Posts Tagged teaching

Buttwinick Musical Services Update ~ Nov 2011

Mar 12

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Music and Life | No Comments


Greetings!

As 2011 comes to an end, activity is activated and production is purposeful!

I hope all is well with you, and here is an update from my zones of creation:

Composing

 

I’ve finished mixing some live music with Richard Robinson and have released four tunes! I should have the next project completed in a month or so. We completed a funk ballad, swing tune, rock fusion piece, Latin piece and a few others. I’m very excited about this! The music is posted at my music, and there is more of my music here as well. :-)

 

 

Teaching

My student’s are winning like crazy. (Sometimes ya have to brag…) My personalized curriculum continues to expand, and every lesson is really fun. One student is recording some guitar & vocal tracks, another is learning classical bass, a piano student went from focusing on reading to grooving and playing blues while an alto sax is being assaulted by another! You can see a list of current students here, success stories here, and more about what I do here.

Also, anyone you know who is bogged with their current musical studies or wants to start some enhancement yet doesn’t know what, should click here. I’m a good trouble shooter/consultant and this page will tell you more about it.

And now is a good time to check out my Holiday Gift Packages! Music lessons make great gifts! You can get them for someone else, or have someone else get them for you!

 

Musicians’ How-To Series

Book publishing continues to expand. We recently developed a new customer who purchased all 15 titles and is getting ready for his band consultations.

And what is this about? Read on…

“There is more to being a musician than fingering notes on an instrument. There are the subtleties of group interaction, musicianship, repertoire, the business side (if you are a professional), and many additional subjects.

The Musicians’ How-To Series consists of short- to medium-length e-books about a variety of music-related topics. This series provides musicians and singers with supplemental information that for the most part isn’t taught in schools and might or might not be learned on one’s own or from a private instructor. Much of this information has never before been in print.They are designed to throw in your bag or instrument case, take to your gig, rehearsal or jam, and PUT TO USE!”

 

That’s all folks!

Well, there’s always more: gigging, new books, blogs, a regular rock-band-teaching gig I have, copywork, etc. But the above are the main points I wanted to tell you about.

So I did.

And thank you for reading this!

Let me know if there is anything I can help you with. OK?

Marty B.

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Marty Buttwinick
(818) 242-7551
http://buttwinickmusic.com
http://musicianshowtoseries.com

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Guitar and Bass: Which Way is Up?

Dec 28

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | 3 Comments

Learning what “up or down the neck” means is one of the funniest things about learning beginning bass and guitar. This has perplexed and embarrassed more adult students then almost any other point! (Almost…)

Musically, the words “up” and “down” most often refer to pitch. “Pitch” is the highness or lowness of a note determined by how fast the string is vibrating. (More about pitch at the glossary at my website.)

An open guitar or bass string vibrates at a certain speed. When you press the string down to a fret, it shortens the string thereby making the string vibrate faster and the pitch higher. When you play notes going from the head of the instrument towards the sound hole, or pickups, the pitch’s are getting higher and is called going “up” the neck. Using a vertical guitar as an example, going up the neck is going down in gravity, and going down the neck is going up in gravity! So down is up and up is down!

It can take a while to get used to this when learning to play. Often enough I’ll say “move your finger down one fret” and the student moves it according to gravity instead of pitch, laughs then corrects the motion. This becomes rather humorous after the 20th or 30th time it happens. Some people get used to this after a few weeks, though most actually take a few months to stabilize this concept.

After all, we’ve been dealing with gravity longer than dealing with vibrating strings!

Marty B.

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Buttwinick Musical Services Update

Apr 8

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Music and Life | No Comments

 

Hello!

I hope this post finds you in a magnificent frame of mind! (If it doesn’t, contact me and let’s fix that!)

Here is a short update of happenings in my areas. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you or someone you know. OK?


Teaching

Teaching moves a long nicely. Each student’s lesson is a little different, very different actually. Though the subject matter and skills are the same, the individual focus and goals are as varied as each individual. You can click on my Student Bulletin Board and see what my current roster is doing, or my Student Comments for more specifics. (I have room for a few more students if you know of someone who should come study with me.)

I’ve also started an online “Glossary of Musical Terms“. It contains the basic terms anyone who plays or studies should know. I’ve worked on these definitions for years and they seem to be excellent entry-level definitions. (If you are an old-hat in music you most likely do not need these. I just started the project and it should take about two or three months to complete. Check it out and let me know what you think! Leave me a comment as well. OK?


