Finding the Sweet Spot

At last, I didn't respond with the word "meh"

In recent days I've been staying busy recording and editing for the upcoming album August In Bloom, and for a while it was an obsessive-compulsive game of finding the "acoustic sweet spot". I had to get into my mad scientist mentality (see my previous blog post) and I kept experimenting until I found something that was at least close to the sound I wanted. The phrase "acoustic sweet spot", by the way, is not an accurate technical term. I ripped it off from an episode of The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon "tests" the acoustics in a movie theater by making embarrassing noises while his friend Leonard is in there, trying to impress his date. But, I digress...

For me, the sweet spot is the ideal sound from the recording of August In Bloom. It took multiple sound tests and multiple recordings for me to finally say, "Okay, I think I can record a song with these settings and confidently hand someone a CD." The intricacies of ProTools 12, the software I've been using, are many. It has also been one set-back after another, even if some of them are more-or-less excuses. Now, however, barring my admittance to a hospital and ending up with no limbs (or something just as drastic) there is no excuse for me not to work on this album. I had the option of teaching a summer session at the Sutter County Superintendent of Schools in Yuba City (my part-time day job), but I declined the offer, specifically to give myself more time to work on this project. So, say it with me: "No excuses, Thor!" ;)


Doing things my way...

Summer is just about here, and while many folks warned me that it's common to lose a few music students during this time of year, my clientele has stayed about the same. I lost a few (or, I should say, they informed me that they're "taking a break" from piano lessons), and this caused my count to dwindle a bit, but then I gained more students after that, keeping the count about the same as it was in the first place!

My next focus is going to be my curriculum. I've been experimenting quite a bit because I listen to feedback from different students. One of them, a retired woman in her 60's, absolutely loves one of the lesson books I use (The Alfred Piano Library) but a lot of the kids hate it. In response to this I looked at other publications, and I've ordered a stack full of lesson books from Amazon, but every book and every publication always has something that seems to be missing, at least for my teaching style.


The solution? (Yes, there is one! :) ) I've been using Sibelius software, which is a program that lets me write and print out my own sheet music. This means, of course, that I can write and print out any song, whether it's a cover or one of my own, and I can use it to design my own exercises. So all that's necessary to fix this is to write
and print out my own exercises, and fill in the "holes" that I've found in the other books.

Here come supplemental materials, here come custom-made lessons, here come happier students, here come more phone calls from folks who want to take lessons :D  The fun part is that I found a way to increase the size of the print when I write the notes out on the program.

It's almost as if "technology" is a big thing nowadays...