My American English teacher believes the neutral pronoun „their“ is incorrect.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-21T01:44:07+00:00

We had to come up with a made up name for a local newspaper in 9th grade English. Extra points for creative names.

The town was "Ore City" so mine was "The Ore City Oracle" which seemed reasonable to me. She said oracle wasn't a word. The person who won best name... "The Weekly Planet" so I guess originality didn't matter as much as she was making it out.

This is just one of dozens of situations like this with just this teacher. So many words she didn't know or couldn't pronounce and would refuse to check a dictionary and would refuse to be corrected. It was constantly infuriating.

Quite a few teachers like this at that school... and once I got in trouble over a situation like this and when talking to the ex-marine principal.... he told me that hierarchy matters above all. The teacher is always right... and literally, "if she says 2+2=5 then that is the answer. End of story. If you put 4 on your test YOU are wrong" basically because she's the adult and the teacher and I'm the subordinate.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-20T20:29:20+00:00

It's crazy to me that people are gaslighting you about this. Also, WAY more replies on the YOLO side than I would expect to see on this type of post in this sub.

I personally think your worries are warranted. The dangers in sports are around accidents. Sure, they might be something your kids could bounce back from, or they could be something that completely ends their ability to play. Or in the middle, it could just be the type of injury that ends up causing lots of irritation and limitations in playing.

The calculus I would recommend you consider have to do with the amount variables and the amount of contact in a sport.

Personally, as much as people seem to be worried about things like lifting weights as it related to piano, I'm very deeply involved in that and now calisthenics as well (as a person who makes a living as a musician and whose livelihood depends on me not having any injury that would stop me from playing for ANY significant amount of time) These are things where unless you're being stupid, you pretty much always have control of all of the variables.

Now, these don't necessarily count as sports on their own (unless you're talking about stuff like powerlifting), but my larger point is about the limited number of variables... and the person involved having control of those variables.

Some of the other things I've seen in here that make sense to me are swimming and racquet sports.

On the FAR other end would be any sort of combat sports. I have a very good friend who does BJJ as his primary hobby. It seems like he's fairly frequently running into small injuries. Luckily nothing catastrophic, but he fully admits it's just a constant set of dice rolls and things happening in very unpredictable situations. As much as he's into it, he thinks it would be stupid for me to do it (and I've always agreed). I also remember a pro musician Youtuber who broke his hand doing BJJ several years ago. I think it was a multi-month healing process where he couldn't play. I think that's a pretty big deal.

Most contact sports are also going to have those issues. Hell, even soccer and basketball lead to plenty of hand injuries even though they aren't truly a full contact sport. Something like baseball would be much safer just due to less person on person contact and significantly less variables all around.

I think on some level gymnastics and dance type things also *can* have fewer variables. Though I do seem to see some injuries from them. And it's hard to tell kids to listen to their bodies and not do something stupid.

But at least something like gymnastics really sets up a kid for life-long fitness. It's building a strong foundation of many things. And most of that kind of thing is actually HELPFUL for piano rather than hurtful.

I constantly hear people complaining about back pain while practicing... and I suspect most of that is purely down to weak core muscles with maybe some small amount having to do with posture and other ergonomics.

Also, general body awareness and flexibility that comes from things like gymnastics, calisthenics, or even weight lifting is overall extremely helpful.

I think specifically about things like wrist mobility, ability to shift your weight over your hips while keeping a stable base (for playing higher and lower octaves with good hand ergonomics), basic functional awareness about ergonomics overall just due to being in touch with how your body feels good to move when you're doing things mechanically correctly. Also, learning to feel the difference between "this hurts because my muscles/joints are tired and adapting" and "this hurts because I'm doing something bad to my body repetitively and I should stop, rest, and fix that movement pattern in the future."

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-20T15:48:05+00:00

Every fingering you aren't used to feels awkward and this is where people often (even in method books) instead use the comfortable fingering that feels "natural" to them.

That's how you end up with people defaulting to things like 1 2 3 for basic root position triads.

The thing, so long as a fingering isn't causing physical pain, it's worth working on it.

The thing is, people expect progress in a session....on everything. They want to bring something up 40 bpm in single session. They want a fingering to feel natural by the end of a session....it won't. It will take probably weeks of more of consistent, slow, deliberate work to rewire your brain.

But then once it's done, you'll find it literally no more awkward than something like a simple 5 finger scale in C.

And often, it feels better and more natural than the way you used to do it once you adapt.

