10 Rules for Being an Artist

If you write for long enough, you will eventually read something that you forgot about writing in the first place.  Here are ten rules, taken from my Saxophone Journal column in May/June 2013.

1.  Never immediately discount anything, ever.  Give it a chance, or put it away for future exploration.

2.  Study with a master teacher for an extended period of time.  Then, find a new master.  Repeat as necessary.

3.  Transcribe [copy] one artist until you gain deep insight into his style.  Then, find a new artist.  Repeat as necessary.

4.  Respect the tradition, study history, and get the oldest [artist] in town to tell you her stories.

5.  Don't lie to yourself, and don't quit.

6.  Have a notebook.  Fill it.  Get a new notebook.

7.  Be confident, but always assume that there is a better player in the band, and an even better player in the audience.

8.  Be generous . . . and share the spotlight.

9.  Regularly read all sorts of books, magazines, and newspapers.

10.  Teach!  You will nurture the future . . . by helping young artists, and by building new audiences.  You will also learn unexpected things from your students.

Of Circuits and Souls: Don Garber (1935-2017)

Don Garber passed away on June 4, 2017, two days before my 45th birthday.  I cried when I got the news, which is a little strange.  I never actually met Don, not in-person anyway.  I was his customer, as I had purchased a pair of his legendary Fi 300b tube amplifiers, and later the matching preamp.  I had to save for years to afford them, which was ok, as the waiting list was almost a year for each item.  That's how good he was.  You had to pay just to get on the list, and I can't begin to describe the agony of waiting.  Don didn't simply design and build amplifiers.  He crafted unique and soulful musical instruments.  If you are not an audiophile (also known as a crazy person), you probably have no idea what I am talking about.  Allow me to explain.

In any normal business, it would require an engineer to design a good amplifier circuit, a designer to create the casework, an assembly house to put it all together, a quality control team to do the testing, a packing and shipping department, and a whole team of folks to do the marketing.  Don did it all himself, and he didn't even have a website or run ads.  In the 21st century, he did not have a website.  Let that soak in for a moment . . . . . . . . . . .  It was all word of mouth, and some passionate reviews, which was how I discovered his work.  You see, the amps belong in the Museum of Modern Art.  They are gorgeous pieces of industrial sculpture.  And the sound?  I never grow tired of them.  My heart beats a little faster when I power them up.  Stereo fanatics are usually thinking about speakers and wires and tubes and transistors, but I tend to forget all about that stuff with my Fi gear, and I simply bathe in the music that they so effortlessly loose into the room, much in the same way that my best saxophones allow me to forget technique and totally focus on the emotions of the art.

I was surprised to find out that, although he lived in Brooklyn for most of his adult life, he was from Virginia, and his father was from Harrisonburg, where I currently teach at the very university where his parents met - then Madison College, but now James Madison University.  I wasn't surprised to find out that Don Garber was (primarily) a gifted painter, and I was even less surprised still to find out that he was a saxophonist in his younger years.  His work reflects the soul of an artist, in every regard.  Even the intricately cutout cardboard puzzle pieces that he used to pack his amps for safe shipping were strikingly unique and oddly beautiful.  I hated to recycle them.

When I first contacted Don, he asked about my speakers and he expressed concern that they might not work with his amps (and he was right).  He tried to talk me out of ordering, but I told him that I would gladly put the amps in the closet and save up for the right speakers.  When the amps didn't mate well with my Tannoys, he gave me detailed instructions on how to rewire the output transformers for a 4 ohm load.  I remember him calling me up and saying "how are you with a soldering iron?  You're going to need 40 watts, if you don't have one already."  I ordered a heavy duty soldering iron that same day.  He sent me copies of his hand-drawn schematics and he even gave me  some of his preferred solder, free of charge.  In the end, as fate would have it, I had inherited some old Wharfedale speakers a few years earlier that turned out to be perfect mates for my Fi 300b, but the bottom line was that he wasn't happy until I was happy.  For the record, I am, to this very day, tears-on-cheeks, don't look at me, I need a minute . . . that happy.  They have been singing in my listening room ever since.

