Initially, I stopped posting because my workload was too large. I had two musicals to prepare, a few piano students, plenty of difficult music for the women’s acapella group, and prepared my upcoming releases with Joe Roller, some of which came out in 2020 with still more to come. I kept my blogging output consistent through writing posts in groups of four or five in advance, saving them to my desktop, and posting them according to my alternating Monday schedule.

With dozens of rehearsal recordings to prepare and hundreds of pages of scores to learn, writing simply wasn’t a priority. I keep my turnaround time for clients and projects as fast as possible, and that fast turnaround time comes with some sacrifices. My blog isn’t a client or a paying project, so it just didn’t make sense to prioritize it. I never used it as a sales tool or part of some SEO strategy because I didn’t want to confine myself too much on what I wrote about or how I wrote it. Somehow, I still retained my two thousand readers (now we’re up to four thousand!) but it sat neglected like a mediocre casserole at a barbeque.

In March 2020, my world ended, and I suddenly had more time to write. I didn’t. The sudden loss of opportunities I worked very hard for was difficult on me. I injured my foot on a run after the city closed the climbing gym and got plantar fasciitis. Walking from one end of my room to the other end was extremely painful, so I spent most days working on music and most nights playing Euro or American Truck Simulator. After my plantar fasciitis healed and it wasn’t a workout to walk from my room to the mailbox, Colorado had historic wildfires that polluted the air to the point breathing outside was the same as smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.

While I never stopped reading or composing music, my writing stopped. This was the second time I burned out writing. The first was a year ago, in 2019, after I completed my honors thesis for the University of Colorado Denver. My professor was abusive, so opening up Word or Outlook brought up bad memories. In fact, I wrote some of the first blog posts in Notepad just so I wouldn’t have to stare at the Word interface, and I wouldn’t have to “see” her comments about how I wrote at a freshman level and the UCD English department failed to teach me anything.

Yet, unlike the last period, I can’t put my finger on why exactly I stopped writing in prose. I continued to write music, and this might be one of the most prolific points of my career. I finished up several releases last year, I completed my first two major transcriptions of Buxtehude and Bach and prepared their final editions for publication, I started a new secret transcription project, I recorded an easy listening piano album, I wrote twelve solo piano waltzes, and I recorded dozens of practice tracks for vocal students and my colleagues. This is on top of the nine commercially available Joe Roller releases that float around the internet. I never struggled with writing music, as I am primarily a musician, and sometimes writing in English feels less natural than composing a melody, but that is a whole other story.

Despite these accomplishments, I never wet my digital quill. Part of the reason is that I started reading more blogs, and I hated the directions other bloggers took with their writing. I didn’t like the LinkedIn Philosopher, who is a young man my age with business expertise that he learned from Instagram University condescending to me as if he started the next Microsoft. Then there’s Blue Hair Suzy who publishes her controversial Hot Takes, who researched her incredibly banal opinion with the same CNN, Fox News, or NPR articles everyone else reads. Let’s not forget SEO Mike, who could write an interesting blog, but instead insults the English language by writing blog posts as if they were poorly thought out computer code, with choppy ideas and first-grade language centered around a group of keywords a marketing team came up with that a Google robot enjoys “reading,” and leaves a reader like me mildly annoyed. Oh, and there’s Obvious Alice, who read a blog post about the “Top 10 Things to Write On Your Blog,” and writes the same posts everyone else does.

I didn’t want to make my blog like any of theirs. Writing about the music business felt a bit duplicitous, as I am not very successful or important in the grand scheme of it. I don’t spend enough time researching political issues to develop interesting or nuanced opinions like Bob Woodward or Radio War Nerd do. I don’t write for SEO, and ironically, since people search with natural language, my blog posts do far better than most people who treat SEO as black magic. I also don’t want to write about the same things everyone else does. There is not point to it, and I might as well unpublish my posts.

