Ok, break time over...gotta get back to programming my next Visual Recital with Pure Data and GEM!

Anywho, take a look at this if you dare.  It certainly helps that Sir Robinson has a wonderful sense of humor liberally sprinkled in with his talk!

(in case the embedded video doesn't pop up correctly, here's the direct link: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html )

In addition to participating in chamber ensembles, each student receives 3 private lessons a week from me, as well as 3-4 afternoon group classes covering a variety of topics.  Naturally, the students have been seeing a LOT of my tablet pc's, as well as my other tech tools that work so well for musicians.  Afternoon classes usually involve me projecting scores and digital ink annotations as i give the group lessons, making it easy for everyone to follow along.  Here's a brief sampling of some of the techniques and topics covered:

• Practice Journals - using the Snipping Tool from Microsoft's 2005 Experience Pack for Tablet PC's, i demonstrate how easy it is to cut out sections of the music and paste them into separate "practice journals" (my PJ's), effectively giving me an efficient means of covering the most difficult spots of a piece quickly.  Even without a tablet pc, one can still create an effective PJ by using Post-It notes or just numbering the location of difficult passages.  Taking the time to isolate problem passages, then cut-and-paste those passages into something like a composition notebook can make practicing exponentially more effective and speed up learning time overall.  In the projected example below, i helped one of the pianists "pull apart" a difficult Bach fugue a section at a time. 

• Fingering Master Class - in this class, i set up my portable camera document scanner to project a live video feed of my hands on the keyboard split with a zoomed view of the score as i demonstrated various techniques for effective fingering.  Some key principles are as follows:
  • Take advantage of the natural shape of the hand to maximize the strongest fingers and comfortably find intervals
  • Focus on the horizontal flow of the hands, rather than "vertical" fingerings that look good on paper but actually contort the hand uncomfortably in "realtime" ("vertical" or "linear" fingerings usually focus too heavily on keeping fingers numerically consecutive, for example)
  • When it comes to figuring out fingerings, cheating is good!  Jorge Bolet, my old piano professor, was a master at finding ingenious tricks to make difficult passages easier (and that usually meant sounding better!) This takes a good bit of "out-of-the-box" thinking - i'll try to see if i can post some examples in a future article.

• Improvisation - after outlining the three primary chords (I, IV and V chords - tonic, subdominant, and dominant respectively), we worked on improvisation exercises within simple binary forms (A-B-A).  One student in particular is extending those exercises by embellishing existing melodies, creating new improvised accompaniment patterns, setting poems to original music, and even coming up with an improvised collaborative composition with a violinist.

• Recording Session Master Classes - using my Samson C01U USB microphone and splitting a projected screen again with music scores and live tracks from the open source audio editing program Audacity, i've been helping the students to hear and fix their own playing; simultaneously, i've been demonstrating how producers annotate recording sessions, then edit the takes to create 'finished' recordings.  This is turning out to be a terrific method for getting everyone to sharpen their ears and quickly correct problem areas, as well as getting a 'hands on' experience with manipulating sound waves visually.  Note, i'm using audio gear that's portable and easy to set up - i'll try to demonstrate work with more 'professional' gear later on.

• 4-hand piano literature - using two tablet pc's and two sets of custom-designed page-turning pedals, the students have been getting hands-on experience with reading digital scores and 'turning' pages hands-free, as well as exposure to some classical 4-hand literature by Mozart, Clementi, Satie, and others.

More pictures and posts to come as we wrap up the second week of the Piano Studies program at Strings International 2008!

Here are some pictures of the new baby:

I really like the inlay of the rim!  Kind of reminds me of a Hamburg Steinway/Boesendorfer finish!

A detail shot of the inside strings and frame - ahhhh, the smell of new strings!

The fall board had some cracks, so it's still in the shop to be refinished - i picked the piano for its warm tone.  Looks were secondary, but it'll be nice once the piano is actually "whole".  Come to think of it, i'm actually kind of enjoying the open view into the action!  German Renner action, by the way - nice and meaty touch, with good response!  Italian felts, i'm told - the hammers are a bit on the bright side and will need to be voiced down as part of the "settling in" process (i tend to compact hammers pretty quickly, given my heavy touch). 