Down the road, Don contacted me with concern that a reviewer wanted to order, for his personal use, a pair of Fi 300b amps to use with speakers similar to mine - the ones that didn't work, because complex crossovers are the work of the devil, by the way.  He was hoping that I could talk the guy out of it.  Who does that?!!!  "I don't want you to buy my expensive, hand-made product because I don't think it will work for you."  Don cared.  It wasn't about money or ego.  He wanted to share a piece of his soul with you.  I have owned all kinds of interesting electronics, but Don's amps are the only ones that I could honestly call "soulful."  The way they look, the way they work, the way they sound . . . every aspect tells you something about their creator.  He was part Picasso, part mad scientist, and all in.

Fast forward:  I hadn't been in touch with Don for a few years, so I decided to write him a letter around the holidays.  I let him know how much I love the amplifiers, and how they have become the center of many intimate social gatherings in my home.  I thanked him for being such a devoted artist.  He got back to me very quickly with a particularly artsy card and a handwritten note, complete with a Sarah Vaughn stamp.  It is worth noting that even Don's handwriting spoke to his attention to detail.  It was almost like a stylized version of architect script, very clean and legible, but also quite distinctive and unique, and captured on the printed logo on his amplifiers.  Anyway, I am so grateful for this final exchange between us.  I was surprised and saddened to hear of his passing, but I could not have engineered a finer farewell to a person that I deeply admired.

It isn't very often that you hardly know a person and yet somehow, you feel like old friends.  I suspect that Don Garber was simply that sort of person, the kind that instantly felt well worn and comfortable.  The world was better with Don in it, and I will feel his absence for a long time, but I am among the lucky owners of these amazing amplifiers that contain a little reflection of his soul.  Every time I play music through them and find myself quietly sobbing, or laughing out loud - every time I forget about the artifice and drown in the art, my friend Don will be right there with me.

Can Dyslexia Teach Us About Learning Music?

*this article was originally published in Saxophone Today (Jan 2017)*

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Can Dyslexia Teach Us About Learning Music?

As a university saxophone professor, a large portion of my work is spent helping students to learn repertoire.  I’m also constantly working on new music, while trying to keep the old standards as fresh as possible.  This heavy emphasis on the learning process has lead to an obsession with increasingly effective methods of learning (and teaching).  We all have limits to the amount of time that we can devote to practicing, so we need to make every moment count.  I am particularly interested in what we can learn from modern technology, so when I heard Gabrielle Emanuel’s fascinating NPR report on current research to better understand dyslexia,  http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/11/29/503693391/researchers-study-what-makes-dyslexic-brains-different, I was very excited about what I perceived to be obvious parallels between understanding the way humans read written words and the way we read music.  Moreover, a method for helping dyslexics to improve reading skills seems likely to have applications in music.

In the big picture, written language is a relatively new development for humans.  Evolution has hard-wired our brains for certain critical skills, like recognizing faces and learning spoken language, but reading requires a step beyond pure instinct.  Without getting too technical (and I encourage you to read Emanuel’s excellent article for slightly more detailed information), our brain likes to take pictures of things.  The first time you see an object, your brain needs to learn what the object looks like, and that means recognizing it from many angles.  Figuring something out for the first time happens in a particular part of the brain, but a different structure takes over when you can recognize an object in the abstract.  For example, if you see a car from the rear, you still easily recognize it as a car.  This skill involves a certain part of the brain called the occipitotemporal cortex.  Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) shows that this area of the brain is not only used for recognizing objects, but it also plays an important role in reading written language.

Our brains basically try to take “pictures” of words, so that we can quickly recognize those words without having to sound them out every time we see them.  This allows the brain to treat common words like symbols, seeing them as discrete objects, rather than a bunch of letters.  If you see the word “the,” your brain recognizes it quickly because it has stored an image of that word.   Words like this are known as sight words, and they are a vital component of learning to read.  Unlike cars, words are not objects that have the same meaning from different angles; think about a young child that writes some of their letters backwards, or reverses mirror-image letters like lowercase b and d.  This is unnatural for the brain, which is why we all need time and practice to learn the art of reading and writing.  [I taught myself to write with both hands, but I sometimes have trouble writing lower case q with my right hand, because I can’t remember which way the letter is oriented, but this only happens with my non-dominant hand, and only when I am tired!]  Dyslexics exhibit difficulty with sight words, and fMRI shows that their brains are less active in the involved neural structures when they are exposed to sight words, when compared to non-dyslexics.  Everyone must learn that a car, when viewed from any angle, is always a car, but letters and words are like one-way streets – direction matters!