So, what will I do? I want to focus my blog on three areas. The first content series will be “Lend Me Your Ear.” I will take a recording I like and talk about what I find interesting about it. The second will be “Linear Notes,” where I will give a detailed description of how a track came about, the personal things behind it, and some interesting production trick I used. I also want to write more personal essays, as those tend to be more interesting than political philosophies or business tips. I also have a series coming up called “Swan Songs,” where I will write about the last normal days I had before the pandemic uprooted everything.

I hope you enjoy it, and I will post twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from now on.

The post Blog Announcement appeared first on Joe Roessler.

Word Washing

Lenin successfully used word washing when he started the Soviet Union, the world’s most brutal empire. Let us examine an argument Lenin advanced in his pamphlet “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline.”

1. We should have a free, equal society.
2. Economic activity eventually produces monopolies.
3. Monopolies prevent equality.
4. Communism removes monopolies, so a free and equal society will flourish with communism.

So where does this alleged word washing occur? No part of Lenin’s argument as I presented it here contains any specific definitions and neither does his entire pamphlet. Joe, you may say, doesn’t word washing imply the use of some definition that gets misapplied into an entirely unrelated concept?

The reality is that word washing is far more subtle and infectious than it first appears. Let’s dig deeper into this argument. As you observed, there are no points where Lenin provides a specific definition. Rather, we see Lenin use implied definitions the reader draws for himself within the context of the work.

Lenin puts “free, equal society” and “monopoly” in opposition in 1 and 3. He explicitly argues that “monopolies” prevent “equality,” and “equality” is connected to the “free, equal society” we had before. So, the reader washes the definitions of “equality” and “free, equal society” together since they’re understood to be synonyms of each other as a consequence of the order they appear in my paraphrase and in the context of the full document. Furthermore, since there are no specific definitions, the reader considers that communism will truly lead to a free and equal society, since it will not have any monopolies. Consequently, Lenin persuades the reader that communism is good.

What makes this technique so insidious and dangerous is precisely the fact that these imperative definitions, definitions that shape entire spheres of culture, are washed away in Lenin’s argument that rests on confusing implications. I will not define “freedom,” “equality,” or “society” in this work, for that is reserved to the ancients who are much smarter than me. Instead, I focus on simpler terms like “communism” and “monopoly.” Where Lenin’s argument precisely fails is where he introduces “communism” as an opposition to “monopoly.” Communism is by definition a monopoly, since the state has monopolistic control over all of her resources in a communist system. Lenin deceives his

reader by washing the true definitions of the words away so that he persuades the readers through this technique. Thus, the argument is persuasive and rests on implied definitions instead leading the readers to the truth.

Questions to test for Word Washing

• What terms does this argument use? Are they defined?
• How do the relationship of terms in this argument create definitions?
• Why should I agree or disagree with a principle based on these definitions?

A Note on Specific Instances

Word washing takes on more specific forms. I simply provided a framework. When I drafted this piece, I initially had virtue twisting as its own, distinct concept but it is in fact a specific version of word washing.

Virtue twisting is when an example of unrelated good behavior, a virtue, is a part of an extreme movement. Here is a common argument that takes a virtue and “twists” it to benefit the movement’s goals. The “twisting” refers to logical gaps where the aforementioned virtue does not have a connection to consequential action. Put simply, the virtue does not connect with its application in real life, and instead is a launching point for people to think that they are correct as it appears that they are good people, acting in accordance with a virtue. Of course, this is an illusion, but the definition of the virtue is misapplied to manipulate the reader.

There are countless other ways people abuse vocabulary to manipulate others, but I think they best fit in this framework. I don’t think I’m the first person to make this observation, but I did slap a fun little word on top of it. What do you think?

The post Virtue Twisting and Word Washing: Duping the Masses appeared first on Joe Roessler.

Seven years ago, I was at a crossroads in my life. The band I was apart of in high school was over. I had an impressive resume, but I didn’t get into the music schools I wanted to because of my grades. Apparently, grades are, in fact, more important than your playing or portfolio.

I hope that, you, the reader, understand how hard I worked to do well in college after doing poorly in high school and that even if you’re rejected by idiots like I was, there is nothing that will ever stop you from accomplishing what you want. What some letter says written by some anonymous jerk who never met you doesn’t have anything to do with the truth. It never has and never will. I was never the type to let other people dictate what I can and cannot do in my life and I hope I inspire you and remind you that you can strive for the life you deserve no matter what.