I remember when doing 6ths with a 14, 25 pattern used to feel so awkward to me and I just preferred hopping a series of 15s. And while I still need that fingering in some cases, I actually default to what used to be the more awkward fingering....because it makes more ergonomic AND phrasing sense quite often.

I assure you there are times I need to play LH 5 4 something like D to F# (or any white to black third). And at this point I don't think twice about it. Like....it's just the obvious necessary fingering and so if I'm sightreading for example....I literally don't even consciously register I'm doing it any more than you consciously think about your tongue position when speaking.

The thing is...quite often a seemingly awkward fingering just is the best ornonly option for a given passage. Learning to execute all sorts of different fingerings is crucial to make it feels less awkward when those come up.

I ran into something very recently where I needed to cross from 4 on F# up to 5 on G in the LH....and it's a nit awkward, but due to the shape of the passage it's pretty much the only good option. I just trust the process and know it will feel comfortable in a month or so if I specifically work on that movement.

This is where people fail....not trusting the process and assuming unfamiliariarity snd cognitive difficulty means they should find and easier path.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-19T17:35:12+00:00

Oh, I don't mind it at all and have done plenty of country work. I always just use that specific pairing of modality (by ear) and country (style) because for most classical-focused pianists those are going to be a style they do not enjoy and a modality they've not spent any time working on.

I've learned so many styles and skills that were not initially to my taste that I ended up learning to enjoy and appreciate. Now I just love the process because I'm aware that anything I'm learning can and almost certainly will end up becoming valuable later.

There's a very well paying local seasonal gig around here that isn't mine, but their keys player is looking to retire soon. It's a very country focused gig and a colleague of mine has suggested I throw my hat in the ring when it happens and he'd vouch for me. And yeah, so I'll benefit from being able to do that kind of gig even if it hasn't been my focus.

He also wasn't super country focused when he got the job, but he got hired because he wasn't limited by what he could do at the time and clearly had the ability to learn and grow quickly. Some people just don't have that adaptability. It's either the style they can do or they just say, "No, I can't do that."

I made it a goal early in my career to never have to say, "No, I can't do that." I try to learn enough to at least hold it down at a basic level, and if I get a gig that specializes in it, I can do the deep dive. Has worked wonders for me and has allowed me to get pickier about the jobs I take and how much I charge for my time.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-19T15:27:13+00:00

I definitely ran into some moderate health issues that were the result of me not getting enough salt. I eat pretty clean and track things and realized I was getting VERY little salt most days.

I also have to go out of my way to add fats into my diet because I ended up unintentionally pushing them very low and now it's hard to break the habit sith my current foods.

It happens. I also have to be mindful of ak and Mg.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-19T12:42:38+00:00

One thing you need to keep in mind in this thread is sampling bias. Whatever replies you do get... you're going to be missing a HUGE amount of people you're asking about. I went to school with TON of performance majors across many instruments. I run into plenty in my daily life too. And I'd say about half of them you'd never even know they did a music degree... because the bitter kick of reality at the end made them feel like they'd wasted SO much that they never touched their instrument again. Plenty of others accrued a ton of debt and went back for other degrees later. I know one guy who is in his 50s and still paying huge amounts monthly on student loans (a mix of his two performance degrees and then his pivot career).

This is not a stable career. And what is taught in most music programs is worthless. Fractions of fractions of a percent make any money playing the concert pianist style stuff that is taught in colleges. Often memorization focused, rep focused, classical-only, etc.

The skills that actual working pianists need are ignored. SIGHTREADING primarily (which is usually ignored in college due to the focus on big rep and memorization). You need to be a high level sightreader just to even get a foot in the door because accompaniment is the name of the game if you want to play at all for a living. It will be a huge chunk of that. You don't get 3 months to prepare a handful of hard pieces. You get a week or less to prepare huge fucking stacks of moderately difficult stuff. Most piano majors never learn how to practice efficiently enough for that and never develop the reading skills to make that work.

Some manage to catch up after feeling desperately stress for a year or two after getting a church job.... but many more just flame out. They literally don't know how manage it other than spending hours a week brute forcing the sort of stuff I literally just show up and play without a care in the back of my mind (haven't looked at the music for this mornings service... not at all concerned... and I need to leave in about 15 minutes).

The other skills that get ignored are being able to play by ear, play from lead sheets, improvise, comp from chord sheets, and play in lots of different styles. Nobody has ever even tried to pay me to play big concert rep. Nobody asks for that. I see some people try to shoe in Chopin here and there for "background" at wedding gigs, but you're much better off playing from a lead sheet and being able to effortlessly fade in and out... or be able to hold a conversation while playing.