Upcoming Lecture Series

I’m designing a series of free, one-hour lectures on various aspects of gigging, as well as the in’s and out’s of reading “sheet music”. (It’s amazing how many people never fully got what all those squiggly lines on music paper mean!) They are designed for “The beginner or the Confused!”. It should be great fun and a free, useful service at the same time. You’ll hear more about this soon.


Gigs

I’m mainly concentrating on writing and teaching, but am gigging a bit. Some gigs with the Marvelous “Marc Bosserman Trio“. We are available for bookings, so please check out the link to see what we do! Also, I’ve recently started playing with Steel Drum man, Nate Middleton. It’s a cool trio with steel drums, guitar, bass and drum tracks. If you don’t know what steel drums are, clink on this link and check them out. They are very cool! (Also called “pans.”) (No musicals so far this year.)


Publishing

The “Musicians’ How-To Series” website is almost open for business. The site has fifteen down-loadable booklets of my published works about various technical aspects of the music-playing business. (That’s a word I coined for “Guitar Player” magazine a few handfuls of years ago.) I’ll let you know when the site is released. (Lot’s of helpful information there!) I’m also trucking ahead with my various notation books and continue to pilot them on my students. So far so good. They should complete and on the market by summer.


Chart Writing

I also continue doing “copywork” for my regular clients. Yesterday I transcribed a cool piano piece for a new client. The piece is “Capture the Moment” by David London. Gotta love it. (Look in my glossary if you don’t know what “transcribing” is. :-) One of my regular clients is the fabulous Filipina Jazz Vocalist, Charmaine Clamor. Fun gal to work with. (I did all the charts for the albums you hear at her site.)

That’s all for now!

Thanks for reading this, and drop me a line anytime…

Marty B.

==================>
Marty Buttwinick
(818)242-7551

http://buttwinickmusic.com

 

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Glossary of Musical Terms

Mar 26

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | No Comments

Check out my new Glossary of Musical Terms!

It is an expanding list of musical and music-business related terms. It has brief, yet concise definitions of important words. Not everything will be here as we already have dictionaries for those terms.

There are often many definitions for a word and I will mainly list a musically-oriented, simple definition or two for each one. Sometimes simple is good! (As time goes on I will be adding more involved and more in-depth definitions that you can access by clicking on words that are hyper-linked.)

The main focus is musical terms that are commonly mis-understood, or should be known by anyone playing or studying music.

I just started this project in March or 2010 and it will be expanding over the next few months. If there is anything you need a definition for let me know.

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The Fascinating Thing About Teaching

Aug 14

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Music Lessons | No Comments

The most fascinating thing about teaching, is how different everyone is. Different levels of alertness, interest, ability and aesthetic levels.

There are two main categories of teaching that I apply: pure enhancement and correction.

 

Pure Enhancement

I guess you can call this straight-ahead teaching. I know what the student want’s to do and I show him the skills needed to accomplish that.

 

Correction

Though there are various levels of correction possible, this mainly entails fixing up any bad habits or incomplete knowledge or skills a person could have. For example: I had a guitar student once who had developed some really bad picking technique and wanted to fix it. Another student didn’t understand what she was playing on the piano and kept on getting confused in the middle of songs. I just needed to fill in her theory holes.

I could go on and on.

In following through with this post topic, people respond in all different ways. Some are resistive, some gladly accept whatever I give them to do, while others learn so fast they end up teaching me something!

And people have asked me If I ever get bored teaching? I don’t think so.

Student’s have cried when they didn’t like some music they wrote, or rejoiced from playing something perfectly.

I could on and on, but it’s time for dinner.

What kind of student have you been?

Marty B.
Personalized Music Lessons

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You can have more certainty in the field of music

Jul 30

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | 1 Comment

Whatever your involvement with music is, the possibility exits that achieving your full potential may be blocked or diminished by any one of seven specific areas. I know what these areas are, how they get bugged and how to fix them.

I am offering an expanded musical service: I am a troubleshooter. I start with a consultation. In this meeting we discover the exact points that are holding you back. From there, I either handle them on the spot or create a program for you to complete.

I have over 25,000 hours in the teacher chair, am a thirty-five year veteran professional, gigging musician, a teacher for twenty-eight years, a published author and a very experienced bandleader.

My specialty is helping YOU get all the pieces of the puzzle aligned.

Want to talk about it? Need more info? Want to refer a friend?

Call me: (818) 242-7551

Consultations and lessons in person or by phone. (I’ve taught and consulted by phone to students across the US.)

I look forward to hearing from you, and being of help to you and your career.

Marty

Buttwinick Teaching Studio
Musician – MySpace
Personal Site

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