And backward planning, going OK, what do I do now that's going to make that work? Because I know the question was about keeping band fun and students engaged and all that. But ultimately, if students — this is my experience — if students are feeling success, even if it's doing those four notes in a row articulation wise, they're excited about the success and I can create energy around that. But if I give them the wrong information and limit their success because of that information, ouch. It was on me as a teacher. You know, I talked to my music ed students about the end, beginning with the end in mind. And every time I tell the story about the statue David in Florence and about how Michelangelo took this piece of marble that most people said was completely useless and created something that I would say is one of the most perfect pieces of anything in the world ever in the history of time from that thing — with the end in mind is just remarkable. But that's what we have to do every day with teaching music.
Yeah, all right. Ask me another question.
All right, the next one from the readers. What's the best advice you've ever gotten about managing a rehearsal?
Talk less. I could elaborate, but I don't think I have to. Like I think we've all probably heard it. Yes, we use five minutes to say something we could say in 10 seconds, 15 seconds. And we lose students, we lose engagement, we lose momentum. Talk less. And it's not necessarily play more. Like yes, you do need to keep playing, I think, but just finding ways to say the thing you're going to say with the least amount of syllables possible. Talk less. How about you?
Excuse me. And for me — I'm all choked up about it. Excuse me. Sorry. Thanks, John. You're never going to know the score well enough. You think you do, but you don't. And even people — a former colleague, Michael Haithcock, knows Lincolnshire Posey better than probably anyone, even better than Grainger, I would argue. And he still doesn't know the score well — he's even said that. Like the guy is a genius. And what my take from this is, score study is more important than what you realize. And where I see most teachers fail are in two areas. One, they don't know the score. Two, they don't know the subject matter that they're teaching. And I think you have to have a command of both of those. And I know that's kind of harsh to say, but I would argue the majority of teachers that I've seen have a deficiency in one of those areas, if not both. And that's something that you're going to need to have an honest conversation about with yourself. I was just judging a state concert band festival this past weekend and there were many fantastic ensembles in the state. And I'll tell you what, the amount of times that I commented on either not understanding the score or not understanding the subject matter was pretty significant. So I would argue that we all need to learn and we are lifelong learners on this, but the best way to manage a rehearsal is to be efficient. How do you be efficient? Know exactly what you're talking about. Because oftentimes if people don't understand exactly what they're talking about, they're going to talk in circles and say the same thing five times in a row and not really say anything about it. So that's my advice there. Score study is important and, you know, everybody does it differently. Everybody has kind of their way and sometimes it's something you just kind of picked up. No one ever gave you like, here's a great method for learning scores or studying scores. I've struggled for a long time. I did struggle for a long time on figuring out how do I want to approach a specific score and it took me a while to come to that. I would tell everyone that's listening, score study is a process as well that you get stronger at and you get better at, and some things become more important. You're able to analyze them more quickly and use the score to your advantage versus always trying to figure things out. That does come along. I'm going to put a little plug in here. It'll already have aired by the time you're hearing this, but I am starting — it's already going — a score study club, I'm calling it. I forget what I called it. Well, it's within a conducting studio called Maestro Mind. But then I've opened up a score study section of that will be free. It'll be open. We'll do it once a month, kind of like a book club, and we'll pick a score and all you've got to do is listen to it before we meet. And we'll spend about an hour talking about it, digging into it and learning about it together, just talking, getting some feedback. My wife just told me it's Measure by Measure — that's the title of that little zoom call. Maestro Mind, Measure by Measure. So in any case, one last question and then we've got a couple of last things and then we'll wrap this up. So John, what is one small change that had a big impact on your program?
It's an excellent question. There have been many, and I will give you two. First of all, trust the players, trust your students. That's something that I learned way too late. And I think I could have been much more effective as a connector with people, having better musical interactions, even in the beginner classroom that I was in. We could have done a better job. I could have done a better job connecting to them if I trusted them more. Now my default is always to trust the players, and I think that fundamentally changed how I taught, the rehearsal process, the product that was achieved, like the whole thing. And then secondly, seek the feedback from your students and ask them the honest questions. And this has also fundamentally changed how I interact with students. We ask our students every month to evaluate every aspect of our program. I mean, like from the rehearsal efficiency, am I being effective? Do they care for the music? Are the sizes of the apples OK? How's the temperature of the water? I mean, we survey everything and we go through and analyze every answer from every student. And at times it's challenging to read sometimes because they're honest, you know. And so it's taught me to have a thick skin. But I think it's important because at the end of the day, it's their experience. It's not about us. And so I would encourage that. How about you?