Here's another view of the action - can you tell i'm enjoying the low-light capabilities of my Canon G9 camera?  This was taken sans flash and a slow 4 second exposure after a 2 second timer-shot setting.

I guess it's too early to say if these pedals will give me "greenfoot", but so far so good!

Rear view of the pedal lyre.  Note the brass supports, as opposed to the old wooden ones of my previous Steinway.

My old Steinway's wheels were so narrow and impractical - i really appreciate the wider footprint of this piano's wheels!

Note the brass sockets for the lid - a nice touch!

A more modern music desk support rack - slow exposure seems to have captured my tablet pc's pen tether swinging back and forth!

Hmm...no fallboard to display the make of the piano...can anyone identify this serial number?  ;)

Here's another clue:  Model 178?  Number 02744?

Good thing the name of the piano is emblazoned on the side of the cabinet!

Full disclosure closeup:  this is a brand new Cunningham Piano!

Geeze, Hugh,

I enjoyed visiting your blog, tipped off by a Google news update on the keyword Steinway.

And so, I hope you'll take this in the right way: YIKES! How could you do that to a Steinway?

It was built, checking the SN with the Steinway age finder, between 1972 and 1973. A mere adolescent in piano years.

And to have afixed shipping labels, et al...

I can't stand to see pianos and dogs abused.

Now I'll have to wait to see what you traded it in on. It had better be a Fazioli because you just sent out a piano with wonderful potential. Your spit didn't cause the brass to flake off; brass doesn't flake. I can't account for the pedals - that's strange, but they can be relacquered and unless the strings have "popped" because of incredible pressure on them thus damaging the pin block (for shame) it looks so repairable.

Anyway, I don't expect a reply - I'm just heartsick.

- M

Thanks so much for visiting my blog! My goodness - what a passionate response! While i can certainly understand your feelings on hearing how a once-beautiful piano received so much abuse over the years, that's an unfortunate everyday fact when you have to pound out a lot of high-intensity repertoire. The concert D at Curtis gets pounded to a pulp every year. My two Steinway B's in my office are pretty badly thrashed now - fortunately, we have a terrific in-house technician at Curtis who's promising me a new set of hammers over the summer!

My home Steinway was a baby L - way too small to sound any good, in my opinion. There was always this bizarre inharmonicity in the scale that made it impossible to tune completely correctly, and i think the small size prevented it from being able to produce a good tone (difficult for any grand piano that size/shape, regardless of make). i guess i'm spoiled with B's and D's.

I've heard wonderful things about the Fazioli, but i actually haven't had an opportunity to try one out yet. For now, the piano i've just traded my Steinway for seems to have a lot of wonderful potential...

But of course you can post my chastisement on your blog. But you need to tell people I'm not necessarily an old (which I am) whiny (which I sometimes sound like, even to myself) b****y idiot who has nothing better to do than gripe at the perceived follies of other folk.

Instead, cast me in the light of someone so in love with pianos that he'd rather watch back-to-back "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," and an endless series of Bush Speeches and Cheney leers than the one scene in the old Laurel and Hardy masterpiece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_Box_(1932_film)

I couldn't stand to see the movie The Piano again; find Shine to be as rusty nails on a chalkboard; and Lang Lang's gyrations akin to ... well, it's akin to nothing but it sure is distracting.

Anyway, I can see, now that I know it's an "L" that you might not want to keep it up, but let's hope it's not being used for kindling.

I've screamed at good friends who dared to put a drink, sans coaster, on my polyurethane'd Kawai and came close to firing a cleaning lady for putting Pledge on my B. And God forbid someone attempt to dust the top of the black monster with circular motions and anything but an imported Chamois skin and water...

I've got a friend in Chicago who sells Faziolis and they are fine, fine pianos. Should you move that direction sometime, please let me know so I can let him know.

And now that I have granted Piano Dispensation, I'll be reading your blog to see what you replaced the Steinway with.

