Technical Resources for Advanced Pianists /  by Chris Foley

One of the strengths of The Royal Conservatory’s Certificate Program is how technique is fully integrated with the repertoire and musicianship components of each RCM level. However, once you pass Level 10 and move on up to the associate levels, there are no longer any specific technical requirements* beyond the mandatory List F etude.

At this level more than ever, pianists need a regular technical regimen in order to grow pianistically, and beyond a certain point, the full complement of scales, chords and arpeggios in the 2008 Piano Technique Book can be a bit limiting.

Below is a listing of public domain resources to work through over the course of your advanced studies and beyond. Some of these pdfs are rather large, so you might find it useful to print out only what you need. Otherwise all of these can be used on iPad apps such as forScore.

  • Hanon - The Virtuoso Pianist. I recommend the first 20 exercises for the most part, as well as 21-30 afterwards. For an extra challenge, you can develop considerable dexterity by learning the first 20 in all 12 major keys, as well as in a variety of different rhythms.

  • Pischna - Technical Studies. These exercises are useful in small doses for dexterity and alignment.

  • Dohnanyi - Essential Finger Exercises. The first section is similar to Pischna, but the following sections explore a wide variety of technical skills in interesting ways. I particularly like the octave arpeggio exercises near the end of the book.

  • Czerny - 160 Short Studies. Each of these 160 short studies is only 8 bars long and can be learned in one session. There’s always something new to explore with these, and they can be tackled numerically or in whatever order you choose.

  • Kullak - School of Octave Playing. Octaves figure prominently the advanced repertoire, and Kullak’s approach helps you learn these skills effectively. The brave of heart can work through the 7 Octave Studies that comprise the second part.

  • Tausig - Studies in Double Thirds. Carl Tausig’s scale system in 3rds covers all the major and minor keys with excellent fingerings. These can be very helpful with legato skills.

  • Liszt - Technical Studies. Franz Liszt’s works for piano are some of the towering highlights of the piano repertoire. Within these 12 books of technical studies you’ll find preparatory exercises for almost all the challenges he throws at you in his piano works.

  • Brahms - 51 Exercises. These mostly short studies are not for the faint of heart, but offer a variety of technical approaches to help you to get around the challenges of Brahms’ piano works.

Advanced piano technique is like CrossFit for piano. Rather than limiting yourself to the same regimen every single day. I recommend a variety of approaches. If you change up your technical routines, you’ll develop a sizeable bag of tricks that can be applied to many situations in the repertoire. With the guidance of a first-rate teacher, you can also discover the right way to work through these exercises while avoiding injury.

* NB: unless you’re doing the Advanced Piano Pedagogy Practical exam.

Reimagining my Writing Process, or How I Intend to Not Plan My Blogging Activities /  by Chris Foley

The keyboard of my aging MacBook Pro from early 2015. Still going strong, but perhaps time for a new one.

I write a lot. On my teaching days I usually type around 2000 words of lesson notes for my students over 5 hours of piano lessons. Examining days are even more intense - I estimate that I’ll probably type as much as 3000 words a day when writing exam reports. This is mostly technical, pedagogical writing and is integral to the type of work that I do as a teacher and an RCM examiner.

But at the same time, I like to write as a blogger. The challenge is that this type of writing is all in addition to the words Ichurn out for my regular work, so time needs to be set aside for the additional challenges of writing blog articles regularly. Sometimes I’m exhausted.

Since last summer I’ve found it difficult to focus on my creative blogging outlets. I’ve learned that my writing tends to come in fits and starts and I want to change that. The idea of sitting down regularly to write blog posts has seemed daunting, especially as my own experience in the profession doesn’t lead me towards cut-and-dried opinions on what’s going on.

Lately I’ve ben thinking about how I can return to blogging and what kind of process could make it viable. Maybe not a newsletter this time around. The weekly looming deadline didn’t work well for me and created a lot of tension over time.

For my blogging, planning in general doesn’t work well beyond a few specific writing projects from time to time. The times where blogging worked out best were times when it was largely unplanned and spontaneous, exactly the way that people post on social media.

So as I move forward I aim to be more deliberate about not planning what to do next, beyond a few ideas and subjects. The present-tense bias of this kind of work might allow more organic growth in the kind of stuff I’m interested in writing about without having a concrete plan.

