The Devil In The Details

**WARNING**

This one has a lot of music jargon in it!  You might not want to read unless you can spell a Neopolitan 6th chord in F Major!

As has been stated before.... several times.... I'm pretty good at berating myself for my shortcoming.  Rest assured, I'm not about to go there.  But it did occur to me today that while I've been carrying the cross of trying to get my "great reform" implemented since last year (and torturing myself for missing deadlines, etc)  I haven't really sat down and analyzed what my biggest obstacle is.  I always thought it was laziness and procrastination - mostly because I have a way of feeling guilty when I fail to get in work after hours, on the weekend or during vacations.  It just occurred to me how much that would sound like insanity in any other profession besides teaching.  I also had a flashback to something my college saxophone mentor once said to me: "Your problem isn't laziness.  You get easily distracted."

Well, here I am at the end of semester finals - and I'm proud to report that I can't really complain about how I spent the extra hours I was blessed with this week.  Given that I only gave out one written final, I threw myself at the task of preparing all of the materials that I've been promising to amass for the great reform.  This mostly consists of individualized instrument packets that (will) contain:

• A chart of the circle of fifths and transpositions for instruments in Eb, Bb and F
• A fingering chart
• Written out scales and exercises in all major and minor keys
• Chorale warm-ups
• Corresponding percussion etudes that coincide with the wind player's scale exercises
• Drum rudiments and rhythm exercises for percussionists
• Full-group rhythmic drills
• Rhythm subdivision worksheets
• Repertoire inventory sheets - used by each student to identify the important characteristics of each piece of music we read and perform.
• .... and whatever sickness I decide to come up with.

 I spent two full days designing the scale sheets.  The material for each key takes up two pages - basic scale construction, articulation drills, related modes (yeah.... those modes) diatonic chords, scales in thirds, intervals from the tonic...  I got kind of meticulous.  Then I started making versions written in different octaves to accommodate the playing ranges of different instruments.... I took a break from that by designing scale sheets for percussionists with a self-designed keyboard chart to help them find the notes on the mallet instruments.

Probably any music teacher who reads this will tell me that there are thousands of materials out there to choose from - a lot of them for free on the internet.  What I'm effectively doing is kind of beyond reinventing the wheel.  But do you know how it is when you want your teaching materials to look and flow the way you want it to?   It's for that reason that I spent half of last Saturday making little jpegs of individual notes - every pitch chromatically from about four ledger lines below to four above in treble and bass clef staves (and some sick part of my mind wanted to make a set in alto clef too.... just for the violas)

So, I think you can see what my problem really is.  I'm not lazy.  And if I procrastinate, I think it's because I know that once I get started, I get crazy obsessed with details, and what was supposed to be a short 40-minute project will turn into an ongoing endeavor that involves six different kinds of software and hundreds if not thousands of individual files.

It's almost 5 p.m. now... I have to pack up and leave my office.  I have to go pick up my son from daycare.  I promise on Rameau's grave that I will not work on anything while we're at home together...  but I can assure you that my one written final still sits in a stack, ungraded - while I'm itching to get back to finishing off the rest of the scale sheets.

Distracted, not lazy.... distracted.