Archive for August 4th, 2008
Lessons
August 4th, 2008 | 
Author: Percussion & Music Lessons Available for all Ages
Do you have a son or daughter playing Percussion in the school band? Let me put my considerable experience and education to work improving their skills while fostering passion for music and percussion.
Eleven Years Experience
With 14 years teaching and playing professionally, you are sure to see steady progress and the joy that comes with it for your son or daughter.
In My Studio or Your Home
I have a private studio, but I am more the happy to visit your home or arrange lessons at your child’s school. Please refer to my Vitae for my experience and references.
Please note my commitment to incorporate the nine national standards as a curricular goal for each student.
National Standards
- Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
- Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
- Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments
- Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines
- Reading and notating music
- Listening to, analyzing, and describing music
- Evaluating music and music performances
- Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts
- Understanding music in relation to history and culture
These goals are vital to the continued success of public school music programs and should be used as check list for any music curriculum. Learning music should be fun! Thank you.
Posted in 
the Professional
As in the word “Professor,” the root of “professional” is the verb “to profess,” or to state something which the speaker views as unequivocally true. (1) A “professional,” traditionally then, was a person who spoke of things, or performed tasks, of which that person was a master, an expert, or an authority. The word is rarely used to denote expertise nowadays, however. (2) Later, the word “professional” took on the added notion of a person who was paid for their work. Centuries ago it was logical to pay only experts and masters for their work; thus, there was no substantial difference, at first, when the word “professional” took on a financial tone. But still later, the expertise requirement was dropped, and now anyone who is paid, regardless of how incompetent, is apparently to be regarded as a “professional.” The word is still somewhat used nowadays to signify payment-for-services-rendered; however, since the maturity of modern marketing techniques, the word “professional” has been transformed completely. (3) Whereas “a professional” (used as a noun) was, and is, a common use of the word, it is also equally used as an adjective or an adverb (i.e., a professional musician, to act professionally). Especially as an adverb, the newest usage of the word “professional” has taken on the connotation of an attitude towards behavioral and personality traits.
To “act professionally” essentially means to wear a slightly plastic smile, to speak with a certain detached tone of voice, to maintain psychological separation from the emotional needs of customers, to avoid expressing one’s own emotions, and, in general, to deny the authenticity of genuine human interaction. While all masters of all trades in the past engaged simultaneously, and without apology, their intellectual and emotional aspects of their minds, apparently a modern “professional” is expected to dissect out the emotional (and some would say the truly “human”) component of social affairs. Ethically speaking then, the modern use of “professional” is essentially a sophisticated form of lying, and a “professional” is therefore a liar. It is interesting to note how the word has degenerated full circle from a position of maximal truth, to that of maximal falsehood.
[ from "Word Origins and Real Meanings" (1998) ]
Dr. Jody Nagel
September 8, 1998