15 Levels of Turntable Scratching /  by Chris Foley

DJ Shortkut looks at the different levels of turntable techniques that go into the art of scratching. Although many of us grew with these sounds, the actual techniques and how they fit together is often a mystery until you hear an expert break it down, if you’ll excuse the pun.

What I can also appreciate here is the sense of listening, feeling the beat, and mastery of technical skill that goes into turntablism. Although Shortkut makes it look easy, years of practice is needed to master these skills, just as with any other instrument.

(Via Kottke)

16 Ideas for First-Time Music Festival Adjudicators /  by Chris Foley

The atrium space of the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby, British Columbia

I originally wrote this article for the Music Teacher’s Helper blog back in early 2012. Unfortunately, MTH lost some of their blog archives when they were bought out last year and the original location of the article was lost. Fortunately, Dina Pollock, editor of the BCRMTA Progressions Magazine, was kind enough to reprint the article for the Spring 2012 edition, and it was this reprint that still existed 10 years down the line. Special thanks also go to Amy Boyes for facilitating the revival of this article for her work for the Canadian Music Festival Adjudicators’ Association.

When I was a student, I looked with dread upon the fearsome weeks of the local music festival. I would prepare my pieces for months beforehand, work them up to a performable level, then walk in terror up to the piano and play my piece with varying degrees of success. I would then sit in continuing terror as the adjudicator would proceed to tear my playing apart, with only the tiniest glimmer of hope that there was something remotely musical about my feeble attempt at musical taste. Sometimes I would win, sometimes I wouldn’t, but there was always the feeling that the adjudicator was there to anoint a select group of chosen ones, and as for the rest, well, there’s always next year.

Many years later, I found myself onthe other side of the table, being asked to serve as adjudicator for some of the same competitions in which I had once competed. As time went on, I also found some of my colleagues asking me for advice on how to both survive and thrive when adjudicating for the first time. Here are some of my thoughts on best practices big and small that can make your adjudicating experience a positive one for yourself, the young performers who play for you, and the musical communities into which you make a cameo appearance.

Getting Organized

1. On the first day, arrive at the venue well ahead of time. Use a service such as Google Maps to find where you’re going easily. Once you’re in the venue, you’ll need to properly configure the room (often a church sanctuary or multi- purpose space), finding the best location and angle for the piano as well as your desk.

2. Sign what you need to sign before you start. Certificates and adjudication forms all need your signature on them, and it’s best to go through the signing ritual before the start of the day, allowing for a smoother flow once you’re compiling marks.

3. Learn the marking system that the festival uses. Do marks start at 80? Or is 80 the equivalent of a medal- winning performance? Talk to the festival organizers about this well ahead of time – often festivals have a written expectation of where they wish mark ranges to be.

4. Befriend your assistant. Most festivals provide adjudicator’s assistants, who compile the scores and write names on certificates (which you have already signed – see #2). Treat them well. If there’s anything you need from them, ask politely. Adjudicator’s assistants can make your life considerably easier.

5. Bring your preferred pens and pencils. Whether it be an extra fine Sharpie, Pilot, Waterman, or erasable Bic, your choice of pen can either help or hinder you when you’re writing out dozens of adjudications every day. If you’re writing in permanent ink, be sure to bring either correcting fluid or tape. A pencil is also a good idea for jotting down notes.

6. Always keep a backup copy of all marks. Towards the end of the festival, you’ll often need to tabulate totals in order to determine scholarship winners.

7. Organize your territory. The adjudicator’s desk is a sacrosanct area of the festival venue. Make sure that there is enough space between you and the audience, so that your every written word and mark is not scrutinized by the prying eyes of parents (and teachers too!). On your desk, figure out where you’ll put the comment sheet, your writing utensils, the score of the current student, scores of previous students, and scores of students who have yet to play. A stand-up clock is also a good idea, so you can see how you’re doing for time at any given moment.

8. Determine the festival’s stand on copyright. Nearly all festivals have an original and/or authorized copy policy in place. If a student hands you a photocopy, know what the penalty is, if any. At the same time, educate yourself on how to spot authorized copies from services such as CD Sheet Music or IMSLP.

The Written and Public Adjudication

9. Write clearly. Legions of teachers, students, and parents, annually spend hours trying to decipher the illegible scrawls of musical authorities sounding forth on a variety of subjects. Writing so that others can actually read your comments can do a world of good and ensure that your suggestions might actually be followed.