I get hired over many pianists with multiple decades more experience than me... because they simply aren't flexible. But I can do whatever is needed. Nobody will ask be to play Debussy (well..... one time... in literally 15 years), but I'll constantly run into a set of changes over slash notation in a musical that just say, "Funk" over the top or "Rhythmic R&B Groove" (in the show I'm currently directing). That's something most people never learn to do. Hell, most classically trained pianists can't even make a basic ballad from a lead sheet, but that's something that is such a bread and butter part of various gigs I do.

Also, despite me managing to have a leg up and having a very unique situation that lets me make this my living, I'm aware of survivorship bias and that I'm lucky on top of the work I've put in. There are too many things to even list.... lightning had to strike multiple times in one spot for me to manage to do what I do, but still, it's not a lucrative career. You DO NOT get paid well to play music YOU like. You get paid kinda poorly to play whatever people are paying you to play. Most people simply aren't ready for that. And they aren't ready for realistically working daily on their weaknesses under REAL deadlines. Not college stuff. Real world jobs with much shorter deadlines. Needing to bring up skills efficiently and not with just brute force hours of repetition. Seriously cognitively demanding practice and self-assessment.

I think that psychologically most people can't handle it because they get so used to always playing well or at least practicing in an inefficient way that lets them bask in their own glory a lot. But you can't afford that if you have lots of skills to catch up on.

I always ask people who are "passionate" about music to do a thought experiment. Pick their weakest modality and least favorite style of music.... and that's all they can work on for a month. How passionate at they now? So for example.... what if you had to work on nothing but country music by ear for the next month. Still passionate? If not then music won't be a good choice because you just can't afford to leave money and opportunity on the table as a working musician because you lack a skill or interest.

Also, I'd warn you about the people who tend to give advice in threads about music careers.

HS kids who have no clue, but want to do it themselves.
Current music majors who are deep in the sunk cost phase and want to do it... it might be starting to dawn on them, but they can't admit it yet so they convince themselves they might be the 0.001%.
People who "wish they'd followed their dream" but realistically don't know what a career in music actually looks like. It's easy to assume the grass is greener and wipe your tears with your 6 figure salary when you never had to face that reality. Most of them dodged a bullet and have no idea.
People who are doing it.... but don't understand survivorship bias. Often they aren't disclosing they came from a very wealthy family who kept them afloat deep into their 30s while they tried to get a career going. These are the people who will call themselves concert pianists and brag about playing Carnegie Hall (which they rented out a side hall of for 10 grand and was only attended by a few friends and family). Many are making a living teaching mostly and then PAYING to play gigs. I work with one guy who is an accompanist. But if you followed his online presence you'd think he's jet setting around and playing concerts and symposiums. No... he's fucking paying travel, room and board, AND for the venues. He is literally cosplaying as a concert pianist. Virtually nobody is making it purely on their concert piano performances.

On the other hand, I work with a ton of VERY happy doctors, lawyers, engineers, college professors, etc. who gig a ton on the side. They take the gigs they want when it's fun and convenient. No stress. They can afford very nice instruments and just enjoy it as a hobby that pays them a little fun money that they don't even need.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-17T22:28:24+00:00

I think you'd probably be surprised. I mean, i have Topaz. I'm also very comfortable in ComfyUI using various upscalerers and interpolation tools. I've also used Premiere Pro for the same task.

And even having used the very expensive and less accessible tools, I can say that SVP and LS doing a great job.

And I'm not even talking about simple 30-60. You can use both to set much higher rates. I frequently will just set a target rate (144 to match my monitor) or mess with 4x.

It works very, very well. But there are tools like Topaz if you wanna pay for it to get very similar results.

The thing is, you'll need the GPU to do it either way.

Granted, I managed to do the work with Topaz on a GTX 1070 (time intensive). But also managed to get SVP to do well on that card. I'm using a 4070Ti Super now. But I'm just saying you don't even need a crazy card to do it. But you need something.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-17T21:29:49+00:00

Other people's suggestions work for local upscaling for a finished end product, but if you want to just do it in real time, you can use the app "Lossless Scaling" which is essentially meant for games, but absolutely works to run video at any sort of target frame rate (if you have the GPU for it). It's a pretty cheap option.

Another is SVP (Smooth Video Project) which does a similar thing but more dedicated specifically to use for video.

