Fickle Ears

As long-time MFEDI readers know, I've been fixated for some time on the question of the inherent value of art considered apart from it...

I often think about how the relative fortunes and career trajectories of musicians of different generations are affected by technology, and ...

Today marks a blogospheric rite of passage for yours truly as I have the opportunity to blog about a tour for the first time (minus the phot...

he's lost in the form furtive glances, panicked looks oh shit, where's the bridge? attention trombones let's hear the ride ...

Since the "Death of Music" discussion invariably intersects with the audience outreach and development discussion, here's a fo...

Despite music's external reputation as a field teeming with hippy liberals, certain bits and pieces of distinctively conservative rhetor...

I've tried really hard over the course of many weeks to resist joining the ongoing fracas over Terry Teachout's now-infamous Wall St...

For any two like instruments reading in the same transposition. Listen To Sibelius Realization

The advent of personal computers, video games and the internet has not changed human beings on the genetic level. If these distractions seem...

The classical music people have been on about the aging audience issue for years. They've identified formality as the enemy, and hence, ...

If you keep up with what I write in this space, you know that I have quite a bit of trepidation about audience outreach, particularly the id...

One of the most pervasive fallacies about "modernist" or "atonal" music is the idea that the people who write it and lis...

The stigmatization of the autodidact may not be unique to the field of composition, but the field of composition certainly has a unique way ...

I'm not ashamed to admit that the primary reason I can't stand most popular music and opera is its supposed emotional content. It ac...

There's a reason that extremely loud music hurts your ears: hearing is a survival skill. If you can't hear the car speeding down a b...

Regular readers (if I have any left) know that there are few blogospheric phenomena for which I have more contempt than the "link and r...

There's nothing remarkable about prodigal talent. What's remarkable is when someone manages to recognize its existence.

This post is intended as an expansion of an earlier discussion of instrumentation in music education, first explored here (PDF format), wit...

The final installment in this trifecta of turn-offs deals with the idea of return on investment. In casually following the blogospheric reac...