10. Speak clearly and accessibly. When you give your public adjudication after the students have performed, remember that you are speaking not only to the students, but to their parents, friends, and teachers as well.

11. Strike a balance between positive and negative critique. To put it bluntly, adjudicators who are ruthless in their assessment of students are doing a tremendous disservice to students, teachers, and the music education field as a whole. All that adjudicators really need to do is reward the positive (no matter how negligible the accomplishment) and provide some ideas for further development. And they need to do this for every single student who performs.

12. Strike a balance between speaking to the class as a whole and each individual performer. This is one of the tough parts. Spend too much time picking apart every performance and you risk being perceived as a curmudgeon. It’s usually a good idea to preface specific comments with a quick general overview of the class. Some examples: offering some insights on pedaling before an intermediate Romantic class or talking about the process of learning a fugue in an advanced Bach class.

13. Know whom you’re talking to. As an adjudicator, you must take into account the age and level of the students to whom you are talking. If they’re beginners, offer as much encouragement as possible. For an advanced class, you can be a bit tougher. On the other hand, it’s not a good idea to sound off on mid-ground Schenkerian analysis for a Grade 3 Sonatina class, nor do students in a senior concerto class wish to be addressed like Kindergarten students.

14. Change the focus of your talks frequently throughout an adjudication week. No one likes to hear a broken record. At the same time, it can be difficult to be continually thinking of new things to talk about when you’re hearing the same problems over and over again. Therefore, it is important to put some thought into the balance between reiterating your core message and branching out into new avenues of discussion in the spoken adjudications.

15. After the adjudication and before you announce the winners, take a second to make sure that you’ve selected the right person for first place. This seems redundant, but is actually very important (make sure you’ve done #6 as well). Think of this part of the festival as reality television: since many parents are videotaping the proceedings, you’ll need to get your announcement of the winner right the first time in order that you can leave town with your head held high.

16. Thank everybody. Thank the teachers for the hours of hard work they do every day. Thank the parents for the uncounted hours of driving students to lessons and encouraging their children to practice every day. Thank your assistant (see #4). Thank the Executive Director of the festival. Above all, thank the students for having the guts to come up on stage and perform in a high-stakes situation.

At the end of the day, festivals aren’t necessarily about anointing champions and lauding the most talented. They are about creating positive musical experiences for the greatest possible number of developing musicians. Over the course of years, the students who end up having distinguished musical careers may not be the ones who won first or even placed in the local festival. Therefore, your job as an adjudicator is to encourage as much as possible, realizing that parents and teachers are relying on you to create enough of a positive experience for students that they will return to their instruments and continue their musical studies
for as long as possible. In these tough economic times, the music education world and the continuing good work of local music festivals expect nothing less from adjudicators.

Free Download: Level 9 and 10 Chord Progressions for Royal Conservatory Technical Requirements /  by Chris Foley

One of the challenges of the technical requirements for The Royal Conservatory’s advanced-level exams since 2015 has been the extended I - VI - IV - V6/4 - V8-7 - I chord progression at Levels 9 and 10 to be played following the 4-note chords. The 2022 edition of the Piano Syllabus only shows the realized version for the chord progression in C major on page 123. Many students are perfectly fine with figuring out the progression in all the required keys. However, some students need some help, and it’s for this reason that I’ve created these sheets that you can download and print for free.

Feel free to download, save, and share these pages. Best of luck with your RCM piano exams!

Product Cover look inside Piano Repertoire Level 10 Celebration Series, Sixth Edition. Published by RCM Publishing (FH.C6R10).


From Doomscrolling to Growthscrolling /  by Chris Foley

This is the first of several articles I’ll be writing on how I use Napkin to collect, process, and work with ideas in my note-collection system. Foley Music and Arts readers will receive a $10 discount on Napkin’s monthly and yearly plans when signing up - just enter FOLEY on the promo code space when you get to the checkout page.

Go to a live news feed and read it for a few minutes, especially live feeds about US politics, COVID-19, or the Ukrainian War. Your heart rate will rise, along with your blood pressure. You'll start to feel anxiety and helplessness. The Merriam-Webster defines doomscrolling (also called doomsurfing) as:

…the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing. Many people are finding themselves reading continuously bad news about COVID-19 without the ability to stop or step back.

