Originally Posted by Mike Halloran
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Oh man, you had one of the good teachers!<...>
Indeed! And I thank him to this day.

It's one thing to teach somebody which buttons to press, how to count rhythms in notation, intonation, and all the other fundamentals, but another to turn that into music that is expressive.

In the early days of the Internet, I tracked him down, gave him a phone call, and thanked him for teaching me the skills to become a good musician. We had a nice long chat, and he invited me to come stay with him if I was ever in his area.

Now I know how to listen for things like advancing or delaying beat 2 and 4 in various pop music forms, and how much to do it per song. (Swing feel included.) Various ways to phrase melodic lines. When to play in tune and when to play slightly out of tune for expressive purposes. Vary my articulation from legato to staccato for each note, depending on its relationship with its neighbors and the entire phrase. And so much, much, more.

I not only use what he taught me, but since it opened my ears, I constantly expand by noticing and learning so much more when listening to and playing music.

I now play sax, flute, wind synthesizer, guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard synthesizer, plus vocals in various levels of competency and incompetency. Learning to sing was the hardest of all to learn.

This enabled me to write aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box, and it supplements my main career as a professional musician. Understanding rhythm for different types of music allows me to make better styles that are more fun to play melodies to.

There is a lot to be said about learning from YouTube and other Internet resources, but there is something that a good teacher can give you that you cannot get any other way. But it has to be a good teacher, like my first one.

Thank you, Robert C. Monroe, for opening my ears.


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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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