Meeting the Great Pete Fountain 

At the age of 10, I began learning the clarinet with a private instructor. I was unaware at the time that clarinetist Pete Fountain was a huge success on the Lawrence Welk Show. My parents knew that Pete Fountain was the clarinetist to listen to, so they bought me a record with Pete playing with a Dixieland band. I did not understand the music, but after listening to it over and over I began moving the phonograph needle to play only the clarinet solos. 20 years later, I had collected just about every Pete…

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What Did I Accomplish? 

While spending a lot of time at home lately, I have been thinking about people who have endured very difficult situations or achieved success through hard work. in particular, three books of human courage come to mind. The first; Endurance, tells of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men surviving a journey home in 1915 after their ship is trapped and crushed by ice in the Antarctic. The second; The Long Walk, tells of a Polish lieutenant who escaped with six fellow prisoners in 1941 from a Soviet labor camp in…

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Playing Your Instrument Should Be Second Nature 

How do you make something second nature? Many things are so "second nature" that you forget that you even have done them. Do you remember every detail about getting up this morning, putting on your clothes, eating breakfast, or brushing your teeth? I don't think so. You were probably on autopilot and went through the motions. But, imagine of you suddenly appeared on earth and had never done those things. What if you had never eaten a breakfast before? Someone would need to explain, "now, this is a spoon…

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Create the Habit of Practicing 

March 19, 2020: I don't want you to think that you have to practice 6 hours a day mentioned in my previous blog. But, you do need to come up with a good length of time to devote to daily practice. For an early beginner, that might be 15 minutes a day. After a few months, that should be lengthened to 30 minutes a day, every day. If you skip a day, you are actually backtracking. You've probably heard the phrase, "Drop, and give me 20." Back in my basic training days, that referred to the drill sergeant…

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To Sound Good, Practice! 

March 18, 2020: I am beginning a blog to provide students with advice that I have on practicing and playing your instrument. During this time of social distancing, many of you are in circumstances where your time is taken up with jobs and other studies. For those students, this time in your lives might not afford you a lot of practice time. But, for those students with extra free time, this is a time for you to put in some serious practicing. During one summer when I was about 21 years old, I began the idea…

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