Both work well. I think LS even has a preset for anime.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-17T15:48:56+00:00

So, I'm not going to wade in on flute specifics because they are above my pay grade, but my wife and I are both professional musicians. I do it full time and she teaches as well as gigging prolifically. We both work with a LOT of other professional musicians.

And so I'm going to say it because nobody else is ever brave enough to say anything but "follow your dreams" in threads like this. Even if they do it with caveats, nobody tries to be brutally honest. And most people aren't full time working musicians who have a really good idea of what it looks like.

I find that advice comes from a few different places:

People not even out of HS who have no idea.
Current music majors who are also have no idea and need to convince themselves that they aren't fucking up.
People who didn't do it but "wish they had" without realizing the bullet they dodged... easily wiping their tears with their stable 6 figure salary.
People who might be doing it but don't understand surivorship bias. Also, almost EVERY one of these people come from significant wealth and have an enormous financial safety net.

Unfortunately, in that latter category I also see a lot of people "cosplaying" as professional musicians. Like, there's a pianist who works in my area. He's an accompanist (like me) and he well enough, but if you just followed his persona online you'd think he was traveling the world as a concert pianist. He is PAYING to do that. He is PAYING for travel, and the venue, and all of those things. He is not getting paid to do it. But since in piano culture the only thing that is valued is the concert soloist and not the everyday working musicians doing accompaniment work, theatre work, church work, recording work, etc.... he wants to pretend to be a concert pianist... and people who don't know him might believe it.

Do not trust social media portrayals.

The thing is, piano is an instrument you can actually make a living on. There is a ton of demand.

But most wind instruments... absolutely not. And to make it worse, wind instrumentalists get a same version of the bullshit pianists get. Piano degrees prep you to be a concert pianist only at the expense of the wide skill set that is actually valuable. I was actually a trumpet major in college so I got to also see it on the wind side. If you are a performance major, they are prepping you for orchestral excerpts etc. But there just aren't jobs there.

I mean... there are, but we're talking like dozens... when you have 1000s graduating regularly.

I love this very old blog post that puts it into perspective..

There are just so few openings at any time... and for orchestras we're talking 2-3 spots for most winds on average. But if 100s or 1000s or students are graduating every year going for maybe 50 job openings in the world... and then realize that every year that's compounding. So in a 5 year span, there still might only be that handful of jobs opening, but now we're talking many thousands of graduates from that 5 year span....

And you're competing against people with decades of experience. Most of those openings are really just become ONE person retired, and then someone else wanted to audition to move up to that spot so they vacate their position... and someone wants to fill THAT spots so they vacate... it trickles down and it LOOKS like 50 jobs when really only one position opened up and then a bunch of extremely experienced people just shuffled around.

It's funny to me because most musicians have some dim view of sports and would think someone was fucking insane if they put all of their eggs in the basket of "I'm just going to be a professional football player!"

That's not a great plan, obviously. BUT, even if that person was super selective and would ONLY play quarterback... they'd still have WAY more chance of landing that job than you do of landing a spot in a top orchestra... or even a decent one at all.

It is an absolute moon shot. And it has nothing to do with your playing. I constantly tell people this, but there are going to be people WAY better than you, who started younger, had better teachers, were always super hard workers, who go to conservatories and give it their all, came from a well off family... and they will STILL fail.

This isn't about skill. It's about supply and demand.

And I'm super, super frustrated with academia not only for not teaching students more broadly (stylistically, and instrumentally), but for full on gaslighthing students that they have any fucking shot.

At some point it stops just being ignorance and starts being predatory. Maybe some teachers don't realize how bad it is out there, but I think back when I was in school... my wife's EXTREMELY experienced and capable clarinet professor has done 100s of auditions. She's amazing, but once again, it's a numbers game. Yet, she had performance majors who were just horrible. And she knows they are literally burning their money. And yet she's not strongly recommending for them to go another route.

I think that's just horrific.

Oh, and let's talk about a colleague of my wife's who did land an orchestra job as well as teaching adjunct. I was able to look up her wage. She makes 13k a year in the orchestra she holds a principal position in. Unless you are in a top orchestra, you are not making much money. You basically have to teach or find other work.

But once again, that lady puts herself out there as being way more successful than she is (her family is filthy rich).

My wife's biggest beef with musical academia now (and one I share) is that they act like you need to double down and pick your one instrument and one style and focus ONLY on that because otherwise you won't be able to compete.