Mike

Yesterday was "T-Day" - the day my Steinway was going to be traded away for a newer piano (i'll reveal that in my next blog - it was simply an offer i couldn't refuse!)  Suddenly, i was overcome with nostalgia - after all, this was the piano my Dad had bought for me, the instrument i had grown up with ever since i was a little kid!  Memories of being enslaved to "the black beast" for hours on end, spitting on the fall board out of spite (maybe that's why the brass lettering flaked away...), memorizing the nicks and scratches peppered throughout the woodwork...i never realized the thousands of stories that a musical instrument can elicit, the deep imprint into one's memories - musical and emotional -  it can leave.

I never came up with a name for that piano, and i never really took notice of the serial number until yesterday - good ol' 428295.   (Sounds like i'm writing a eulogy for a droid!  "Ah, C3PO...how well i knew you, R2D2...")  I took the opportunity to use my new Canon G9 to preserve the views of my piano that i had taken for granted for so many years.  You can see the full gallery of pictures here. 

There are stories in the scars - i'm sure that alliteration has an obvious source somewhere, but it's still amazing to recall those stories as i post these pictures. 

Here's a view of the battle-scarred piano-scape, complete with busted strings and overturned tuning pins.  You can even make out the chalk marks on the strings from all of my prepared piano exploits!

You can just make out the remains of the lettering here - spittle marks evaporated long ago, but i'm sure they contributed to the accelerated oxidation of the brass labels!

Eric had only good intentions when he decorated the piano with a large postage-delivery label.  He had no idea that i would be so upset - and no idea that tacky labels would be so difficult to remove from lacquer finishes!

My piano's brass pedals weren't unique, but the way they colored the soles of my feet green from hours of practice was certainly memorable.

I don't know what it was about this old-fashioned music rack support bracket, but i always found its double-fold design to be endearing...

I know i've been harping on the ugly scars on my piano, but it still had its beautiful perspectives even after all these years...

I've been working with the superintendent of the Neptune, New Jersey school district for several months now to put together my latest Visual Recital workshop for the Neptune High School students.  This is my most exciting VR workshop so far, if only for the fact that i'll be able to work with the students for about a month (as opposed to the one-day workshops where we make the art then quickly scan everything into the computer for a show either later in the evening or the very next day).  Given the advanced artistic capabilities of the older students, i've decided to try something much more challenging:  visualizing the Ballade No. 1 in G minor of Frédéric Chopin. 

Today we had our first hands-on workshop where i presented the Ballade in 13 segments, each with a short descriptive text to give the students a basic concept of the emotional content and flow.  We tried picking out a few landscape pictures that a previous art class had already made, matching them to the shifting moods of the ballade.  That led to some fantastic brainstorming to come up with an amazing set of story and visual elements!  I'm planning to use www.VisualRecital.com as the project website to present notes, sketches, and a discussion forum for the students to contribute ideas and flesh out the scenes for the ballade's visualizations. 

Thanks to being debt-free and getting a better handle on my business-related finances, i've been investing in several new bits of equipment, such as:

My brand new Sanyo PLC-XF20 5000 lumen monster projector (aka Proxima PRO AV 9350).  Did i say this beast was a monster?  Try lifting this puppy at 80 pounds!  Hence, the dolly in the picture - an absolute necessity for me to move this elephant around!  As a point of comparison, my old HP M3130 DLP projector throws out only 2000 lumens and can be carried on my shoulder - can't be more than 7 pounds or so, i guess.  The Sanyo is loaded with tons of inputs and blazes its luminary output with 4 halogen lamps.  There are a lot of thoughtful touches in the design, such as the retractable handlebars on both sides of the unit as well as the front feet dials which have spring-retractable knobs as well (so that you can rest the unit on either side while you catch your breath trying to get the hippo into your minivan...) 

The lamps are surprisingly easy to install and remove with the back top-loaded hatch.  The main lens is motorized for automatic zoom and focus.  I got this projector very used through eBay for an incredible steal of a price - i wasn't planning on getting this type of projector for a good while yet, thinking that it would cost me twice as much as it did.  Hopefully this will help to address image brightness issues for future Visual Recitals.

