“Primordial Matter”, acrylic on canvas, 48x24 by Wendy Hatala Foley
One of the challenges of blogging in 2022 is that it needs to survive in an online ecosystem that offers so many more ways to access exciting content. Yesterday I mentioned that blogging often feels like a liminal space, devoid of the human activity that once gave it vitality.
In order to make writing interesting for other people, it’s important to start by finding things I genuinely care about. So when I reflected on how to restart my writing this year, I went through the archives of Foley Music and Arts, the Collaborative Piano Blog, and my newsletter to make a listing of the subjects that I wrote about. Here are the main subject areas I found:
Collaborative piano. What it is, what it is not, its origin story, how to get work doing it, and the skills you’ll need.
Piano pedagogy. I’ve written two ebooks on the subject! Take a look at 31 Days to Better Practicing and Five Deep Breaths and a Pencil Behind the Ear.
Wendy’s new paintings. My wife is a fabulous painter! You can check out her paintings here and purchase any of them online. You can also find recent pics of her art in my newsletter.
Productivity. I’m no productivity guru. But I do have the ability to juggle multiple projects and keep an eye on the big picture. See 9 Mental Models and Organizational Systems I Use in Daily Life and Inbox Zero: The Basics.
Cognition. I’m fascinated by how we think and how better ways of organizing our storage of information and ways of thinking can improve ourselves. See 9 Mental Models and Organizational Systems I Use in Daily Life.
Technology. Using technology to enliven creative processes has been a fascination of mine for years. See How I Use My Music Staff and Craft to Create Detailed Lesson Notes.
Skills. The expertise that we need to cultivate, and how it changes over time. Check out What Are the Top Job Skills that You’ll Need in 2025? and Required and Preferred Skills for the Collaborative Pianist.
Dealing with the world around us. The world can be a strange place these days and we need to stay on top of things. Take a look at 4 Ideas to Understand the Present Through the Lens of the Past.
Reading. I love books and I read 36 of them in 2021.
Musician advice. Often my advice is from a different angle. See How to Get Lucky in a Pandemic (or Any Time) and Organize Your Practice Time Like a Stage Director.
Reflections about the blogosphere. Every year I publish a listing of my favorite blogs (and now newsletters). Here’s my 2021 edition (also 2020, 2019, and 2018).
Upcoming events. You’ll see these on the Collaborative Piano Blog more than here on Foley Music and Arts. But if you’re a collaborative pianists looking for a summer program in Europe, you might want to check out one of the collaborative piano positions at Musictheater Bavaria.
Videos. Often the videos I like are off the beaten path. Investigate John S. Gray’s L&R 3.75 and Nao on NPR’s Tiny Desk.
Academia. Like many whose professional identity has been informed by academia, I have a love/hate relationship with it. But there are lots of interesting things I write about, such as From Music School to the Opera World and The Culture of Practicing in Music Schools. I also curate a list of degree and diploma programs in collaborative piano.
My personal performing projects. Some of my favorite performances include An die Musik with Alia Ahmad, HBD!Project June, and lots more, going all the way back to a concert of African chamber music back in 2000.
Personal growth. I don’t like to stand still, and am always looking for ways to improve myself. See Optimism Might Be Fleeting: Let’s Focus on Growth Instead.
Stories from my creative process.I like to do cool stuff and then talk about how I did it. Take a look at How I Created a New Ebook for my Studio in 30 Days.
Week-to-week life in the profession. Yes, working in the arts can be a grind. One of my goals for the newsletter is to give regular status updates on the kind of things I’m encountering in my regular work. See April is the Cruelest Month.
Meaningful stuff from around the internet. Every so often I fade into the background and just post links to cool stuff. This is one of the original aims of blogging from the early days of the genre and I aim to continue this tradition. See Thursday Morning Coffee Links.
Links to all my current articles through the week. Too busy to keep up? Subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll send them to you every Sunday morning.
In retrospect, I’m glad that I started Foley Music and Arts in order to branch out into lines of inquiry beyond what I’ve traditionally written about in the Collaborative Piano Blog. The newsletter brings everything together from week to week. I’m gratified that several readers who responded to my first newsletter of the year mentioned the curational aspect of the newsletter as one of the things they found most meaningful.
(Image courtesy of Eric Karim Cornelis on Unsplash)