Now that’s out of the way, I thought it was time for a change. I wanted new musical experiences and so I went to the same place everyone else goes when you want something new: Craigslist. I sent tons of emails and eventually got a badly formatted, all lowercase, was-he-drunk-when-he-wrote-this kind of email along the lines of “sounds legit dude come over tomorrow in stapleton [address] at 4:30 good to hear your tunes bro [cellphone number].”

I drove my prehistoric, no-AC ’91 Honda in a dry heat in rush hour an hour away from my parents’ house to Stapleton. It was so freaking hot when I finally got there I was covered in sweat and utterly exhausted.

Getting to Stapleton that first time was one of the times in my life I truly felt afraid. I was nervous about the audition, sure. Like everyone else, I also get a little anxious any time I have to meet someone new, and I had no idea what I was about to get into since the email didn’t have much in the way of specifics. That’s not even half of what I was afraid of, though.

The area at the time was mostly halfway houses and warehouses that all looked the same. All the traffic around me was semi-trucks going extremely fast around tight corners, with guys that had neck tattoos screaming at my Honda that barely had enough power to haul my keyboard amp and me. I parked to try to call the dude I was supposed to meet. My phone overheated due to the sauna on wheels I drove, and I just had to wait it out in the shade for a little while. A few of the many hostile drug addicts walking around the neighborhood surrounded my car like vultures and caught a glimpse of the keyboard amp and knew that there was something valuable in there. A few of them started yelling things to get my attention, so they had an excuse to come see me.

It didn’t take much for me to drive around the block. I had to make a call, and you know, I do deserver an Oscar for my brilliant acting job that covered up how nervous I was I’ll never forget the first time I saw the drummer on that day out of hell. Finding him was such a relief. I felt like the Jews finding water in the desert for the first time.

I rolled up to another warehouse to find him standing near a door stenciled “FIRE EX IT.” He was a dude with a violet wook trucker hat covered in pins, stunning brown eyes, curly earrings, goatee, graffiti tee shirt, a half-whiskey half-coke Polar Pop, and held a pot pipe and smoked his cigarette at the same time. I immediately thought “well, what did you really expect from a Craigslist ad that said ‘420 friendly,’ Joe,” and went up to meet him.

He lead me to our little rehearsal room. God, I miss that room. We rehearsed in a very small room with black, cloth walls lit with faux candles. The air conditioning didn’t work and it reeked of body odor, palo santo, weed, and beer. We played for four, five, even six hours at a time in that space. That room was part of one of the craziest, most fun periods of my life.

That first day, we played for two hours without talking. He said, “good work, come back next week.” I replied, “sure thing,” loaded up, and drove another hour back home. We said all of ten words over two conversations that first day. When you have a real musical connection, you don’t need to talk that much.

“Sixish” captures the four-hour jams we had in that little room. I created a track that captured the simple, elegant melodies our guitarist played, the bassline our awesome bassist laid down, and of course the amazing drumming I was lucky enough to hear. I wanted most of all to capture the vibe of what it was like to play and jam out for hours and hours and hours and distill it to some of our finest moments together.

Buy “Sixish” on Bandcamp

Buy/Stream “Sixish” on Apple Music

Buy/Stream “Sixish” on Google Play

Stream “Sixish” on Spotify

Stream “Sixish” on Deezer

Buy/Stream “Sixish” on Amazon

Buy/Stream “Sixish” on Amazon

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The post “Sixish” Linear Notes appeared first on Joe Roessler.

I want to thank you for reading. You’re part of 1,000 regular visitors moving about 4.5 GB of bandwidth every month. For non-technical people, bandwidth is basically how much data a website moves. Text websites like my blog and other ones tend to move very little, if at all, data. The fact we’re moving so much data is amazing.

Anyways, I ran into an odd issue with Pro Tools and updating my computer’s BIOS fixed it. I wanted to share my solution with you in case, like me, you tried and tried to fix something without getting anywhere.

