Disabilities and Music

Hey! Today I got a shorter post, but it is a specific post. You see it in the title. It's all about LEARNING HOW TO HOLD A STICK. Every time I get a new student that hasn't played percussion before, we spend a fair amount of time in lessons dealing with holding sticks. It seems like it would be a simple concept to explain, but I've found that it can often take a while for students to truly understand the idea of a fulcrum and keeping the other fingers on the stick . I know what your thinking, who is using a word like Fulcrum with a middle school or elementary school student? Well... Honestly, I am. Always in passing, but I use it to not hinder their furthur education. Back in. Percussion is an extremely accesible instrument. For one, you don't even need an implement. Just go out and play any object and you've suddenly became a percussionist. But in order to progress, we need to use sticks, and to use sticks we need to know how to hold them. to avo...

Hey all, I wanted to take a moment to talk about something I do that I think is fairly unique and how it can be applied beyond my specific instance. As a quick refresher, I teach a class called Beethoven's Buddies Clementi's Colorful Chimes Class (BB Chimes). In this class, kids play hand chimes that typically look like this. However, mine look like this What are those colors for you ask? Well I use the colors to help students recognize their note in relation to that color. For further example. My "scores" look something like this.  There are a couple things to notice beyond just the colors, so lets get those out of the way. First is the fact that the time signature is notated as a number over a quarter note instead of another number. This means of notation is common enough that we don't need to spend too much time on it. Next is the use of numbers inside of the colored Quarter Notes. The numbers directly correspond with the octave numbers ...

I want to take a moment to talk about something that has been extremely important to me. As you might be able to tell from the title, it is about the importance of setting a schedule and sticking to it. The reason that I have found a schedule so wonderful is that it honestly is liberating. It has been one of the toughest things in life for me to schedule gigs and lessons and events etc. This has actually lost me gigs and connections. I didn't respond fast enough, not because I missed the note, but because I simply did not want to schedule that far in advance. I was afraid I would say yes to one thing and miss out on something else that would be "better". As you can probably tell.... THIS IS NOT A WAY TO LIVE A FREELANCING LIFE. in fact, it has definitely burned me and kept me from being a freelancer like I so desire. Luckily, I am on my way to growing into freelancing and teaching. Honestly though, what has really pushed me to do this has been saying yes to g...

Hi all! My name is Noel Streacker. I am currently a graduate student at Northern Illinois University studying Percussion Pedagogy and Special Education. To explain why I am doing this, first some background. That's me! I was always fond of music growing up. My mother was in fact a musician herself and would play piano as my four brothers and I would fall asleep. Little did she know that one of her children would fall deeply in love and fascinated with music. Unfortunately, I put off learning music for a very long time. I was taught briefly by my mom at a very young age but I didn't keep going because I wanted to be cool like my brothers. It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I started taking music seriously. I started re learning piano and being more involved in the arts at my high school. I graduated and knew I needed to be involved in music. With that in mind I went to College of Dupage where my second semester I met Michael Folker, a wonderful chic...