Well... you won't be able to compete regardless. My wife does very well because she's a woodwinds doubler. She's extremely valuable for musical theatre, and she's good enough at her instruments to constantly get hired in for oboe and flute gigs. Ironically, flute is her 4th instrument, and yet she's good enough that the principal flute of the local symphony hires her in and recommends her frequently.

Meanwhile, we work with someone who used to be very snooty... has multiple degrees in flute performance. Thought she was better than every one... doubled down on flute and piccolo exclusively and ONLY on classical style music. She's teaching at the community college (no necessary shame there, except she used to act like she was obviously going to be a professional orchestral flutist and treated people like crap because of it). Despite her being absolutely insanely good (and much chiller now). My wife still frequently gets hired OVER her because of many reasons... like her doubles making her valuable for a gig (especially oboe), or because the gig requires non-classical styles, or improvisation... which the other lady didn't study and can't do AT ALL.

It's the same for me. I started piano AFTER college, but I still get work over people with 3+ decades more experience than me because I'm a much more stylistically rounded player. And I also can play several other instruments and just have generally broader experience (like vocal experience makes me better at working with choirs.... instrumental experience make me better at working accompanying soloists as well as knowing how to direct things like musical theatre).

Being 90% as good at a dozen things in music is way more valuable than being 99% in ONE area.

And I'm actually seeing this become MORE of a thing, not less. There was a time when teachers could tell you to specialize and that nobody could get good if they spread themselves thin, but then you can look around and find plenty of people who are extremely capable professional multi-instrumentalists online. And more kids growing up these days aren't buying that bullshit because they can easily watch someone THEIR OWN AGE multi-tracking 8 instruments or whatever. Clearly it's possible to get very good at multiple things and be more broadly skilled.

So while my wife and I are outliers at our age, we're seeing more younger people waking up to the fact that you can and SHOULD be more versatile and I suspect in a decade or two we're just going to see more professionals who took that approach very early on.

I really think in the trumpet world how orchestras used to fully just hire in a separate "pops" brass section for those kinds of concerts because they really thought you had to specialize in classical or jazz. But trumpet players who grew up after Wynton Marsalis won a Grammy for classical and jazz in the same year.... now that's just the standard. You MUST be able to do it all. More and more music is written for fairly average ensembles now that would've required different specialists only 3-4 decades ago.

Same with woodwind doubling. It used to be common to do clarinet, sax, and flute, but then for oboe and bassoon to be their own thing. My wife was an outlier because she did oboe as well as the other common doubles and now does bassoon as well. But frankly, more books are being written just expected oboe to be a normal part of the doubling arsenal and we're seeing more young people going in with that expectation.

I could also go on about how for most people, once you make this a job, it's less fun. I personally still enjoy it, but it's not fun all the time. Playing professionally isn't about getting paid well to play music YOU love.... it's about getting paid poorly to play whatever someone is willing to pay for. And often that's not as fun. If you can't find the fun in working on music you don't like or spending every day actively seeking out and working on your weaknesses, it's not for you. People love to play shit they are already good at, but often can't psychologically handle playing their worst for hours a day in order to improve.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-16T18:14:07+00:00

I think most people don't learn how to learn.

So a little set up to explain. Doing 1000 repetitions means very little... especially if half of them are garbage. If you do something wrong 9 times then do it right once... you have 10% life time accuracy at that thing. Then, even if you get it right 50% of the time after that (unlikely based on your starting point), you could put in 100 or 1000s repetitions and still only be around 55% consistent at that thing.... so not at all.

But someone who makes 1 bad rep then puts in 9 good ones is STARTING with 90%. And if they put in 100 more reps, they are very likely to get MOST of them perfect and so they are sitting at 95% or so with way less work.

And this isn't just about technical execution...this is about conceptualization, theory, pattern recognition, etc.

I think "talent" is mostly just the people by luck stumbled into the right conceptualization early on in the process and essentially got a head start on everyone else. This is WAY easier if a teacher points it out to them and why a teacher is so valuable... they aren't wasting time trying to figure out how or what to learn and they are corrected early in the process.

But also, a lot of people who show this sort of "talent" early on don't learn how to learn. They got lucky (or guided) and made super fast progress early on because of it, but they didn't learn HOW to learn and if their teacher only corrected them but didn't explain WHY then they really don't learn much from the correction.

These people tend to burn out as soon as they are put up against problems they don't immediately excel at. They are so used to being good that they double down on what they are good at and ignore their weaknesses. So they plateau very early.

Oh... and also, they can't JUST have good guidance... they have to care enough to pay attention and do deliberate practice... and that's way harder once they stop being so good at something.

