Happy Birthday/Blog Philosophy Revisited/Year In Review

This blog turned 1 year old on August 18. Happy birthday to me/it. What follows are some of my reflections on the year that was.

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After a certain amount of experimentation, I decided that the best way to proceed here would be to post only when I feel I have something worth saying AND have taken the time to produce something worth reading on said subject. This, of course, results in two highly un-bloglike characteristics: the posts are often long, and they materialize infrequently. Nevertheless, I plan to continue down this road because I believe that there are many topics that deserve better than the traditional blog-and-run miniatures found elsewhere, and also that both you and I probably have better things to do than to hang out here on a daily basis. If I am going to take the time to write (and expect you to take the time to read), I want it to be worth it for both of us.

If you simply must have your Fickle Ears daily, you may follow this simple procedure:

(1) when a new post materializes, determine how many days it has been since the last post;

(2) divide the new post into this many sections;

(3) read one section per day.

If that's not good enough for you, there's always the prospect of re-reading past entries. Particularly if you're new here and on the fence as to whether you'll ever come back, you might check out the following "year in review" for a sampling of what I feel to be the most representative posts from Year One:


On Music Criticism

On Composition

On Teaching Jazz Improvisation

On Patterns In Music

On Self-Esteem

On "Saving" Classical Music

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To avoid the appearance of simply using the birthday/year in review thing to fill up space after not producing much for the last several weeks, there's a new post up following this one. Remember to enjoy it responsibly; it may have to last you a while.