At an initial pre-workshop meeting with some of the art students, i noticed that they were working with large canvases.  There was no way i would be able to fit their work onto desktop scanners, so i knew it was time to bite the bullet and finally invest in a decent digital camera.  I've been getting along with my trusty Sony DSC-T7 for three years now, but you can only do so much with 5.1 megapixels and a limited set of shooting options (my DSC-T7 pictures have always had gamma balance issues, heavy on the red and yellow spectrums).  I wasn't interested in going out on a limb to overspend on a full digital SLR, so i tried to get something to meet me halfway:  the Canon Powershot G9.

i suppose almost any camera after a relatively crappy point-and-shoot would be reason to celebrate, but man oh man, i LOVE this 12 mega-pixel camera!  Don't get me wrong, the DSC-T7 served its purpose well by being the camera easiest to hide in a pocket and whip out at a moment's notice, but the G9...wow, i never realized just how much fun it could be to play with F-stops for depth-of-field shots like this one (yes, i took this flower shot):

Here is a sample shot from one of the art students' landscapes:

You can see some other pictures from the Visual Recital Chopin Project blog here.

More tech to talk about, but right now i've got to catch up with some serious video/audio editing...back to the digital salt mines (sigh...)

No, i do not "need girl friend" and i certainly don't need Bidvertiser anymore.  The offending ad services has been promptly removed.  My deepest apologies for the offensive display - please let me know if you come across any other advertising anomalies on any of my sites! 

Google Adsense seems to be somewhat better behaved, as it tries to match ads to the text content of the site.  I see a lot of ads for music related products and services, tablet pc's, and even some financial things from time to time.  The other web ad referral services like Amazon Associates and various online music publishers like Virtual Sheet Music are much more preferable if you want direct control over advertising content.  With Amazon, i can select only items that i'm interested in promoting, such as my own CD's, carousels of my favorite books on career and finances on TheProsperousMusician.com, and music scores that i'm starting to recommend to students on my new piano lesson satellite site (more recommendations and updates to that site forthcoming soon).

A side note:  placing ads on my website helps to take care of the costs associated with running the site (domain name registration, server subscription, etc.), but i'm not expecting to retire rich from the income anytime soon. i'll be posting some metrics on my earned web income soon at TheProsperousMusician.com later today. 

Many thanks to Piano Magazine editor and musical scholar extraordinaire Jeremy Siepmann for graciously inviting me to submit a double whammy - an article and an interview.  i'm still marveling at the surgical skills of Jeremy's editing - i submitted a 2000+ word monster of an article and for the life of me couldn't find a way to pare it down below 1400+ - you'll simply have to buy the magazine and see a master journalist's handiwork ;)

As you can see from the title, the emphasis is on my explorations of technologies to enhance the classical pianist's art and capabilities.  Jeremy came across one of my blog articles on the subject (back when i was just starting my search for the perfect digital piano) - he seemed to find my depiction of some of the concert stage pianos i've put up with as "kindling and firewood" particularly fetching, and asked me to make sure i kept mention of that in my contribution. 

I'll have to keep my eyes out for US distribution - Piano magazine is based in the U.K., and i haven't seen it here (yet), but you can order subscriptions online.  Can't wait to get my own copy!

Nothing more than the intro blog post for now, but be sure to check out the book carousels along the left hand column.  I'll be writing up a number of book reviews in the coming weeks and linking up to as many classical music business sites that i can find.  For those of you who have been following this blog for the past year or so, you can probably understand why personal finance has become such a passionate topic for me, given the amazing success our family was able to achieve in knocking out our personal debts in only 9 months (a la Dave Ramsey).  We aren't rich yet, but i'm excited about the tremendous opportunities that are out there, particularly for the classical musician who is willing to think "out of the box". 

Thanks to Valerie from www.free2create.com for the encouraging comment to get this new blog baby started!  Hope y'all find this new resource helpful as it grows!

