In Which Ryan Is Doing Laundry
June 2024 | 5:6
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What's Been Happening
I'm writing this month's update as I wait for laundry from drum corps in the dryer so I can repack and fly to the UK tonight, which gives you a fairly accurate picture of my month. Of random interest, I had to order a new staff paper notebook because I finally filled my old one that I'd been using as a sketch space for commissions. It had evolved into the role and wasn't the exclusive place I would do sketching, but especially since I'm not someone that keeps a journal this was an interesting retrospective to check out. Some specific highlights:
I don't have an exact start date, but it goes back to at least 2010, so probably almost 15 years worth of writing and pretty much my entire career post-grad school.
I actually forgot, but this was also where I'd create exercises and notes for when I was more actively teaching lessons so there's some pretty interesting stuff in there that I may re-organize and share.
Over time, I've been writing less and less actual musical notation as part of my sketching process which is interesting to me and something I may try adjusting just to see what happens.
Of the idioms I'm writing for, marching band and drum corps seem to still need the most actual notation or at least the most sketching before I go to the computer.
Total, the sketching ended up being 114 pages of marching-related notes, 40 pages of miscellaneous commissions, 22 pages of educational notes, and 8 pages of things specifically for the Medium Ensemble.
I don't necessarily have conclusions drawn from any of this, but it's been neat to look back and remember so many cool projects. It also gave me an excuse to order a new notebook, which I just unwrapped today and I can't wait to start page 1.
May your masks smell pleasant and your packages arrive without incident,
Ryan
Chart O' The Month
In what is at risk of becoming an annual tradition, rather than a specific new chart I want to share some of my favorite pieces I either learned about or got to finally dig into this year as part of my arranging duties for various marching groups. The above recording is actually from way back in 2018 and was described in a previous newsletter, but it's still fun and worth a share.
Huntertones - Change
Riverside - Dance with the Shadows
Woodkid - Reactor
Danny Elfman - Alice's Theme
Prokofiev - Scythian Suite
Arthur Simonini - La Jeune Fille en Feu
Look, Nature!
This is a Cypripedium acaule; we saw some similar flowers on a hike before we started all our travels, and they're currently in blooming season here in the Midwest if you check local wetlands. Look at me knowing things (maybe).
Education Notes
Given my various roles across different educational institutions, I go through a looooot of training nowadays on things like mental health and student safety. It's fundamentally great that this is becoming the norm, even though it can be draining to go through so many duplicated courses on uncomfortable subjects. There is one specific thing that I think all of these miss in both their description and their application though; preparation.
First, from the standpoint of coping with anxiety. For normal rational anxiety, being as prepared as possible and truly being honest with yourself about your level of preparation is an incredibly effective way of addressing it, and one that is hardly ever mentioned in training sessions. I can't even begin to guess how many conversations with students about anxiety have come down to calmly walking them through if they are/were prepared or not for a situation, and how to self-monitor that in the future.
Second and related, acknowledging that there are simply some situations you can't be prepared for; you just have to experience them and evolve once you have. I thankfully have never experienced war. If I was in the military, they would put me through as much training and simulation as they can to prepare me, but there's still an acknowledgement that until you go into battle you are hoping you're ready but you don't know. That's an extreme example, but virtually any stressful situation is the same to a degree.
There's a certain irony that the existence of these courses acknowledges both the need for preparation (in my roles I need to be prepared to deal with these situations) and the occasional futility of the preparation in the face of situational stress (dictating mandatory responses to certain situations so my bosses aren't responsible if I react in a way other than what is deemed appropriate). Regardless, for me it comes down to this:
Be honest with yourself about how much preparation you need and how much you have done, and then learn to accept that it sometimes will still not be enough until you learn from a new situation.