James Tapper writes in the Guardian about how the need to understand and make sense of current events can make the anxiety worse:

Mental health experts are warning that public engagement comes with a cost in terms of anxiety that should not be ignored. Paul Salkovskis, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford, who worked on measures to help people deal with Covid-related anxiety, said: “Clearly there are some people who are already anxious, who will be significantly more anxious, as happened with Covid – we saw a big increase in some subtypes of anxiety in the clinic. There will be some of that with this situation, but I don’t think it’s going to be the dominant response.”

What if you could feel the opposite of the compulsive anxiety triggered by doomscrolling? What if you could discover a reverse reaction that lowers anxiety and blood pressure while scrolling through information that helps you to feel agency, surrender, and a rush of possibilities?

Over the last months I’ve been using Napkin, a tool for connected thought that’s currently in beta. From Napkin’s website:

Napkin is built for short notes. Napkin’s core is the dynamic interface. It reveals connected ideas without an explicit search, based on association instead of hierarchy.

The uncovering of associations between notes is something that I’ve found beneficial. Here's how to do it using Napkin..

1. Regularly collect a body of information such as book notes, article notes, highlights from journal entries or morning pages, and enter it into Napkin. I tend to collect a lot of information from various sources and put them in places for these ideas to lay idle and eventually become forgotten. These can be in notebooks, emails, note-taking apps, social media, and other places. The important first step is to centralize the body of information that is relevant to you so it an be reviewed regularly and utilized. You can also selectively import notes from apps such as Notion or Roam.

Once a note is created in Napkin, you can add tags and bidirectional links between notes through a process called Magic Labelling. There are plans to eventually automate Magic Labelling but I prefer to do it manually in order to have more control over the connections.

2. Retrieve notes from your system through tags, note connections, and at random in order to uncover connections between ideas. Serendipity is paramount.

Revisiting previous ideas in a traditional journal or Zettelkasten is a slow and laborious activity that requires significant focus. With Napkin, the review is built in - the algorithm does it for you and random retrieval is baked into the service. It's like crack cocaine for positive ideas, creating a dopamine rush through moments of understanding of how disparate things could fit together when they're thrown at you randomly.

Here’s a look at what the Napkin refers to as the swarm of thought - the expanse of your ideas collected in the system:

You can navigate through the swam via tags, bidirectional links, through search, or randomly (the “r” keyboard shortcut is my favorite). Previous notes, rather than being neatly catalogued in a folder structure, are quickly ready to be retrieved for reflection and putting together with other ideas.

Many people might just be fine stopping at step 2. Being able to understand and process what's going on in our life is a major accomplishment in itself and is by no means easy.

But there’s a third step…

3. The connections formed between ideas can lead to personal outpout or further exploration. Personal output could include articles, Twitter threads, videos, workshop ideas, or even books. Some of the connections might also yield no answers, but result in opportunities for next steps in your reading, learning, or research.

Far from arriving at concrete conclusions, the connections discovered from growthscrolling are much more open-ended, resulting in questions and possibilities rather than answers:

  • How could I use this?

  • What could this lead to?

  • How do these ideas fit together?

  • What if I tried this idea?

  • What if I was wrong about this?

  • Where can I find further information about this?

  • How can I break through my apparent bias on this?

All of these questions lead to growth and further avenues of inquiry.

Similar to doomscrolling, the growthscrolling process also requires a large amount of information to wade through and put together. You’re the one who will need to put the time into putting together a meaningful and growing body of notes. In return, you’ll be able to generate positivity, agency, and the lure of latent possibilities.

In the next few articles I’ll be looking at the process of assembling material, inputting it into Napkin, and going from random entries to stacks, and from there to the first draft of an article.

(Image courtesy of David Vig on Unsplash)

5 More Mental Models That I Use in Daily Life /  by Chris Foley

A while back I wrote about 9 mental models and organizational systems that work for me. In the time since writing that article I've had a chance to reflect on which of these has stood the test of time and which ones no longer work for me. 

Neuroplasticity, a growth mindset, little and often, a morning routine, keeping a Zettelkasten (albeit in modified form), and awareness of antifragility are all things that still resonate with me. However, some of these models I’ve dropped recently:

  • Getting Things Done. David Allen’s system worked for me for many years. However, the nature of my work has evolved, and I no longer have so much of a project-oriented and context-centric way of working that I once did. 