One book on loan from a friend was "Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom" by Robert Kiyosaki.  i had heard Dave Ramsey mentioning Kiyosaki's first book, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" several times on his radio show as a "must read", so naturally my curiosity was piqued. 

Several things struck me about both the book and its author:

• Robert Kiyosaki comes from a 4th generation Japanese background; being a second generation Korean myself, i felt an immediate connection to several cultural aspects he describes being an Asian in an American setting



• His depiction of his real father being the consummate professional, having graduated with advanced degrees and employed in the highest echelons as an educator, working harder and harder for an increasing salary (and increasing debt load), while ending up with less and less time for his family and virtually nothing financially at the end of his life.  This sounds too much like the life track i'm currently on...



• His clear depiction of the 4 quadrants of cashflow:  on the left side, E for Employee and S for self-employed;  on the right side, B for Business and I for Investor.  Again, this makes a lot of sense, and i find myself identifying with both the E and particularly the S quadrants ("S" folk are perfectionists, tending to do everything themselves and having difficulty delegating their work to others)



• The idea of "getting your money to work for you, instead of you for your money" sounds awfully gimmicky at first - but it starts to make a lot of sense when you see how a combined portfolio of real estate, business startups, stocks and bonds and even royalties for intellectual properties can actually work passively to bring income - "cashflow", being the operative word throughout Kiyosaki's books.  Financial freedom is defined as coming to the point where your passive income brings in more money than your expenses.



• Kiyosaki's definition of an "asset" is pretty radical - the most stunning example is his assertion that a personal home is NOT an asset, but actually a liability.  Assets are supposed to be those investments that have a positive cashflow, putting money INTO your pocket, not taking them out (any homeowner will tell you that bills, property taxes, repairs all siphon out money on a regular basis).  Waiting for an investment to appreciate in value is akin to gambling, according to Kiyosaki. 

Dave Ramsey also points to what he calls "the pinnacle point" in his book, "The Total Money Makeover".  That point gets achieved when the interest from your mutual funds exceeds your expenses.  The problem is, particularly in light of today's stock market volatility, mutual funds go up and down - there's a long term record of steady growth, but the wild swings get awfully hard to stomach when you see your OWN money lurching up and down for the ride.  For example, close inspection of my TIAA-CREF retirement account revealed that it lost $7000 for the first quarter this year.  That sucks. 

Dave eschews ALL forms of debt and regularly proclaims his own FICO score to be "0" because he hasn't borrowed money for 20 years.  All his investments are done in cash with the "100% down" plan (ie, no payments).  Kiyosaki, on the other hand, makes a compelling case for leveraging the power of OPM (other people's money) and OPT (other people's time) to actually make debt work for you by increasing passive cashflow.  Here's a simple example from Kiyosaki's book, "Rich Dad's Prophecy":

• Putting 20% down on a $100,000 property (=$20,000), borrowing $80,000 to mortgage the difference and pulling in $200 of rental income per month after expenses would net a ROI (Return On Investment) of 12% ($200 x 12 - $2,400) - roughly equal to Dave Ramsey's Mutual Fund average 



• Putting only 10% down ($10,000) with the same example above, coming up with a reduced monthly income of $130, the ROI actually INCREASES the net return on the $10,000 investment to 15%

Of course, theory always looks great on paper and has a funny way of turning out a lot worse in real life...i'm not about to take a financial sky dive and become a high rolling real estate investor overnight, but i have to confess that Kiyosaki's books are inspiring me to read up more on exploring passive forms of income from real estate, businesses, and other income-generating assets.  i like his example of comparing the risk of investing to the risk of driving a car - there's always risk every time you drive, but if you take lessons and practice, you simply become a better driver over time.  My plan in the meantime is to try to pay off the house, continue monthly investments with mutual funds, and lots and lots of reading up on investment/business "how-to's".  Who knows?  i may end up creating another blog specifically dealing with "Money for Musicians"...

Hm...some musicians would say that this just reveals what many of us have known for years about heart-less conductors...as for me, just show me the downbeat and i'll be happy, Maestro ASIMO! 