After a period of extreme burnout, I’m back to writing again. I’ll try to publish every week this time. Next week’s post is a dialogue I wrote about music genres. Don’t worry, if you’re not a musician you’ll get a lot out of it. I don’t spend too much time on the details. Instead, I use two unnamed characters to explain the musical mindset I have. Besides, details are for nerds to feel smart. Beleive it or not, it’s much harder to discuss overall abstract structures and approaches then spend time working out the details of what compressoror chord to use.

Now, back to the post. Here we go:

The Issue

I had an issue with Pro Tools on Windows 10 where it always generated an error “Pro Tools ran out of CPU power. Try de-activating or removing Native plug-ins. (AAE -9173)” even if I played a blank project. I have good hardware (Fireface UCX and Ryzen 5 2600 32 GB low latency RAM) and the rest of my machine appeared to work perfectly. My Cubase and Ableton sessions still worked just fine. I tried re-installing Pro Tools, the PACE drivers, my graphics driver, network driver, and nothing worked. I ran Windows Update, and went through Device Manager to ensure everything is working. I updated my audio drivers and re-installed all the Avid drivers. I even ran the Emsisoft Emergency Kit to scan for malware Kaspersky may have missed. Nothing worked.

I referred to the Pro Tools documentation and went through the optimization guide. I went through all the steps, even though some of them will hamper your overall computing experience. On a side note, UAC is a critical security measure in Windows and I don’t see how disabling it would help Pro Tools. I don’t work for their engineering team, though, so what do I know. Anyway, the steps Avid recommended didn’t fix anything. I contacted their support and haven’t heard back.

The Fix

I updated the BIOS on my motherboard for unrelated reasons. I do this about once a year as part of the maintenance I do on my machine to keep things working. After updating the BIOS, Pro Tools works again. I hope this helps someone, and maybe if it helps enough people, Avid might consider adding it to the troubleshooting guide.

If you found this post through a search, I really hope this helps you solve your problem. Take care, keep calm, and always remember you have the power to fix your computer!

The post Fix Pro Tools Error AAE -9173 appeared first on Joe Roessler.

1) Disease Does Not Cause Social Change

Disease simply is not an agent for social change. Gay and bisexual men continue to have unprotected sex despite the presence of HIV. In Colorado, a third of men who have sex with men have HIV and this number will increase over time despite advances in treatment and prevention. HIV’s terrible legacy, the countless lives lost who we only remember through passing thoughts among loved ones and those who succumb to the disease currently, are clearly not enough to encourage condom use or larger social changes among men who have sex with men.

The 1911 Spanish Flu and Polio did not last too long in the memories of those who went through it. Even though a vaccine cured polio, that information was not enough for people to continue to use vaccines in this century. Today, most people do not get flu vaccines. China recently allowed the sale of exotic animals again, even though SARS-COV1 (SARS) and SARS-COV2 (COVID-19) spread faster through these markets. Nor was SARS enough for China to make sweeping public health reforms, such as wrapping foods in supermarkets or enforcing cleanliness standards.

In the United States, the presence of COVID-19 is not enough for the government to reform our healthcare system. The ideological commitment to a free market in all areas of life trumps anything else in today’s America.

The tangible presence of diseases simply fails to change how we navigate our world. By extension, I don’t see any long-term impacts on art, how it’s produced, or how it’s consumed directly caused by the disease.

2) Tech, not disease, changes lives

Changes in technology that increasingly automated the production and distribution of art happened before COVID-19, and they will not stop regardless of the disease. It might sound strange to think of content delivery as an automated process now, but robots and algorithms power the websites you use to consume media. Art replication is automated, and in music, the performances are largely automated through software.

Technology is the largest driver of social change, as new tools allow us to navigate the world faster, better, or worse. This operates independently of disease. Certain pastimes that were impossible before, such as video games, are now commonplace. Methods of production and consumption of music, and to a greater extent all products, are fueled by technological developments that adapt over time to our needs in a feedback-loop mechanism where the technology changes us, and in turn we change the technology to suit the new society.