Emanuel goes on to explain research being conducted by Guinevere Eden of Georgetown University.  In short, subjects with dyslexia were given intense training in learning to recognize words at sight, which resulted in a measured increase in activity in the appropriate structures of the brain.  Moreover, fMRI showed an increase of activity in other parts of the brain, suggesting that the brain can compensate for problems in some areas by recruiting other structures.  This can also be seen in patients with brains damaged by injury.  With disciplined practice, the brain forges new neural pathways.

In many ways, reading music is identical to reading language.  When we first learn to read music, we count the lines and spaces on the staff and use a mnemonic device (like “Every Good Boy Does Fine”) to determine the note names.   With practice, our brains will memorize an image of the staff, and then quickly identify note names by their positions in the staff.  I find it particularly interesting that an inexperienced music reader might confuse B with D, for example, because the two notes form a similar image, especially if one temporarily loses the visual center line of the staff.  From a more advanced perspective, scale passages are quickly recognized at sight, and the same holds true for triads and chordal structures.  A similar process happens when reading rhythms, where we go from having to count out the individual components to seeing a group of notes as an image that is a symbol for a certain cliché.  Young readers can easily execute quarter notes in a row, but syncopated figures are like little riddles that must be solved (sounded out?) before they can become grouped into images that can be recognized at sight.

 All this had me thinking about a method of practicing that I use, and how this method could be refined to take advantage of the brain’s strong tendency to organize components into meaningful image-symbols.  I tried working on some long, complex lines of music using the following method:

1.     Divide the line into clear visual groupings of notes.

2.     Play each group slowly with a pause between each group.

3.     Gradually increase the tempo within each group, but maintain a pause between groups.

4.     Play the line very slowly with no pauses, but still try to see each group as a separate unit within the longer line.

5.     Play in time, as written, increasing to the desired tempo.

In my own practice, this method worked very well.  In a relatively short amount of time, I was able to see each group as a “chunk,” and my eyes were free to move ahead to the next grouping while I was still playing the notes of the previous group.  I tried it with some of my students who came to their lessons with trouble spots in their prepared etudes.  While none of this was done in a scientific manner, I can say that the anecdotal evidence of taking the student through these five steps resulted in a rapid improvement, and the desired outcome was reached with seemingly far less repetitions than is required by the common method of repeating the line slowly and very gradually increasing tempo.

There are many well-known approaches to “note grouping” as a method for learning and interpreting music, so this is not really anything new.  With that said, fMRI is providing us with profound insights into the way that our brains work, and this information is bound to have broad applications for enhancing the way that we teach and learn.  While we might not ever be able to download talent directly into our minds like in The Matrix movies, we can definitely supercharge our practice by knowing how to quickly stimulate the parts of the brain that are involved in the acquisition of certain skills.  I will be following up on this article when I have a chance to do some of my own research.  Good luck, and practice well!

How I Found Myself While Pretending to be Prince

So, thirty years ago, I won a lip sync contest.  

  If you know me, you know that the only thing that could be more unlikely than me even entering a lip sync contest, is me winning a lip sync contest.  The significance of this improbable moment in my young life requires a little backstory.

All through grade school, I was bullied for being feminine.  I was a shy and skinny, and I had a mouthful of every orthodontic torture device ever invented.  If you can think of a gay slur, I was surely called it as I received regular beatings while being held under the downspout in the rain and stuffed into playground garbage cans.  They liked to punch me in the upper thighs while I was at the urinal, because I would piss myself and be too embarrassed to show anyone the bruises.  I had no self-confidence, no hope for the future, and my only goal was to get through the day without getting cornered.  In the sixth grade, they lined up and took turns punching me in the face until my retainer broke in my mouth.  I wanted to die.

In junior high, things got a little better.  I finally started growing, and even though I still took a few pretty good beatings, I wasn't getting put in trash cans anymore, and I started making friends (many of them a few years older than me) through the school band.  In 1986, I switched from flute to saxophone and I bought a hat and some Converse All-Stars.  I figured that it couldn't hurt.