Wired magazine's online blog reports that Honda will be sponsoring the concert with their advanced robot ASIMO as the stick beater and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, featuring Yo Yo Ma as soloist on May 13, 8:00 pm.  What's especially heartening is the generous support for the arts that Honda is pledging to, with a $1 million donation to the orchestra's "Power of Dreams" educational fund and continuing support for master classes, scholarships, educational concerts and the like.

Maybe this robot has a heart after all...

Timmy has been fanatic about tracking all his jobs, and as a result he's consistently racked up high commissions each week.  Eric, on the other hand, really could care less and only fills in his chart sporadically and under duress.   He just doesn't share the same excitement about seeing his money grow as Timmy does, so it's been hard to find fiscal incentives to help him keep up with his assigned chores. 

Eric had been half-heartedly mentioning that he wanted to start saving up for a Nintendo Wii video game system, but i chalked this up to wishful thinking given the game console's incredible popularity and scarcity in stores.  Jeff, our financial planner, had just recounted his own Wii-purchase adventure, having snatched up the last unit after months of searching and pestering his local video game store.  This past Saturday on the way to Tae-kwon-do lessons, Eric asked to stop by a Game Stop store to see if there was something he could purchase with some gift cards he had received as birthday presents.  On a whim, i asked the store clerk if they had any Wii game consoles in stock, not really expecting there to be any.  He asked me to wait a moment while he checked the back stock room.  Lo and behold, he actually came back out with a unit, one of the last two they had left.  Two?  Since last Tuesday?  The clerk was equally incredulous - the only explanation he could think of was that lately customers had become so accustomed to being told that nothing was available that they had pretty much given up asking.  Not wanting to let opportunity slip away, i immediately texted Kyungmi and got her permission to buy it. 

Lest y'all think i'm succumbing to a poor example of instant gratification for my kids, i should explain the stipulations placed on our yet-unopened Wii:

1.  No one would be able to open the game system until it was completely paid for - i just guaranteed that there would be an actual reward for hard work instead of the additional frustration of hunting down scarce inventory.

2.  The power of incentive just shot up exponentially for the kids!  New jobs have been created for the boys to ensure that they would be able to apply the rate of savings needed to enjoy the Wii sometime before the age of retirement...

Eric immediately went to work vacuuming the minivan, practicing his piano and trombone, and even giving trombone lessons to Timmy.  Additional jobs include putting out the trash, weekly cleanups of the basement playroom, back massages for Dad (he's got the best feet for walking up and down my spine), etc.

Kyungmi and i agreed to allow the boys to dip into $100 of their bank savings and $70 of their current "Spend" envelope accumulations.  If Eric and Timmy perform all their jobs weekly, they should be able to take care of the remaining balance of $300 within about 6 weeks or less ($250 for the game console + $60 for the additional controllers - Eric's gift cards brought the balance down after taxes to $300).  Paul has also agreed to help out with some of his commission earnings, so that might cut the time period even faster.

Amazing to see how well the power of Wii-ncetives works!

Now if only we could get more musicians who read music to actually embrace music reading technologies (like Tablet PC's), we might actually see some of these neat devices actually getting made...

Taking advantage of the ELP (Endorsed Local Provider) program offered by Dave Ramsey, we hooked up with Jeff, a financial planner from Merrill Lynch to start laying out an investment strategy.  With Paul being only 4 years away from college, we needed to start aggressively addressing that oncoming train.  We also wanted to supplement our current retirement plans with some mutual funds and find ways to keep our tax burdens as low as possible.

Here's what we came up with:

1.  Jeff suggested keeping only $10K in cash for our emergency fund ('only $10K'...wow, only a few short months ago it seemed impossible to keep $1,000 intact in our savings account!) and putting the rest into tax-free municipal bonds.  The bond fund would still enjoy debit card and check writing access, but of course with the added benefit of tax-free interest growth.

2.  We set up some aggressive 529 plans for the boys, with Paul receiving the bulk of the initial setup funds.  The nice thing about these 529's is the fact that unused portions can be passed down to the other boys and eventually left to create a perpetual education trust to benefit our grandkids - and beyond!