The boundaries between man and machine now are porous at best. Academics typically refer to online spaces as if they are some novel idea, like a foreigner speaking about seeing palm trees for the first time. However, online platforms existed since 1990—thirty years ago. These changes are brought on so quickly that, academia being about 100 years in the past, simply fails to see them yet.

Our legacies exist in online spaces, as do the ideas we interact with and enjoy. Our work, through the proliferation of cloud storage, exists almost entirely online now. When we take an idea we read online, and apply it to our life offline, the online idea influences how we act offline. So, even if a computer is off, the ideas remain in our heads and continue to shape the ways in which we construct our reality.

Consequently, we ought to be more concerned with how the technology we use shapes our beliefs and worldviews, and the exchanges in power that occur when we use online platforms. Algorithms that control what you see and when you see it can adversely affect the worldview of individuals, and people allow themselves to develop tunnel vision.

Online platforms are inherently restrictive spaces, for they control exactly what you may or may not do within the platform. There is nothing wrong with restriction, for we face regulations on life every day through laws and social customs. However, when a platform is too restricted, it enforces its own fascistic tendencies beyond that which is reasonable, at the expense of the free exchanges of ideas and overall intellectual growth of its participants.

While I focused on the digital realm, I’d also like to bring up a larger history of colonization that was only possible through the advances in shipping. The Dutch empire, for instance, was only able to sail across the ocean when her ships were strong and powerful enough. The intersection of the civilized European world, and the sophisticated empires American Indians, such as the Aztecs, Utes, and Hopi, eventually led to the utter destruction and castration of the rival empires—destruction partly possible due to ships.

The existence of the English and Spanish languages in the United States is the tangible proof of the success over the European colonial powers over the colonial powers that previously existed in America. It is naïf and childish, while also disrespectful, to assume that the Aztecs and other populations were not interested in power and domination. Where their power fell depends on the tribe and circumstance. Spanish colonists were able to convince tribes the Aztecs took over to fight the Aztecs in exchange for freedom. What the colonists did not specify was that the natives fought for freedom from their own culture and way of life.

Cultural destruction is the largest and most concrete example of social change possible through technology. Entire societies and empires with beautiful beliefs and ways of life foreign and incomprehensible to the Europe and her powers and most contemporary Americans. These beliefs currently exist as decayed leaves blowing in the fall wind, hopefully attached to a soul who may experience them in a future life and keep them alive, albeit in a distorted form.

COVID-19 simply cannot, and will not, have as much change on the world as what I brought up previously. Do not buy into fearmongering.

The post Covid Won’t Matter appeared first on Joe Roessler.

Yes, it’s that easy to get started. No, there aren’t some super-secret barriers I’m hiding. If you can point and click, and can navigate your computer’s filesystem, you already won half the battle.

Don’t feel intimidated if it’s something you always wanted to try. Are you waiting for a sign to start? Well, this is it. Let’s talk about what I mean in some more detail.

1) Have the Right Attitude

Focus on the big ideas, not the details. I guarantee that 99.99% of what people discuss in forums is pointless. Internet strangers are sneaky devils. While most intend well, they also don’t know what they’re doing, they aren’t accountable for wasting your time, and they won’t give your time back to you after they took it.

Internet strangers focus too much on the details. You didn’t get into production to debate compressor circuit types with people who never worked in studios. Audiences don’t care whether the new version of Ableton is better than the old one. You don’t now, and you shouldn’t down the road. Focus on the music. Focus on the magic a beautiful piece of music brings to your life.

Think about these questions instead. What made you want to make music? Are you inspired by an artist? Do you want to see how the magic is made in the studio? Do you have a passion for technology? Do you have a passion for doing something new?

Or are you inspired by life itself? Do you have experiences that you want to channel into the music you made? Do you want to transport people to another place, or do you want to make the present moment better?

What is the role of music in your life?

What specific moments in a piece of music you like make you feel a certain way? Why?

How is music made? Is music a reflection of the artist? Or, does the artist channel music from somewhere else? How do you know? Are there any people who wrote about this?

