I hate buying textbooks.

From my perspective, life is a long journey of gathering, receiving, and processing knowledge. We spend our whole life learning and putting together everything we know, to in turn pass it on to the next generation. So when does the bulk of our learning occur? Is it in the classroom? Maybe for some, but i think that living life and interacting with people of our own age, those younger than us, as well as those older than us have the largest impact upon how we learn about ourselves, and about living the game of life.

One of the first things i learned, is that in the music world, more often than not people suck. Yeah you heard me right. Not everyone is going to voluntarily take you under their wing, and show you the ropes, or show you how to be a better musician. The way the job market is today, and even just the way the world is today, everything is so competitive that we can sometimes forget that were all in this together. I have had the pleasure of working with many fellow students, as well as high school teachers, instructors, and professors who have mentored me into what i am today.  Although this is true, i've also had more than a handful of people who quite frankly have wanted to see me fail, and that has almost molded me into what i am today. My freshman year in college during a rehearsal of a piece for a chamber music concert, an upper classman came in and literally said the words, "This is too hard for you, you guys shouldn't be playing this." Whether or not this statement was accurate is beside the point. (Although it was not ;) This just goes to show you a caliber of person that is less ideal.

So how do we deal with this in real life? What do you do when someone, wether it be a professor, fellow student, or any other peer does this? You LEARN. As a future educator i find myself constantly looking at others, and comparing and contrasting myself to them. By doing this, i'm not trying to bad mouth anyone, or think i am better than anyone, i'm just trying to figure out what i think is the best possible thing for my students. The same way we admire people in a positive manner, we can do for the opposite reason. In fact there are a lot of people i admire because they've shown me many ways i do not want to teach, or practice. Although my experience with this that i am sharing is solely musical, this applies to everything we do in life. Strive to be not only the best musician you can be, but also the best person you can be.

Learn from everything.
Make every experience positive no matter how it effects you.
Strive to be the Best you can be.


Peace & Love,

MB

Music is Opportunity

Last year during my spring semester i had the honor of performing for the new assistant professor of percussion at University of Oregon, none other than Pius Cheung. As musicians, networking is something that we are all told will help us in the long run. Most of the time we find it a hassle constantly meeting and introducing ourselves to people hoping they will remember out name, but this my friends, is living proof that the impression you leave on people can really affect your future and their involvement in it. Sitting at the desk of a Dorm on campus (my on campus job at the time) i got a call from a girl named Kristin, a very talented upperclassmen percussionist at the time. Today was the day of the Pius Cheung Masterclass, and she was asked by Dave Smith our resident percussion teacher if she could drive to the train station to pick him up. Nervous, she asked me if i could go with her. Of course my response was yes. I got someone to cover for me and jetted out of Newbury hall as fast as i could. I was about to go pick up someone i had long admired, someone i considered a Marimba GOD up at the train station to come do a Masterclass that i was performing at. It was a very cool feeling. I had only seen videos of Pius on the internet. He is often Featured on Vic Firths video podcast which you can find here. From what i could tell, he looked like he may not speak english very well, he sat on an organ bench while he played so he must be very tall, and he was definitely VERY asian. As i waited at the terminal, many people got off the train and finally i saw him. Trying to be the least awkward i could be,  i stopped him and introduced myself. To my surprise, he was much shorter than me (I'm 6'1), he had little to no accent, but he was in fact VERY asian. I feel like in my mind i look at my percussion idols as celebrities, but on the exterior Pius was just....a normal guy. He performed an outstanding Convocation recital for the entire Music Department with a great energy and even took requests for his last tune. Lunch passed, then the masterclass began. Of course Mr. Smith picked me to perform first. I had just finished learning Eric Sammut's Rotation 1 and i was looking forward to playing it for him. He had so many great things to say, and he conveyed it in such a positive way. Many of the comments he made pertain to his new book, "Colors."After the masterclass in a professional fashion, we took a picture and i told him how grateful i was for his input. We became facebook friends the next day and that was it. Or so i thought. A few weeks later, in passing, Mr. Smith called me into his office and the first thing he asked me was, "How big is your car?" At this point in time i was driving my fathers old car, which is an infiniti sedan. He asked me if i could fit a 4.3 octave marimba in it. Puzzled all i could think of was that scene in 40 year old Virgin. Ya know..."I hope you got a big trunk 'cause im puttin my bike in it. Anywho i told him i had fit it in before and he told me that Pius needed to borrow one for a gig in westport. He said if i did it he would pay me a hundred bucks and he would really appreciate it. The next day i got a facebook message from Pius, he told me he was ecstatic that i was able to help him out and that i should bring a drum so we could play together. This was such a great opportunity for me! One gig with Pius eventually turned into Two and it was a great experience. He played Bach solo and i sat in on Djembe for a few other tunes, but the one i remember the most was Ghanaia by Matthias Schmitt. An african sounding marimba Piece, Ghanaia has a great theme to jam over, and thats exactly what we did. This was one of the funnest pieces ive ever played and the fact that it was with someone whom i greatly admired made it special. As full time musicians its not often that we get that special feeling after every piece, but i sure did feel that way after this performance. Pius and i still keep in touch via facebook, and having his name as something concrete on my Resume' is a great thing. So for anyone thats thinking about introducing themselves to someone in the world of Music, or whatever it is you're trying to succeed in, know that most of the time there is only good to come of it.  Ghanaia