My church youth group hosted a dance that year.  I mostly stuck close to the walls, trying not to be noticed.  There were teens there from other churches, and when the DJ announced a lip sync contest, I suppose that I figured that most of those kids didn't know me anyway, so I had nothing to lose.  It was totally out of character, and I have no idea how I mustered the courage, but I shot for the moon.  At the end of the contest, the DJ named the winner by who got the most applause.  I won.  I couldn't believe it.  Later on, a pretty girl  (I never saw her before, or ever again) asked me to dance.  I was reborn that night, and Prince was there.

Well, not really, but my song was Prince's "Kiss."  To this day, whenever I hear that song, I am filled with gratitude.  It's a cliché, but Prince helped me to know myself, and to find my creative voice.  Prince seems like an unusual source of inspiration for a guy like me, until you get beneath the surface.  In actuality, Prince was exactly the unconventional kind of hero that I so desperately needed.

Prince was an unlikely sex symbol - not exactly what one would consider a natural "leading man."  He was short (5' 2"), his look was very unorthodox, and he dressed a bit like an 18th century dandy.  He was all ruffles and purple velvet, dancing his ass off and rocking out in falsetto.  He embraced his femininity fearlessly and with full force - and it only made him sexier.  Way sexier.  He was unambiguously heterosexual, but he wasn't like most men, and certainly not like most rock stars.  For a teenager like me, that wasn't into sports and typical "manly" stuff, Prince presented a very different set of possibilities.  Clearly, my path would be quite a bit more conservative than that of a flamboyant rock star, but I was obviously never going to be varsity quarterback, and it was reassuring to see that there was more than one way to be a man.

Of course, Prince wasn't just about seduction.  He was also an incredible artist.  He could play nearly every instrument on the stage, and he was one of the greatest rock guitarists we will ever know.  (Even Stevie Wonder had to bring in Jeff Beck for a few guitar solos!)  He was a prolific songwriter.  He had multiple singing voices (and ranges), and he sang in-tune, live.  He rocked like Jimi Hendrix, he grooved like James Brown, and in the end, he was much more than the sum of his influences.  There is only one word in the English language that can properly describe him:  Prince.

At first glance, it might seem that Prince surrounded himself with women because he was objectifying them; there were certainly more than enough scantily-clad ladies on stage to raise those concerns.  He clearly loved women, but I think there was more than met the eye.  In the same way that he valued his own feminine qualities, he valued femininity in general.  His off-stage persona was shy and reserved.  He wasn't known for wild parties, and the women on the stage were rarely mere ornaments - they were usually there on artistic merit:  Sheila E, Candy Dulfer, and far too many others to mention.  At first, I was surprised to learn that Susan Rogers was his recording engineer in the 80s, but this really shouldn't be shocking in any way.  Even behind the scenes, he valued the female perspective.  The iconic symbol that temporarily served as a legal substitution for his name was obviously an expression of the beauty that comes from the unity of a balanced whole - a yin yang analog of gender and sexuality, yes, but also a thing of inclusive beauty unto itself.

Prince was unwavering in his pursuit of artistic freedom.  He was composer, performer, producer, and he led the rebellion against corporate record labels.  Prince and the Revolution?  Prince was the Revolution.  His death comes tragically too soon, and I won't be surprised if the autopsy reveals a man that simply worked himself to death.

Thirty years later, I find myself settled into a fantastic life and a successful career.  In some ways, I bucked the system by refusing to limit myself to one genre of music, knowing that it made my path more difficult.  In order to keep myself nourished, I habitually take my own artistic risks and I try to challenge what it means to be a saxophone professor.  Whenever I find myself in a moment of doubt, which is rather frequent, I remember that nothing could be as reckless as the time that I mimed to The Purple One.  I never had the chance to see him perform live, but in this nearly random moment back in 1986, he gave me this incredible gift of bravery, to be my own kind of artist and my own kind of man, and I will reap the rewards for all of my life.

You were, and ever shall be, the one and only Prince.  

"You have to pay the bills, right?"