There aren’t answers to these questions. But, keep these ideas in mind. My answers change, but the questions stay the same. Maybe the question has more truth than the answer. Anyways, let’s go on to tame everyone’s biggest enemy: time.

2) Have some time

One of the biggest myths about being a musician is that you have to be a loser to do it. You don’t have to make sacrifices to produce music. It turns out you can still see your friends, game, or whatever else and still have time to make music. It’s really easy to find time to produce.

I’ll show you just how easy it is to find time to produce. Are you into gaming four hours a night? Start an hour later after you produced for an hour. Your friends won’t mind. Go to the gym three times a week? Great, produce on a night you set aside rest. Have a fling you want to keep around on Fridays and Saturdays? There’s always Sunday afternoon.

You could even produce just once a week for an hour or two. That’s better than nothing. Two hours every Saturday adds up to eight hours in a month—eight hours you didn’t spend before! That’s more time than most people ever spend in their lives making music.

Don’t let yourself get seduced by a Faustian bargain. Yes, people who only make music are losers. If you only spend your life doing one thing, that’s a horrible life to live. The art you make will suffer because it’s not informed by the richness that other disciplines, and life, provide. Musicians without other interests make boring music.

While we’re on the subject of time, give yourself a while to refine your skills. It’s ok to take a while to make your first complete track, even if it’s thirty seconds. Take some time to study music itself with guitar or piano lessons so you know how to write chords. Even if it takes you a year to make your first track, at least that’s one more track than you had before.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Your first tracks will be very bad and that’s ok. Keep in mind that someone with at least ten years of experience probably made the tracks you like, even if they’re young. Some guys start at 10; when they hit 20 they’re incredible musicians.

Don’t worry about it. If you were a writer, you wouldn’t publish your first-grade report on “How I spEnt summr.” Why would you publish the first track you made?

3) Get a decent computer

Chances are your computer is already good enough to run production software. If you have at least four cores, 8 GB of RAM, and 70 GB or so of free space you’re good to go.

Make sure you have a Mac or a Windows machine. Chromebooks and Linux won’t ever make the cut.

You’ll probably need a machine produced within the last three years. Don’t break the bank getting a new computer. You can always upgrade down the road.

4) The Right Software

Software is one of those details that people love to talk about which doesn’t matter as much as people pretend it does. What matters the most is that is you use something you like. People make all kinds of subjective judgements on music software they trick you with. Use whatever you want.

There aren’t many options for production software right now. Ableton, FL Studio, Cubase, Logic Pro, Studio One, Sony Acid Pro, and Pro Tools all will give you the result you need.

What do I use? Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter for you. Go and find something you like to use by downloading trials and following along with the tutorials the developers included for you. That’s the only way you’ll learn.

Go get started!

The post Yes, You Can Produce: Starting from Nothing appeared first on Joe Roessler.

Buy on Bandcamp Here

Sream on Spotify Here

Stream/Buy on Apple Music Here

Stream/Buy on Google Play Here

Linear Notes

I don’t like writing about my own music. Everything I have to say in the track is in the track.

“Fire Inside (feat. Kay-Kay)” was inspired by a trip to NYC last summer. I stayed with my best friends, and we constantly went out to enjoy the finest music and art in the world.

Like the rest of my trips, I spent a great deal of time alone while my friends worked. When I’m alone, I avoid listening to music.

I don’t know where these tracks come from, but I was alone in Central Park towards the evening, and I heard the piano and bass out of the blue, and when I returned, started writing it a few months later.

I incorporated some ambient sounds of NYC in the background, with the voices of some old spirits of house music to create something that I want hot guys to dance to in the club.

The post “Fire Inside (feat. Kay-Kay)” Out Today! appeared first on Joe Roessler.

1) Panic Prophesy

Right now, there’s a feedback loop happening between the media and citizens. The media creates negative, sensationalized reports about the potential negative impacts of COVID-19. Fictional, speculative reporting triggers panic buying and other irrational behavior that causes real damage to supply chains, the environment, and psychology.