  • Inbox Zero. There was a day when I religiously went through all my incoming email to determine what was actionable, archivable, or deletable. I managed, but doing it was exhausting. Now I use Basecamp’s Hey, which at $100/year is pricey, but automates sorting of my mail into pre-arranged folders such as the Imbox (important mail), The Feed (newsletters), Paper Trail (archived email that I don't need to look at until later via search), and Set Aside (junk). From the Imbox, emails I don't respond to immediately get processed into Reply Later or Set Aside. My work for RCM remote exams generates 3-5k automated emails a year, most of which need to be found via search several weeks to months after sending when I set up for the student’s remote exam. The time saved by the automation of these emails has been worth the yearly subscription in itself. So rather than adhering to Inbox Zero, my email just flows effortlessly. 

  • Plus/Minus/Next. This is a fantastic review system from Anne-Laure Le Cunff at Ness Labs. It worked for me at one time, but I find myself not keeping up with it, and that's fine. Plus/Minus/Next is worth a look, as it might work for you. 

In the original mental models post I wrote that my primary mental models are ones found outside my immediate discipline of music. This has been useful in identifying frameworks for thinking and doing. Which leads us to the current list.

1. Bias towards action. Just get started. Resistance to getting started is the greatest barrier to getting things done. Once the tendency to procrastinate is broken, I've found it relatively easy to get projects started and finished. Even if you haven't got a plan in place, merely starting can get the ball rolling.

It is better to start to do something and fail than it is to do nothing and wait for the correct path of action to appear. Failure is part of the result to expect if you have a bias toward action.

The vast majority of projects that have succeeded with me are ones where I only had a vague idea of how to proceed but figured it out while immersed in doing the work. The entire project seemed to create itself organically, starting at first steps. There were moments of failure, many of them. But these were moments where I could easily reorient and proceed.

2. OODA loops. The systematic relationship of observation to processing and decision-making is a concept that was developed by US fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd. Although he first developed this concept in relation to military operations in order to gain an advantage on the battlefield, the process has expanded in subsequent yers to encompass a variety of activities in non-military settings. 

The OODA loop consists of a four-step process:

  • Observe

  • Orient

  • Decide

  • Act

The process is cyclical, but in a non-linear manner - any of the steps can feed back into the observation phase. Take a look at Farnam Street’s article on the basics of OODA loops and how they work - John Boyd was able to capitalize on the OODA loop to develop the ability to beat most fighter pilots in 40 seconds or less.

Vankatesh Rao’s article on thinking in OODA loops looks at how this concept can be utilized in collaborative settings. Vankatesh’s view of the cycle in business:

The goal of OODA operations is to operate inside the market's decision cycle, to seize and retain the initaitive, in order to control the market, to make yourself surprisingly lucky, and your customer predictably delighted. 

3. Reviewing your own idea collection system can create the opposite of doomscrolling. Since the onset of the pandemic and the Russo-Ukranian war, we all know what happens when you look at news and social media feeds for too long, with the increased anxiety, rise in blood pressure, difficulty sleeping, and overall feeling of, well, doom. 

But what could you do that creates the opposite of doomscrolling?

Over the last while I’ve discovered that randomly looking through previous entries in a journal, commonplace book, Zettelkasten, or idea collection system can create the opposite effect. The more you look at your previous collections of ideas, notes, and thoughts, the more positive effect it has:

  • connections between things

  • ideas for future projects

  • Aha moments

  • positive vibes

  • less anxiety

I've noticed that this activity can turn around my mood and have a beneficial effect, even when done mindlessly. 

I need to think this idea through in greater detail and will be writing about it in greater detail in the coming weeks. I use Napkin as an idea collection system to send information to and very quickly review previous entries randomly in order to create connections that eventually lead to articles. I've even thought about what to call this effect. Growthscrolling perhaps? 

4. Start reading a lot of books in order to get the right things from the ones you finish. I start an inordinate amount of books but rarely finish them. Far from feeling bad about my habit of dropping books, this is what helps me to find value in the books I read. I first read about this idea from Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution, who estimates that he only finishes one in ten books. 

If you’re thinking about starting a larger number of books, I highly recommend using a library to cut down on costs. I’m fortunate to have an account with the Toronto Public Library which has one of the largest collections of ebooks in the world. 

Here are some of the qualities I look for in books:

  • makes me think

  • gives me new information in a illuminating, engaging way

  • feeds my wonder at life

  • draws me in

  • helps to build a viable understanding of some aspect of reality, whether fiction or non-fiction

  • helps me to build skills where needed

  • gives me delight

  • beautifully constructed sentences

Feed the best parts into your idea management system (see #3), review quickly and randomly, and the benefits compound over time. 

