Staying in the game: The best practices, attitudes, metacognitive strategies, and intrinsic motivations of aging musicians
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LIVE IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Tears will flow soon...

1/23/2021

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"Someday soon bands, choirs, and orchestras will gather together again. the conductor will signal for the first note to sound, and musicians will remember it's hard to read music with tears in their eyes." Anonymous internet meme
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Covid-19 Lockdown Slouches Forward...

11/15/2020

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"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards to be born?"
W.B. Yeats
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The inevitable lockdown is coming. Cases are soaring, too many people are ignoring health regulations through selflessness, willful ignorance, fear and stupidity.

Our return date to the rehearsal room, concert hall, teaching studio has been pushed back again. My guess until the late spring, early summer. Vaccines or no vaccines.  

My take on coming out the other side. I will be: 
  1. Networking, keeping relationships alive
  2. Practicing, taking the time to learn new repertoire, address those nagging deficiencies in my skills, exploring new musical avenues. 
  3. Continuing with coaches. In my case: piano and drums.
  4. Continue to work on eliminating my "Covid" belly. Eight months sitting on my ass, 6 extra pounds. Yikes.
  5. Follow all the health guidelines, ignoring stupid. 
  6. Take care of my students. Prepare for the post-Covid world. I don't' believe it will return to what we all had before March 2020. It will be a new world of creative possibilities. I'm pretty excited thinking about that. 
  7. Preserve my financial position carefully.

David

“Flexibility, improvisation, practicality, and the ability to recognize and respond to changing environments” ​
​
Berklee Credo
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Staying Motivated As A Musician During The Pandemic

10/13/2020

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This will take work. Work that will get more difficult as this things drags on. 

First things don't wait for the government to solve your money problems. Taking a temp job will be better that sitting at home underpaid on government benefits waiting for a miracle. Even a temp job that pays the same as benefits. It gets you up, dressed, and out of the house, or at least interacting with humans on some level. This has got to be better than sitting alone at home stewing in our own juices.

Secondly, seek professional help, we all know in our hearts that we are looking at another year before any kind of communal music making and audience gatherings are allowed. The vaccine will need to work and then be distributed widely to a reluctant and skeptical population to do its possible magic. Ask your doctor, union rep for ideas and possibilities. 

Thirdly, take care of yourself. Sleep, exercise in sunlight, eating nutritional meals, and staying sober will up one’s chances to cope. 

Fourth, take online lessons or classes if you can swing it. I find this helpful. I interact with my drum tutor weekly, piano tutor bi-weekly. 

Fifth, stay close to your friends. Have online coffee meetups, or coffee in the park on a regular basis. 
 
Take care, 

David







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Doc Rivers, Covid-19, Musicians

9/24/2020

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Lockdown is imminent. What to do?
  1. Stay safe and follow directions of competent health authorities. And then...
Work on our attitudes. 
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To hell with Covid, let's play safe

8/26/2020

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Three sessions in 2 days.
  1. Jazz trio around the pool. Each musician had an umbrella. We stood apart.
  2. Classic rock quartet in a large recording studio. Spacing observed. Well ventilated. Singer behind and enclosed with plastic sheeting. 
  3. Electronic improv trio outdoors on the patio under the starts. Almost romantic. 

Where there's a will there is a safe way. 

​David 
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​How to simplify everything to lower the cognitive load during the pandemic?

7/8/2020

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Cognitive overload: Too much information, not enough context, too little time to process and reflect= stress, from the resulting inefficiencies in holding information in our memory for later retrieval. 

A good example for musicians in memorizing music. Apparently as we age, we lose abilities with working memory. Memorizing becomes increasingly difficult.

How do we improve our working memory? It's complicated, but decluttering the mind might be of help. 

Ten things to help lower this stress to free up our processing power, so to speak.

  1. Acceptance that life is complicated, and aging is, if you are lucky, inevitable.
  2. Lower social media use, this apparently is a negative factor of modern life.
  3. Access news once a day, or week. Another difficult edict during a pandemic.
  4. Do an audit of one’s daily activities. It may be time for a reshuffle, reordering, or abandonment of  activities and goals that are no longer relevant. Circumstances change, people change, you’ve changed.
  5. Take a nature walk, leave the phone at home.
  6. Call a friend, have coffee, chat about nothing important.
  7. Practice without an agenda. With the current pandemic situation, it’s going to be awhile before activities musical resume. Have more fun with your instrument.
  8. Declutter your studio.
  9. Revisit your goals. Are they congruent? (It’s impossible to suck and blow at the same time.)
  10. Seek out competent sources of information on this subject from eminent authors. My goal with this blog post is to excite your curiosity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load#Effects_of_heavy_cognitive_load

David
 
 

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Maintaining our Intrinsic Motivation in the middle of a Pandemic?

6/26/2020

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Being internally driven when sitting at home takes some extra effort. Idleness, loneliness, cramped spaces, financial stress; it adds up. 

I've made a short list for musicians of positive qualities that may help us focus our efforts, deal with reality, be creative, and get on with it. 

  1. Professional pride, that's a good start. Most of us are decades into this, we have standards to maintain for our self-respect.
  2. Imaginative thinking to take charge of, and responsibility for, what happens next. 

The short hokey video below is a good reminder that fitness, appearance, and conduct go a long way to preparing us what is to come. Combine this with professional pride and imaginative thinking will, I believe, move us forward. 
​
Good luck, 

David

For more on this subject I suggest checking out this peer reviewed article: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-intrinsic-motivation-2795385
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What is a good attitude in the age of COVID-19?

6/21/2020

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What is a good attitude in the midst of a pandemic?

Good question.

I. Stay in touch with others. Especially musicians who are still practicing, staying sober, practicing safe practices. This has really helped me: Jamming with social distancing in safe spaces.
2. Stay physically active. Keep the endorphins up. A challenge for sure. I'm drinking way for much coffee.
3. Taking lessons gives us another reason to stay musically fit. I take weekly classes on drums. For piano classes twice a month plus an online teaching course here and there.
4. Explore alternative routes for your career. I'm exploring drum teaching. This is a creative industry, let's get creative, we have no choice. As someone wiser than me said, "you got your war". This is our moment. 

David 
​
An external link: 

​https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html
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Reimagining the future part 2

5/28/2020

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The inside of my mind in pandemic.
Performing live is over for the foreseeable future. Going to any kind a show prior to either the virus dies out or a vaccine miraculously appears is done like dinner.

Time to reimagine the future.

What's not happening?
  • large ensembles
  • jazz camps
  • Tranzac club performances
  • Array studio performances
  • conventions and in-person workshops
  • student recitals

What can happen?
  • social media video posts
  • online communities
  • piano and guitar trios performing in safe spaces
  • duos at my house
  • online recording projects
  • collaborative online projects
  • learning new musical skills to share with my students
  • practicing my instruments: Piano, Drums, Synthesizers, and DAW
  • composing for my students
  • personal online learning
  • collaborative projects with other music teaching professionals

David
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Networking in the time of Covid-19 Does it make sense?

5/11/2020

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Darn Tootin' it does. This won't last forever. Reach out everyway you can to stay in the loop. Project positivity, keep moving, keep practicing. Be ready.


David
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    Author

    David Story: Professional pianist, drummer, composer, and educator. Well into his 5th enthusiastic musical decade, David works with adults pursuing musical dreams in the autumn of life, while he maintains an active presence in the Toronto arts scene.

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