Suddenly, mere conjecture becomes a frightening reality. People feel like their panic is validated, and panic more, causing more damage that gives the media more to report on, which in turn causes more panic.

This is primarily a psychological phenomenon, but that doesn’t make it any less tangible or real. We must believe in a system for it to keep working. Doubt leads to more issues.

2) Depraved Journalism

Not all journalists are depraved, but today most of them choose to abandon their ethics in favor appalling reporting that generates clicks instead of facts. How did they do it?

If you follow Reddit, you can be ahead of the news by a few days, because journalists are now using Reddit as a trusted source. Reddit doesn’t take steps to verify content it receives, and it is also clear that journalists aren’t using their training and ethics to stop falsehoods from reaching the country.

The issue is that Reddit users on subreddits related to COVID-19 tend to be doomsday people, spreading the same vitriol and conspiracy theories over and over again until they become verified at the popular, community level and find their way into mainstream news sources.

Journalists need to uphold ethical standards because their reporting informs and directs the general public. Most will not travel to the affected areas and get the truth as it is on the ground, and rely on heavily colored testimony from Reddit users, who may be CCP operatives, anti-CCP operatives, conspiracy theorists, people who are there and honest, or people writing fiction. Most of this content simply isn’t possible to verify at face value.

Journalists simply aren’t doing the extra work to verify content before reporting it, and it causes panic prophesy.

3) Armchair Experts

I didn’t know that most of my friends on social media had medical training until COVID-19. Nor did I notice that most of them have access to the same journals and databases that universities and labs use, despite never going to college or graduating a few years ago. I also didn’t know that so many people understood diseases to the point where they feel like they can make recommendations.

Suddenly, everyone feels like they understand disease because they watched a few YouTube videos about viruses. People fight with each other about recommendations to stay home or go out, how serious the COVID-19 is, or whether China or the WHO lied about the numbers. It’s a waste of time.

Not only is it frivolous to debate without expertise, it is also frightening how little we truly know about the world around us.

The post Panic Prophesy: COVID-19’s Psychological Effects appeared first on Joe Roessler.

I’m so happy to announce that my transcription of the Interlochen Theme, the theme from Howard Hanson’s Symphony n. 2, is now available for free download.

I hope you enjoy playing it!

You can watch me playing it back in high school here:

The post Interlochen theme for Piano appeared first on Joe Roessler.

So how does one learn a lot of music in little time? First, you limit the scope of the work. Second, you work efficiently within the limits you set.

Since these limits are set by context, I won’t provide any catch-all strategies. What I have here instead is a framework that I use time and time again, that you could try out too.

A lot of people give blanket strategies. “Just make charts.” “Work on your sight-reading.” “Listen to more music on your free time.” But generic advice never helps.

What if takes a longer time to make a chart than it does to learn the piece? Or, you already have a chart, wouldn’t it be faster just to correct a few typos?

How useful is sight-reading? Sure, I can read almost anything these days. But I don’t have a large working memory of songs like a lot of my peers do. Sight-reading and learning are different processes, and we need to distinguish when reading is useful and when learning is useful, since reading takes less time and not all gigs require that you learn the songs on a deep level. (If you balk at this, then I’m sincerely jealous of how much free time you have to learn thousands of songs in all twelve keys and their histories and intricacies between different recordings)

And who isn’t constantly listening to music? I’m no exception. That doesn’t mean I know how to learn songs quickly!

Anyways, here are some strategies I use to limit my work and work efficiently. I also have some bonus tips on learning music fast at the end.

1) Setting Limitations

Generally, I try to work as little as possible on any given piece of music. This isn’t out of laziness, but rather volume and time constraints. There is a large amount of music to learn, and almost no time to learn it.

When I set limitations on what I do, ask the following types of questions:

• What is the classification of work?
• Will I be able to read music on the job?
• How many rehearsals will we have?
• How is the music delivered?

Here are how I answer them.

What is the classification of work?

Piano work generally comes in these types:

• Recordings
• Rehearsals for some type of ensemble (orchestra, choir, musicals, chamber ensemble, jazz band, etc.)
• Performances

These are not exclusive categories, and often overlap. But they help in setting limitations on how much time spend with the music.