5. Figure stuff out on your own by doing. When I first started the Collaborative Piano Blog, I had absolutely no idea how to create a website or write and manage a large number of articles. Back in 2005, there were very few resources on how to create a blog. The best way to go about it was by diving in, making mistakes, learning the lessons, and creating it over the course of months and years. Also see #1 above.

This has led to a philosophy of working out stuff on my own and helped me to learn a large number of skills, including accounting, marketing, starting a company, as well as how to set up online teaching a year before the pandemic hit. 

Robert Greene writes about the importance of finding your own way in the last of his 48 Laws of Power:

Rely too much on other people's ideas and you end up taking a form not of your own making. Too much respect for other people's wisdom will make you depreciate your own. be brutal with the past, especially your own, and have no respect for philosophies that are foisted on you from outside.

I would love to hear what mental models that you’ve found useful. Leave a comment below and let’s get the conversation started. 

(Image courtesy of Agence Olloweb on Unsplash)

Maintaining Sanity While There's a War Going On /  by Chris Foley

To bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging. Produce them in your mind, as you know them from experience or from history: the court of Hadrian, of Antoninus. The courts of Philip, Aleander, Croesus. All just the same. Only the people different.

Since February 24, Russia has waged war against the Ukraine, and every day we’re bombarded with images of brutal and unimaginable human suffering. Many of us have been shocked far outside our comfort zone and have trouble focusing. Others merely go on with their day, consciously tuning out events of the world in order to operate normally. How do we maintain a balance between the need to function and the need to develop an awareness of what’s going on in the world?

I’ve already mentioned how digital interaction is remaking our psychological spaces and how taking in a lot of information can be bad or good, but those articles were written during peacetime, when things were a lot simpler and the stakes were much lower. How can we adjust our information intake during moments of international crisis?

This is the problem stated by Nassim Taleb in Antifragile (p. 125):

The more frequently you look at data, the more noise you are disproportionally likely to get (rather than the valuable part, called the signal); hence the higher the noise-to-signal ratio. And there is a confusion which is not psychological at all, but inherent in the data itself. Say you look at information on a yearly basis, for stock prices, or the fertilizer sales at your father-in-law’s factory, or inflation numbers in Vladivostok. Assume further that for what you are observing, at a yearly frequency, the ratio of signal to noise is about one to one (half noise, half signal)—this means that about half the changes are real improvements or degradations, the other half come from randomness. This ratio is what you get from yearly observations. But if you look at the very same data on a daily basis, the composition would change to 95 percent noise, 5 percent signal. And if you observe data on an hourly basis, as people immersed in the news and market price variations do, the split becomes 99.5 percent noise to .5 percent signal. That is two hundred times more noise than signal—which is why anyone who listens to news (except when very, very significant events take place) is one step below sucker.

Not to mention that watching real-time footage of a war going on can create genuine trauma in the viewer, even if they've never experienced war in person. Taleb goes on:

…the best way to mitigate interventionism is to ration the supply of information, as naturalistically as possible. This is hard to accept in the age of the Internet. It has been very hard for me to explain that the more data you get, the less you know what’s going on, and the more iatrogenics you will cause. People are still under the illusion that “science” means more data.

However, 2022 is a time of immense change, and there is a case for observing live information, no matter how shocking or chaotic, in place of cut-and-dried analyses of the war, pretending to display more packaged, logical progression than the uncertainty of the present moment. Observing the chaos of what’s going on might be as valuable than observing the narratives imposed upon it.

The accuracy of information in both mainstream and independent news sources has been mostly commendable if you look in the right place (such as the r/worldnews live feed). How fortunate we are that we have access to multiple news outlets, and that we’re not being fed censored or false information about the progress of the war, as is the case in Russia.

But the problem still remains: following the course of the war is traumatic. There’s no other way that the specific targeting of civilians, bombing of hospitals, kidnapping of children, and unfolding of war crimes could be rationalized in any other manner. If you follow what happens, there will be an emotional cost.

So what do we do?

Oliver Burkeman in his newsletter suggests rationing the flow of information:

I think there's a third option, more realistic than renunciation and more ambitious than self-care: adjusting your default state, so that the news once again becomes something you dip into for a short while, then out of again – as opposed to a realm in which you spend most of your day, only sometimes managing to wrench back enough concentration to live your actual life.