Yeah. You know, I'm honestly not going to add to those. I'm going to affirm them because I agree with both of them and I did not do them soon enough in my career. And one of the two things that I — if someone asked me like, you know, tell me about your doctorate, what did you learn? The first one was to trust the players implicitly. No matter how I felt in rehearsal — we're not getting this, we're not far enough along — trust the players, create an environment where they feel you believe in them regardless. Because then when there is something that needs to be accomplished, we're on more of a collaborative plane. Then I'm going to tell you information and you're going to do information and then this gets better. And that role from the podium — I learned way too late that I need to be collaborating with these kids. And I want to kind of go back to this — in season one this would have been with Cindy Lansford and well, just about everybody we've talked to — this is really about the kids and we're not the kids. Kids could be whomever, 6th graders, 5th graders, 4th graders, college students, young professionals, people sitting in a community ensemble. They are our students. They are our collaborators. And music is collaborative. So I, I would just maybe just add to it is calling it collaborative. And I'll tell you the part about getting feedback, what I love about John in his statement is that he's doing this often. It's not like you're doing it once, you're doing it more often and you're not doing it because someone said, Hey, we need feedback. Like, no, you genuinely want to know how they're doing, how they're feeling about how this thing is going. And again, I think that adds to this collaborative space that we, we want you to have a wonderful experience and we as the teachers are helping to create that environment. So I think that's fantastic. Absolutely.
Can I just add one more thing?
Oh, absolutely.
I want to under score the point that this is not about us. We see it too often. It's not. And I think that you need to check your ego at the door. I'll just be honest about it. Like I am so cautious about this. Every decision I make, every piece I program, all the things, pick the list. Is it in the best interest of the students? Is it in the best interest of the program? Or is it about me? And if the answer is anywhere near me, we're not doing it. It's that's not the point.
I love it. Before we jump into some kind of bookkeeping, record keeping, things we have to talk about before we wrap up. John, tell me about your summer plans. I hear you're taking a trip to Germany.
We are indeed. So the, the like University of Michigan marching band is going to Europe in June and we're going to be there for 18 days doing a tour of Germany, Austria and France. And it's going to be a performance exchange, cultural exchange, educational exchange will be taking the band to a school. We're going to be doing a couple concerts by ourselves. We'll be doing some side by side concerts with the police orchestra Baron a Johan Mozambique LER who is Veranda Mozambique's father. And so it's it's going to be an outstanding trip. I'm so excited about that. I'm heading overseas for another trip in a couple weeks. And actually, this would be the first time, David, that we haven't been to Europe together in the summer in about 15 years. I'm sad about it. Maybe next summer I'm I'm just can't make it happen this time around. But.
I understand. But I am I'm trust. Me, I'll be Facetiming you every day. You'll be there with us. And anyway, so how about you? What's going on?
You know, I just launched, well, I just mentioned a moment ago, but I launched it's a virtual conducting studio called Maestro Mind. It's just on Facebook right now. I'll probably end up adding Instagram and some other things, but I'm really excited about it because I polled a few different people and asking I'm I, I was noticing something out in the field and, and it was that I'm hearing really great ensembles. I'm hearing ensembles that sound good, but I'm, I'm watching conductors that are struggling with, with how they look and like what they're communicating from the podium. And I know that sometimes it's difficult because we as teachers, we get so wrapped up in the things we have to do to get our bands to where we want them and so forth. But some of them almost look like they were, there was just so much tension and things that were like, I, I know they were counterproductive for the music. So then it got me thinking like, you know, I had two semesters conducting. I guess most people probably have one or two semesters of undergraduate conducting and then you go do the job and you do the job for 30 years and you never that you had two semesters which were these are usually one hour, maybe 2 hour classes. These are not mine were twice a week one hour.
Oh yeah, right. Exactly. So like they're not 3 hour courses and you're not, you know.
So I just got to thinking, unless you go back to get a master's or a doctorate like we have, there's not a lot of development for really movement, for how we look, how we're communicating. And I kind of was like, why, why is that? And I could be wrong on this, but I think it's probably a bit threatening. To. Like air your dirty laundry. Like, OK, I'm going to put this out. So, you know, are, are people going to go to a conducting symposium if they know like, OK, I have to go conduct the Stravinsky octet at this particular university. I'm like, I'm just trying to make my middle school band sound bad, you know, sound better than it. It does. That's not necessarily applicable. So I don't know. I asked some people say, hey, do you think this will be beneficial where people could send in a video to me and then I can provide live feedback about the video and then push it back out there. And then we just created a dialogue that helps them move forward. Every two weeks. It's twice a week, sorry. Every two weeks or once a month. That's the options and just see what that looks like. And so far I've had good feedback. I've sent out some lessons already and it's just been exciting to see people go. My goodness, this is so helpful. And I made immediate change today and the students responded immediately. So it's cool. I'm excited about it. It's starting off as the virtual program, but then we'll have a private rehearsal room for the group itself. And then obviously I started the measure by measure, which is the score study portion, but that's open to everybody because I just think it's like it'll be a cool book club for all of us, so.