     When I meet someone and they discover that I am a saxophone professor, there are a few common reactions.  "Wow!  I didn't know that was a thing."  I always smile and explain that all college music majors study their instruments with a professor, and that we are a part of a master-apprentice system that goes back through the ages.  Another common reaction happens when a person already knows that I am a musician, and upon learning that I am a teacher, they say "Well, you have to pay the bills, right?"

I used to just laugh it off, but I've changed my mind about how to approach the situation.  Obviously, everyone has to pay the bills, but suggesting that teaching is a great way to pay the bills?  It's ridiculous, and it hurts my profession to not address the idea.  Here's why:

1.  PAYING THE BILLS?

If your goal was to make money, why would you choose teaching?  Teachers are underpaid.  Take a look at this listing of average starting salaries for teachers (according to the National Education Association).  Higher education in music isn't much better.  I am not complaining, but if my goal was to make money, I would have easily found a different career that paid better, and certainly one that paid better out of the gate.  The idea that anyone would pursue teaching for the easy money is completely insane and should be treated as such.

There is always the argument that the hours are light and we have the summers off.  When teachers aren't in the classroom, they are busy preparing, making lesson plans, studying.  Teachers are lifelong learners.  They are attending and presenting at conferences - the kind that have you busy all day and into the night.  They are getting training to teach new subjects and to meet the changing needs of modern students.  Teachers are always on the clock, always thinking (and often worrying) about their students.  The actual hours spent in the classroom don't even begin to tell the full story of what it means to be a teacher.

2.  FALLBACK POSITION?

I have been teaching professionally for more than 20 years.  I have easily taught over a hundred students in private lessons, and that number expands exponentially when you consider all the students that I have taught in classroom and ensemble settings.  I dare you to ask one of them, at random, if they ever thought for a sigle second that they were my "fallback" career.  I teach because I love to teach, and because I love students.  I teach for the love of teaching.  I teach to pay back my teachers.  I teach for love.  Anyone that tries teaching as a fallback position will be a terrible teacher, and have a life of misery.

3.  GREAT TEACHERS OF ART ARE GREAT ARTISTS

The greatest teachers of art, any art, are world-class artists.  In my field, the single most important qualification is musicianship.  My colleagues have performed all over the world, and with some of the most famous artists and conductors.  This isn't special.  It's normal.  The notion that you can fail as an artist and succeed as a teacher is preposterous.  I don't perform "on the side," or as a hobby.  I am a professional musician.  If I didn't have the ability to perform at the highest level, I would not be able to teach.  The best teachers are the best artists.

STANDING UP FOR TEACHERS

Someone recently asked me, half sarcastically, "How do I get your [cushy] job?"  I replied, with a friendly smile, "practice the saxophone for about 20,000 hours, borrow $100K to go to the best universities for ten years, and get an international reputation as a performer, author, and composer.  Then, compete against a hundred other highly qualified applicants for only a handful of positions in the entire world." I could have added, "and be prepared to accept a starting salary in the forty-thousand range with no ability to negotiate."

I'm not being snarky.  This is the reality, and I accept it with a smile because I love my job, even when I am swimming against the tide of criticism and public misunderstanding about what I actually do.  I also keep things in keen perspective by comparing my situation to what K-12 public school teachers face.  With standardized testing scores connected to funding, pressure to teach outside their areas of interest and specialty, lack of support for students with special needs and language barriers, and a general lack of support from politicians and the media, it is much, much worse for them.

But teachers will continue to teach.  Not to pay the bills - there are better ways to do that.  Not because they "fell back" - that's a myth.  And certainly not because "those that can't do . . . " - give me a break!

Teachers will continue to teach for the love of humanity.  If you've ever had a teacher that made an impact on your life, don't miss the chance to say thank you.  It means more to us than you could possibly know.

Remembering Phil Woods

When I was a student at UMASS, the jazz ensemble played a festival that was judged by the legendary Phil Woods.  On the scoring sheet, he singled me out with a very nice comment.  My teacher at the time convinced me that I should ask Phil if I could use the quote in my promotional materials.  (I was probably 20 years old at the time, so my resume was still a little slim!)  I thought it was a great idea, but I certainly had no idea how to contact him, so I forgot about it.