3.  The remainder will be put into taxable mutual funds.  If i understood correctly, our income bracket doesn't allow us to enjoy the tax-deferred benefits of Roth IRA's - Kyungmi and i are both maxing out our respective employee retirement contributions.  Dave Ramsey recommends a diversified mutual fund portfolio with the following fund groups:  Growth, Growth & Income, Aggressive Growth, and International.  We're putting a heavier emphasis on the aggressive growth and international for now and will adjust the ratios as needed while we keep an eye on the market (and get a hang of all this newfangled investing stuff).

I've been reading and hearing about other financial gurus who pooh-pooh mutual funds as being too plain-jane vanilla and even riskier than individually picking out stocks, but until i getter a better grasp on how to invest it seems that monthly deposits into mutual funds are better than sitting around with money accruing lousy savings-account interest. 

Man, it was scary writing out those checks, bigger than any i've ever written in my life - but what a thrill to know that we were in essence paying ourselves instead of a credit card company!  In some ways, we're back to living on a tight budget, given the monthly contributions we're now committed to.  i think i now understand what Robert Kiyosaki means when he refers to "paying yourself first" - the fiscal pressure of putting money away for yourself first forces you to exercise your financial IQ muscles to find new ways to make money to cover any shortfalls.

More to come as we learn about the world of investing...

Gosh, i can't recall how long i used my old publicity pictures - 14? 15 years? 

Kudos to Mr. Steiner for getting my squinty eyes wider (i never knew i had whites in my eyes!  LOL) and for making the best of my sparse scalp - these new pictures should be good for a long time to come!

The subsequent week saw us entering our first tournament.  Eric was extremely reluctant at first, but ended up winning a first place trophy for his Chun-Ji pattern!  Paul in turn won three first prizes, for weapon form, Chun-Ji pattern, and sparring.  Even ol' Dad himself came home with a 1st place trophy for his pattern (accompanied with some excellent advice from the judging master to pay more attention to my footwork) - all in all, a terrific tournament system where everyone is guaranteed to come home with a prize and heaps of encouragement!

The best prize for "most dramatic transformation" has to go to Timmy, who was initially terrified to try Tae-Kwon-Do;  i had to drag him to his first class last Friday with him clinging to my leg for the first half.  By the end, he was laughing, jumping, kicking and punching with hearty "kiyaps" like everyone else - he wouldn't take off the uniform once he got home!

Saturday's class saw him standing all by himself and having a wonderful time.  What a fantastic confidence booster for the kids!  Now if only i could get my sit-up count past 40...

Crazy rhythms, poly-metric tacets galore, un-metered passagework...this piece looked to be a logistical nightmare!  My initial strategy was to use all the tech i had at my disposal to record the rehearsals so that at least i could get a better aural understanding of the work.  I had my nano iPod fitted with my MicroMemo Digital Audio Microphone, as well as my Samson C01U USB condenser microphone plugged in to my tablet pc recording into Audacity...the micro recording studio was ready to go! 

That is...until the glare of the Orchestra's assistant personnel manager caught sight of my setup and the threat of possible copyright infringement had me dismantling my equipment.

A tech musician being forced to resort to reading - gasp - paper music?  Counting measures with fingers?  Writing cues with (shudder) - pencils??  The horror, the horror...it felt a lot like the final battle scene in "Star Wars" where Luke Skywalker loses his R2-D2 astromech droid and abandons his targeting computer while being mentored by Obi-Wan Kenobi to "use the force" to make the shot...

Turns out that "Obi-Wan Kenobi" in this case was Maestro Leonard Slatkin, who did a phenomenal job of explaining the work and making the whole piece come together effortlessly.  I guess i learned to get better at counting fingers and toes - many thanks to Patty's comments for helping me to decipher the number cues within tacet bars indicating various instrument entrances (that helped keep me on track and verify that my finger counts were lining up correctly).

Thanks to paper, pencil, and a good set of fingers, toes and ears, i guess enough of the "Force" was with me to get through this final week of orchestral playing!