Recordings

For instance, recordings will require a lot of time practicing, since there is little room for error during the recording process. Unless I’m making rehearsal recordings at home, then I will simply record everything at 50 BPM and speed it up in the DAW later, so that no one project takes more than an hour of time.

Rehearsals

Most of what I do currently is as some type of rehearsal pianist. In these situations, I spend more time learning the vocal parts, since the singers need accurate parts, and singers hate hearing pianists figure things out. I spend little, if any, time learning accompaniment parts in these situations. I usually play pop patterns to make the accompaniment parts better. Consequently, I don’t practice the chart as much as those patterns I constantly revise, and I spend time refining chord voicings over time.

Performances

If we’re performing, the time spent with the music depends on the nature of the performance. If we already had a lot of rehearsals, I don’t have to spend time on the music outside of rehearsal. If I get to read the music, I don’t have to memorize it. If the performance is background music, it’s ultimately not important to learn thoroughly, since the audience isn’t listening (don’t kid yourself). If it is a recital or competition, then that requires a great deal of preparation.

Will I be able to read music on the job?

When music is provided and read during the performance, that saves learning time, since memorization is no longer necessary.

How many rehearsals will we have?

Frequent rehearsals mean that it is not necessary to work on the music, other than a superficial level to get the notes correct. Even that might be a waste of time if the director chooses new keys or interprets rhythms differently than what is notated in some sections.

How is the music delivered?

Music is delivered as a score or audio file.

When the music is a score, it might not be readable at first, so there could be some additional preparation to make it readable for rehearsal, such as indicating page marks, or re-beaming incorrectly beamed rhythms. Otherwise, additional preparation is unnecessary and should be avoided.

Audio files may require some type of transcription. Audio files always take the most amount of time to learn, but in these situations, it’s best to listen to the music on a loop repeatedly until it sinks in. Usually, this music has the most improvisation, so it’s not necessary to learn specific melodies as much as how long each section is.

2) Efficiency vs. Laziness

Some people might think I’m lazy for learning music like this, or “cheating” by recording parts in this way.

The difference between laziness and efficiency is that laziness doesn’t care about quality and speed, while efficiency is ensuring that products are delivered quickly without losing quality. I’d rather spend 6 hours recording six separate pieces for six separate clients, rather than 2 hours working for one client.

Since I work efficiently, I can offer more revisions, since the revisions don’t take any time to complete. This means clients get more value for my rates than what other musicians provide.

Bonus tips:

• When sight reading, read for the chord and pattern, not the specific notes (I’ll write more about this later)
• Music is all “lego music.” That is, you can learn a set of building blocks (“legos”) and use your discretion and refinement to pick the correct musical phrase at the correct time. Yes, this applies to classical music, too.
  • This isn’t to trivialize what we do as musicians. It’s just how I’ve always viewed music. Remember: just because you have all the ideas in front of you, doesn’t mean you’ll know what do with them!
• Most charts are great time savers, but they don’t have a lot of useful accompaniment parts. Play something that sounds better than the chart. Left hand octave doubling, avoid doubling the melody with the vocalists (if requested), using 10^ths in the left-hand, and using your own voicings are ways to get you started making something sound better.
• When reading a Piano-Vocal sheet with chords, just ignore the piano part.
• In piano music, chords are outlined in the left-hand part in octaves, so you can usually tell what chord you’re playing just by reading the left hand and the key
• There’s a big difference between reading on your own and reading in front of people. Have some friends over, have some wine, open a music book, and read it in front of them to get used to the pressure.
• Most musicians in a certain specialization work with the same repertoire over and over again, so learning the canon in each specialty is useful
• Work on your abilities to focus and sustain attention over long periods of time without spending too much mental energy.
• If the band uses drugs in rehearsals, make sure everyone is at the same high. Otherwise, members will not be able to properly connect at the same wavelength. This is hard to do. For this reason, it is usually best to avoid drug abuse at rehearsals.

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