A year later, I had a job at a music company that did some work with Phil and I was able to get permission to copy down his mailing address to send a letter.  On my old electric typewriter, I pounded out something like, "Dear Mr. Woods, Thanks for being awesome.  I don't ever expect you to reply to this letter, but if you would give me permission to use that quote, I would be ever grateful."  I mailed the letter and imagined that he would never even read it, so once again, I forgot about it.

It was summer and I was living at my parents house while I made some money for the coming school year.  I got home from work one day and my younger sister said, "Some guy named Phil left you a message."  I was thinking, "Phil who?"  When I hit play on the answering machine, there was the voice of THE Phil Woods, happily telling me to use the quote as much as I would like, and wishing me luck in my career.  I freaked out.  I couldn't believe that he would give me permission to use the quote, never mind that he took the time to call me and leave a nice message.  I still have it on a foggy sounding cassette tape somewhere in my archive of unplayable and ancient recorded media.

When I was a graduate student, I was at a jazz education conference and I walked into the hotel restaurant to see a crowd around the bar.  At the center of the group was THE Phil Woods, trademark hat and all.  I quietly sat down at a table, not wanting to disturb him, as he was already being sufficiently worshipped by his friends and fans.  As I looked at my menu, I heard my name called out, "David Pope!  How the heck are you?"  He said something like, "Do you guys know this cat?  You should check him out.  He's going places!"  I ran over to him and shook his hand and he put his hand on my shoulder.  I'll never forget it.  For thirty seconds, I was the coolest guy in the bar.

Phil Woods was the architect of the modern jazz alto sound.  He played with a tone as big as the room.  His time, language, and phrasing were definitive.  It's also worth noting that his solo on Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are," is possibly one of the most perfect improvised solos in the history of pop music.  He was a solid composer, contributing several pieces of core repertoire for saxophone/piano and saxophone quartet.  He performed with everyone from Thelonious Monk to Paul Simon, and he won multiple grammy awards with his own groups.

Phil had a reputation for being tough, and he certainly had a low tolerance for anything that smacked of jive.  I was lucky enough to have a few encounters with him, all of which showed him to be a kind and generous soul.  Only a few weeks ago, I played "Cheek to Cheek" from my vinyl copy of LIVE AT THE SHOWBOAT for a couple of students.  That track still gives me a particular thrill.  The master is now gone, but he gives us seven decades of recordings that leave his permanent footprint in jazz history.  He also taught us how to wear a hat.  Rest well, Brother Phil.

Advice for the First Year Music Major

Your first year in college is an incredible adventure.  It is likely your first time completely away from home.  You will experience freedoms that are totally new, but as the old saying goes, with great freedom comes great responsibility.  While every discipline of study has unique challenges, music majors have particularly heavy workloads.  You might have nearly twice as many credits as your non-music friends, and when you are done with all that homework, you face the never ending climb that happens in the practice room.

In truth, being a music major is excellent preparation for a career in music.  We are extremely busy people. Professional musicians typically balance a wild schedule of teaching, rehearsing, performing, and practicing, all while trying to keep a social schedule and a family life.  We are often our own managers, promoters, accountants, copyists, and so on.  Here are a few pieces of advice for the first-year music major.

Actively Manage Your Time

You are about to be the busiest that you have ever been in your entire life, and you won't have anyone constantly looking over your shoulder.  Only you can make sure that you get everything done.  Your high school life had a certain structure that helped you to keep things compartmentalized - all your classes were during the day, you had after school activities, and you did your studying at night.  As a college student, your classes will be spread out and you may have intense blocks of back-to-back coursework with irregular breaks.  You can't afford to wing it.  You need to be organized, to think ahead, and to anticipate what needs to happen across the day, the week, and the semester.

The Power of the Paper Planner

There are many ways to keep track of your responsibilities.  There are plenty of apps and cloud-based solutions, like google calendar and iCal.  The trouble with these things is that you actually have to remember to look at them, and my experience as a professor tells me that many students simply forget to check their calendar, or they get distracted by other things happening on their various electronic devices.  For this reason, I strongly recommend an old school, paper planner.