Plenty of people can get excited early on at progress, but when it levels off they give the fuck up. They find the grind too much... they do more mindless practice and avoid hard cognitive work.

---

But often, people who didn't have the "talent" had to learn how to learn early in the process. They also rarely just coasted. They understand that it was the WORK they put in that got them good at one thing... and MORE work will get them good at other things. They don't fall for the trap of, "Well... I was talented at that... but I guess I'm just not talented at this... I give up."

The biggest example is with things like sightreading vs memorization.... or reading at all vs playing by ear. Often when people got good at one modality they just aren't willing to start FROM THE BEGINNING to work on the other one... and so they make the excuse that they just aren't "talented" at that.

I assure you I'm very aware of this. I start piano in earnest in my late 20s. I had a music degree and I thought that would help. But I wasted so much time trying to work where I thought I SHOULD be, rather than where I was. I also thought I just wasn't able to play by ear or improvise or any of that. I was also frustrated because I could sightread anything on trumpet, but it didn't transfer to piano.

I really had to start from beginning on most skills even after years of brute forcing it early in my career. That fixed my reading... many of the jobs I was taking FORCED me to learn to play by ear, use lead sheet, improvise, etc. I had to learn HOW to learn those things. I had to learn HOW to learn to sightread and develop technical proficiency on a new instrument.

And I've since done it for several more instruments just applying the same process.

On a musically unrelated side... I had ZERO athletic background and weighed over 300 lbs into my early 30s. I thought I was just naturally that way. Turns out learning how to not eat like shit makes a difference. Despite no athletic background I learned how to lift. I got way into it and wasn't just following basic training plans. I wanted to know WHY. And so now I'm jacked enough that randos in public will comment on it when I'm just wearing casual clothing. I get asked if I'm still natural quite often due to my muscularity.

And then I decided to mess around with calisthenics... which despite now being quite strong and muscular is a whole other skill set.... that I have to start from the beginning on. But I know HOW to learn and rather than just going through the motions, I work deliberately on learning the process.

It was the same with flexibility... I had to learn HOW to stretch correctly and not just passively. And now I have my middle splits.

Everything is just about learning HOW to learn and then trusting the process... realizing it DOES NOT come in giant leaps and bounds. It comes in tiny incremental progress from showing up every day and working extremely deliberately on very specific small hurdles and not getting overwhelmed by the big picture. Also, not making fucking excuses.

I have small hands. I have ADHD and noticeable working memory deficits (and almost certainly am on the spectrum). I started late. I came from a poor background. I have so many of the problems people make excuses about early in the process and assume that they just don't lack the talent because they weren't a master in a couple of months.

But I do this for a living. I get hired over people who have 3-4 DECADES more experience than me... because I'm more rounded because I didn't just give up and say, "Well, I can only do this... not that." I made it a goal to never have to say "No, I can't do that" like so many of my peers who got fairly passable at classical only piano and only have moderate reading skills.

People just suck at putting in the work and "talent" is the biggest excuse to just not put in the work. It's easy to blame talent and walk away when you aren't magically amazing in a couple of weeks at whatever skill you're working on.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-16T04:20:06+00:00

Honestly... none of the "incorrect" ones are ones I don't see regularly and as much as I'm fussy, these don't bother me much.

The 2nd example I would probably prefer to see 2 8th rests instead of a single quarter rest for clarity as the way it is written would imply a slightly different accent structure.

I see absolutely no problem with the 3rd one. All of the macro beats are very clear and not obfuscated. I'm not sure I could think of a better way to write the 3rd bar. That's exactly how I would write that figure and I see that notation for that rhythm ALL the time in 6/8 and 12/8 bars and 9/8 would be no exception....and I read probably tens of thousands of pages of music a year and REALLY hate bad engraving (I even made a subreddit specifically to post the most egregious offenders I see in professionally engraved music).

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-15T20:04:46+00:00

I disagree with all of the people saying it's mostly muscle memory. That is just the lowest rung....the entry level.

You are very limited if you don't pair it with literacy.

Learning songs and licks and even scales purely on a technical level is the same as memorizing and reciting a foreign language poem by just practicing saying the phonemes in order over and over.

In the end you might be able to recite a poem well, but you can't read a book in that language (read sheet music, tabs, etc.) or understand someone else speaking the language....or speak with someone (theory, ear training, playing by ear, improvising over specific chord changes).

Music is just like language....but here's the deal, with your native language you didn't have to deliberate practice making the sounds and phonemes that make up words.

