Almost Everything I've Learned About Teaching Band

10 tips that will make your school concert even MORE successful.

In this episode, I interview Andrew Yaracs, retired music educator and author of Travel 101: A Band Director's Guide for Planning Student Travel. Get your softcover or ebook today at www.authorhouse.com; Softcover ISBN 978-1-4918-6310-7  $14.95; E-book ISBN 978-1-4918-6309-1  $3.99. Also available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble Andrew's website:  http://www.bandtravel101.com Andrew's Facebook Page:  http://www.facebook.com/bandtravel101  

We often lose great ideas because we don't have a way to capture them. Here are several tips to help you capture your ideas.

Need some tips on what you can do (or not do) during your upcoming break? You get five of them here. Don't worry, they don't involve work (or only slightly).

Directors are always looking for ways to make warm-ups engaging and still learn music skills. Start by calling it "Ensemble Sensitivity Training" instead. Get 30+ ideas in this 12 minute podcast. Also find a link to download a pdf at www.themusicedpodcast.com. 

James talks about how to help your band sax section sound better. He covers reeds, embouchure, mouthpieces, high/low tones (free worksheet included), recruiting and what to do with beginners.

In this episode, I interview Dr. Mark Montemayor of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley during a break from the Colorado Music Educator's Conference.

One of my band students was disappointed last year when he was rejected for the talent show as an instrumentalist while singers who sang poorly were accepted. He mentioned his disappointment to the event organizer, who told him the audience wanted singers, not instrumentalists. He mentioned to me that we should hold our own talent show, thus was born Coffee & Talent Night, an event for students run by students where they show off their musical talents. The amazing display of talent - songwriting, singing - that I saw made me cry, and it didn't take any work on my part. The students did it all!

One of the hardest things to do as musicians is setting boundaries, especially around our personal lives and with our time. In this podcast, you will learn strategies to help you be better about setting boundaries so you can have success not only in music, but in your personal life too.

These four things - if left unchecked - can be poison to your career, health and emotions.