There's no use in waiting for human suffering to cease, for the war to miraculously end. Live your life, do the important things, but don’t shy away from struggling with how terrible war is. But you might find it useful to ration the flow of information so that it doesn’t become overwhelming.

It is necessary to bear witness to these horrors so that as many people as possible will know that war is indeed hell, tyranny must be stopped, and that the only genuine way to prosperity is through peace.

(Image courtesy of Igor Karimov on Unsplash)

10 Memorable Quotes from Music Lessons /  by Chris Foley

Every so often a student of mine will blurt out something about what they’re learning in an entirely unique and unexpected way. It’s these moments of clarity and new ways of thinking that often restore my faith in humanity on tough days. At the same time, I have a habit of stumbling upon new ways of explaining musical concepts that are rooted in pop culture in weird and unexpected ways.

I’ve been posting these on Facebook for the last few years, and after multiple requests, here’s the first of several collections of these.

1. From an 11-year-old student upon hearing Dennis Alexander's Reflections in the RCM Level 4 book for the first time:

"There's a lot of mixed emotions in this piece. A little bit of happy, a little bit of sad. That's exactly where I'm coming from these days so I think I'll learn it."

2. Students often experience the security of using the notes at the same time that they discover the finer points of memorization:

Student: I have it memorized, but I prefer playing with black and white in front of me.

Me: But when you play piano, there's ALWAYS black and white in front of you!

3. Writing reminders in the music is important. But it’s important to actually observe them when you practice:

Me: Notice that the A natural from the beginning of the bar is still in effect on the fourth beat. Could you mark in the natural?

Student: It's already marked in.

Me: Circle it then.

Student: It's already circled.

Me: Then circle it in anger so you remember it next time!

4. Learning coordination is a core skill of piano playing, but can sometimes go awry with students:

"Sometimes my hands don't listen to me when I'm playing.”

5. Ornaments in the Classical style is a combination of personal feeling and adherence to performance practice. I said this in a lesson once:

"Playing ornaments in Mozart is like making Chicago-style hot dogs. Not only do you have to use the right brands of meat, buns, and toppings, but also put them on in the correct order and proportions. And you're not allowed to use ketchup."

6. Doing theory homework can be a tricky business. You would think that writing it in pencil would be obvious, but some students insist on a much riskier choice:

7. No musician’s diet is complete without Bach:

Student: We're spending a lot of time with Bach today. Is this Bach week?

Me: Every week is Bach week.

8. Learning music involves striving for a level of accuracy that many of us are unaccustomed to. This is how I explained it in a lesson:

“In math, if you get 90%, you're doing well. In music, if you can only play 90% of the notes, you've still got a ways to go."

9. On learning to integrate music theory with the wider world of a student’s repertoire, one of my students came upon this insight:

"Analyzing chords in music is like viewing animals in their natural habitat instead of in cages.”

10. More trials with memory work:

“I had it mesmerized. Then I forgot it.”

Post Every Day /  by Chris Foley

Yesterday I had my first barber appointment since December. But on the way to downtown Oakville I first had to stop at the GO Station to buy another Presto card. My previous Presto card had cracked on Wednesday so I had to buy another one from the machine. Problem was that when I registered the card yesterday morning, I couldn’t transfer the balance, since you can only transfer a balance from a pre-existing card to an unregistered card. This I found out yesterday morning on the phone from a customer service person at Presto. So I had to buy another card with only a few dollars on it, not register it, so that later this morning I’ll call customer service again and have the balances from both my registered Presto cards (one functional and one non-functional) and transfer them to the unregistered card I purchased yesterday. Such are the vagaries of paying for train rides in 2022.

I arrived early in downtown Oakville for my appointment and decided to go to my favorite espresso joint on Lakeshore and sit for a few minutes. The espresso was beautifully made, and 10 minutes passed agreeably before I headed to my appointment, where my barber and I discussed vintage hairstyles, Netflix, travelling, and where to find the best pizza in Oakville.

One of the challenges of being a blogger is finding something to post every day. The vast majority of blogs end up in a kind of limbo because the initial drive to write memorable articles waxes and wanes over time. CJ Chilvers posted a list of ways to post something every day that I’m going to find useful over the coming months. Long-form articles don’t always get written every day, and it’s the ephemeral posts that often bring readers to blogs: the cool links, the offhand remarks. Most of all, curation.