One of the problems with using the calendar on your phone is that, well, your phone is a phone.  It is basically a time killing distraction machine.  A paper planner is a book that does exactly one thing, and the more you use it, the better it gets.  There is also research that indicates that we remember much more of what we write in our own handwriting.  I recommend that my students have a paper planner, and that they schedule out every waking hour of the day.  Schedule your meals, your practice, your homework and studying, and when you will go to bed.  Never be without your planner, and read it frequently.  Make notes about upcoming projects, papers, and presentations.  Fill your datebook with all your concerts and rehearsals, and don't forget those extra dress rehearsals.  It takes some time to get the book filled in, but once it is complete, you will always be able to deal with stress, depression, or boredom (it happens) by leaning on your schedule.

Keep a List of "Time Bombs"

In addition to the paper planner, you should have a separate list of the big stuff.  I call these items "time bombs," and I sort them according to the ones with the shortest fuses.  That music theory quiz next week would be high on the list because it is going to blow up soonest.  Preparing the parts for a concert next month might be in the middle of the list, where final exams and your jury would be towards the bottom.  When something big is completed, cross it off the list.  This additional bit of "big picture" organization will ensure that you don't miss something on your datebook because it didn't stand out.  Again, a little preparation at the beginning of the semester will pay off throughout the coming months.

A Sense of Place

Music majors tend to spend a lot of time in what many of us call "the music building."  Oftentimes, your classes, rehearsals, and practice space are all in one building.  You spend much of your time there, and you see the same people hanging out, especially in that dreaded den of distraction, the student lounge!  By keeping certain activities sorted into specific places, you will limit distractions, and it is wise to find ways of doing certain types of work as far away from the music building as possible.  Obviously, the practice room is for practicing, and you might need to do your theory and ear training work there as well, so that you can use the piano and feel free to sing and make noise.  Try doing your reading work in a quiet corner of the main library (NOT the music library!).  Find special places that work well for specific tasks, and keep them sacred to their designated activities.

Eat

Do not skip meals.  Your body and your brain need energy, and you can't live on coffee and energy drinks.  Eat regular meals, a balanced diet, and plenty of fruits and vegetables.  "I'm too busy to eat today," is not acceptable.  Ever.  Pack a lunch.  Have a granola bar and a banana in your backpack.  No excuses.  Eat.

Sleep

If you are overtired, you will find it difficult to concentrate, you will be more susceptible to stress, and you will be more likely actually waste time by being unproductive.  Lack of sleep is also a leading cause of catching a cold.  Schedule what time you will go to bed, and try to stick to the plan.  You are better to go to bed and get up early to do some last minute studying than to stay up all night and try to sleep for a couple of hours before that 8AM test.  The 20-minute power nap is also a very useful tool for those days when you can't get enough rest.  Set your alarm for twenty minutes, close your eyes and drift off.  Just make sure to get up after twenty minutes.  Any longer and you risk falling into deeper sleep and not waking up, or getting that dreaded groggy "nap head" feeling.

"How Do I Feel?"

Ask yourself, "How do I feel?"  Are you hungry?  tired?  tense?  Assess your state of being and try to address specific problems.  Make some time to do something that makes you feel healthy.  Go to the gym.  Take a swim in the pool.  Go for a walk by yourself.  Meditate.  Something as simple as sitting quietly for 5 minutes can have a surprising effect on your overall state of physical and mental health.  Only you know how you feel, and you can't take care of yourself if you don't think about what you need to feel good.

Blue Light

Humanity evolved to recognize that blue wavelength light signals time to be awake, red wavelength light triggers the sleep cycle, and darkness is for sleeping.  Unfortunately, our electronic devices are super-exposing us to blue light, and it is making it harder for us to go to sleep.  Instead of staring at a screen until the moment you attempt to go to sleep, try unplugging yourself from light emitting devices an hour before bed.  At the very least, dim the screen as much as possible.  It is far better to read a book before bed, by which I mean an actual, paper book.  It is also important to resist the urge to look at your phone in bed.  Just as the library is your place for studying, bed should be for sleeping.  

I hope these bits of advice will help you to have a great first year, and set you up for many years of success.  The good habits that you establish in this important time will set the tone for the rest of your life.  Practice Monster Smash!!!