This is that's. My summer kind of getting that going and then important.
Resource. Yeah, I think it's gonna be fun and I'm hoping it's not there yet, but I'm hoping that I can tie that into actual them getting professional development credit at some point. Because if you're going to be enrolled in a coaching program, well, that'd be great if that could be helpful, you know, over time. So working on it, knock on wood.
Great. Yep. Let's see what's next. Let me go to my notes here from our producers. Teresa, let's see. We're supposed to tell people to keep an eye on our socials during the summer. Socials over the summer, stuff that's coming up and then we also have a new segment and this one, I am excited about it. I think I saw a post that Teresa put out recently, which is we're going to start doing every week in the next season, a segment we call Standing Ovation. And it is to highlight music educators that are doing a wonderful job for their kids. And we'll have a link for you to nominate someone. And it'll always be in our show notes. So when you listen, wherever you listen to whatever platform in the notes, there will be a link for you to submit. Here's a person that you've been observing doing a fantastic job. You want to nominate them for recognition on the on the podcast. So we'll give them a standing ovation. So looking for that and please submit people that you see. It only takes like 2 minutes to get that in. So submit them. We'll go through them and start getting that taken care of and those people recognized and shout outs to them. And there's also a survey, right? David, yeah, we're going to do a survey and yeah, John, tell us about that.
So just everyone just keep an eye out for a listener survey that's that's going to be going out during the summer. We would love your feedback on things that can improve topics that you want us to talk about. If that, if that you want David to talk less, I mean whatever you want it would be.
Exactly. Yeah, so.
There's only three words. Exactly just like why does John stutter? I thought he was smarter than that anyway, you know, those kinds of things. So please, please keep an eye on eye on that because we do value feedback and kind of help to guide, guide the future. So.
Yeah. So we'll, we will be back in September for Season 3. In the meantime, we will have content that's coming out over the summer. So keep an eye on our socials. And also we'd love for you to, you know, really reflect on the season and go back and listen. If there's if you got some time, go back and listen and share this with your friends and other colleagues. And I'll tell you, it does help us when you listen, if you hit that like button or a little heart button, if you hit the share button, if you comment that this is something I really hope in season 3 that we can encourage. Put your comments. I know you have some thoughts. Put your comments down there so that we can see them and react to them in upcoming episodes. That's really helpful. If you have a suggestion like here's a topic I'd really like to hear back hear about, not hear back hear about, or a suggestion for a particular guest you'd like to hear from, send us Adm on our Facebook comment time podcast Facebook page. We already have some guests booked and lined up, but we still have some room to work in some other projects, so we're always open to suggestions there. So indeed, any final thoughts?
Yeah, you know, first, well, I have many, but first thought is I want to thank all of you who are participating in this. Our viewership is increasing significantly, which is awesome. But at the end of the day, I mean, we're just trying to put together something that's going to be helpful for you in the profession to help your students have a great experience. And so that's why we're doing this, you know, but I am thankful everyday for so many reasons. And for this one, I get to be here with my, my best friend in the world, whom I love dearly. 2. I think we, we also get to talk to some of the best and brightest in the business. And I think that is really cool. I mean, I cherish that because after every episode, I'm like, man, I didn't know 88 things that person just said. That's awesome. I've been teaching for 25 years, you know, so I, I think that, that's really good, you know, but also too, just having these conversations is, is invigorating and inspiring for me, right it.
Is I love them. I just walk outgoing now. It's awesome. It's incredible.
Yeah, I leave excited. It gets something that going inside of me and I'm, I, I love it. And I'll tell you, we are, this is our first. We're not even really a year into this and we're right at 10,000 downloads, which is incredible.
We when John says thank you, we are so thankful that you're listening and hopefully we're making a difference in helping you out there in the field do what we all want to do, which is help kids play music and love making music together. So I do want to reiterate, thank you, thank you for listening, Thank you for sharing, thanking. Thank you for taking the time and kind of believing in us to bring you this kind of content. And I will, I, I will say the same as what John said. I leave sometimes blown away by our guests. They're incredible. I'm like, man, I wish I had just wish someone had told me this earlier in that whole concept of being a lifelong learner. That's why we're doing this and it's helping us. And we hopefully, hopefully in the next year, we continue to help you. So I think that's, I think that's it for Season 2, John.
That's it, Season 2 done. Season 2 is a wrap. Thanks everyone. We look forward to seeing you in the fall.
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Comment Time Podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media and we'd love it if you shared with your friends as well. We'll see you next time, but until then, keep making music and keep making a difference.