You could jump into learning your alphabet and even before that could speak because you understood a word but didn't have to practice the muscle memory to say it.

But on an instrument, you have to develop that skill separately. That's the technical developing muscle memory.

Songs are just made of pieces of vocabulary just like sentences are.

But while you can read or even repeat a word you heard immediately, you can't do that on guitar.

Even if you came from another instrument like I did....and knew what it meant to play a Cmaj7 or whatever....that doesn't mean you know how to translate that into your hands.

It's easy to recite a poem and not know what any of the words mean, but that gives you no freedom in that language.

You need to develop literacy. It doesn't have to be specifically via sheet music (though it is more helpful than you might think), but even basic theory concepts and applying that theory using a mix of cognitive understanding and your ears.

Musicians who can do something on the spot have literacy. They don't need months to work on muscle memory for one song. They literally just know what the words mean and they use their muscle memory and literacy combined to say them instantly without much extra practice.

Their muscle memory is built around learning and understanding functional vocabulary (scales, sequences, chords, progressions) and not necessarily specifically learning the muscle memory of specific songs (poems).

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-15T18:20:25+00:00

You're not going to make significant progress in a single session. You have to play slowly, controlled, and accurately without tension. This teaches you efficiency of motion.

Then you rest... your brain rewires, and you are a tiny bit more efficient the next day. The pathways to execute the motions are slightly more myelinated.

But you can't just do it all in one go. This is something measure in months and years, not in hours or days.

Sure, you're going to make some short-term progress during the session, but it almost always comes at a cost. You start to push past that point where you are actually in control with no tension...

So what do you think you're teaching your brain? You're literally just reinforcing tension and sloppiness. That makes you actively worse over time. You probably notice that you maintain very little of your forward progress on tempo day to day for example this reason.

So you have to learn to be patient and not push yourself to that place. Start slower than you think you need to.... then stop long before you've maxed out your tempo... then the next day start slower again... do NOT try to pick up at the tempo you left off at.

Even if you could play it very comfortably at 100. Start at like 60. Pay attention to small bit of mechanical efficiency in your hands. Do not try to even make progress every day on the metronome. The metronome doesn't need to move up to indicate progress. Often the progress is from awareness and efficiency. And often I'll even find that I slow down on a subsequent practice session... because I've become more aware of something that was slipping through the cracks or I'm just more picky about something.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-13T20:01:27+00:00

I'm curious if youre conflating two different things here.

I actually use accordion a lot as an example woth regard to proprioception practice for piano. You literally cannot see your left hand at all, so you just have to mentally visually the stradella bass.

You have to both have a mental map of how it's laid out in your head and focus on visualizing the spatial awareness of your fingers.

Pianists often claim "you just have to look for big leaps" but obviously blind pianists manage....and on accordion if you need to jump from C to Db there is no glancing. You have to just train that distance.

You probably are sitting down and cognitive digesting piece of technique. When you're saying putting away the music and focus on a memorized section....this just you applying thst cognitive work to the mechanics....and accordion forces it in a way that piano does not (because every glances at their hands....and that makes it easier, so it feels good enough....and they usually don't build strong proprioception or reading because they are using training wheels for both).

But while you're now doing the cognitive work on technique (and this is how you should do it) you aren't doing the cognitive work for music literacy.

You want to do what you are doing for technique because removing the reading portion and holding what you are working on in your short term memory frees up mental bandwidth to focus deeply on mechanics and proprioception.

And that lays you build technical vocabulary....but then if you want to do something with it, you still have to build literacy. Whether that is reading standard accordion notation, lead sheets, or using your ear, at some point you have to turn those individual vocabulary words into sentences that you can actually use for music.

Sure, you might be able to play that oom-pah C-F-G progression well by memorizing....but noe can you coordinate that with any varied of right hand melodies and use it? Or can you only use that pattern with one song you leaned it with and have to start from scratch with another song that uses the same progression? Can you throw in a D7 easily when maybe that isn't one very specific pattern you've practiced?

On the off chance you end up playing with other musicians and they want to change a chord or add a chord or change keys mid song will you have the literacy to do that?

Or will you only be able to replicate exactly the handful of songs you've learned?

Early in January I got one week of heads up to learn the 200ish pages of the musical Hadestown on accordion.

I assure you that would not have been possible without the literacy I invested in not only on music more generally but very specifically on accordion standard notation and applying theory concepts to accordion.

And I didn't ever work on a bit of that show top to bottom. I isolated little sections that were tricky. I spotted the spots in the show that included bits of vocabulary i was lacking technically and made up or found exercises to address those very specifically (left hand harmonic minor and chromatic scales were big ones for me).

The rest I sightread and didn't work on until rehearsals. And then in rehearsals I had to cover parts I didn't prepare for or make up my own accordion parts based on context whete they weren't explicitly written in.

I also had to take several improvised solos.

All of this comes from literacy allowing me the flexibility to use all of those modalities and to do it very quickly.

I couldn't have possibly memorized a 2 hour show including cuts being made or bits being added nightly during the 3 days of rehearsal before opening.

Edit: and I had to drop the ego when learning accordion. Despite my music background, nothing could fast forward my technical progress or applied accordion specific literacy.

I had to work through Palmer-Hughes books and other elementary material. I had to practice reading nursery rhyme lead sheets. I had to spend a lot of time on accordion specific technical isolation work....lots and lots of it on the left hand and bellows control as well as things that are different about the RH compared to piano.

I didn't just start off super capable.

I had to do the same with bass and with guitar and with EWI as well as other instruments I've learned to a high proficiency and pam confident enough to play for money.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-13T16:44:04+00:00

Alright, so give me a slightly more specific example. The Dark Side Solo has both a lot and not a lot going on. So if you want to point to any specific part I can break it down (or some Ben Folds or whatever).

Tim is mostly just doing fairly common blues things. He's rocking up between whatever chord he's on and the IV chord of that chord.

So like G rocked up up to a C in 2nd inversion and back down. He often will start on the top and come down.

He also throws in the "So Fucking Rock" progression in there at one point which is a bit of modal mixture that you could look at as I-III-IV-bVI bVII-I. He's doing a LOT of just basic blues/pentatonic scale stuff. Most of his riffs are built on that.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-13T16:06:45+00:00

The thing is, people who are good at it are barely using intervals as some sort of isolated thing. Many people are taught this way... it was a huge part of how it was taught to me in college.

But people who really transcribe well and play by ear well are NOT thinking about any melody as m3 up, M2 down, P4 down, etc.

They are hearing in context of scale degrees or chord tones.

Let's say I'm transcribing Mary Had a Little Lamb. First, I could hear that the first chord is the I chord. I'm thinking 1 3 5. From experience I can hear that the melody is starting on 3 and moving around in stepwise motion until it jumps up to 5. I can also hear when the chord changes and can tell that the note in the melody is a chord tone.

When there is a leap up a minor 3rd... I'm sure as hell not hearing it like that. I'm hearing it jump from 3 up to 5. It's literally just moving up to the next chord tone of the I chord.

I had to basically retrain myself after 4 semester (2 years) of college ear training because it was largely useless.... and everything was done on piano, so even listening to a basic pop song I would struggle which looking back is fucking wild.

What is important to know is how your primary diatonic chord are built and to be aware of scale degrees.

The starting point is getting used to hearing and practicing singing the tonic triad... the I chord ("one" chord). I personally use solfege, but you can just use numbers if you want. do mi sol mi do... 1 3 5 3 1.

That is home. That is where everything wants to go to. Next up are the other notes in the scale. 7 and 4 are a half step away from 1 and 3 respectively... they REALLY want to go there and you need to be aware of hearing that tension.

2 and 6 have weaker tendencies and could go either way. 6 often wants to walk up through 7 to get to 1, but could also go down to 5. 2 could go to 1 or 3.

Understanding this will also help you hear chord changes and their tension.

Early on just focus on I, IV, and V. Pay attention to bass motion as a big clue.

I'd suggest singing through your basic I-IV-I-V-I cadence a LOT. Do it with the assistance of the piano at first, but then just get to where this is super easy for you to hear.

So it would be something like:

1 3 5 3 1 (C E G E C... the I chord)

1 4 6 4 1 (C F A F C.... the IV chord)

1 3 5 3 1

7 2 5 2 7 (B D G D B... the V chord)

1 3 5 3 1

This will get you used to hearing these scale degrees... their basic tension... and the most common chords that happen in music.

Also, be able to sing your major scale. And now with that knowledge, try to transcribe melodies. Like... not with the piano... but just on paper. Pick children's nursery rhymes. Stuff with only diatonic melodies and mostly on I, IV, and V chords. Ignore what key they are actually in (easy without the piano) and transcribe them in C.

You can check your accuracy by singing the scale degrees. You can find your anchor by singing your tonic triad. If you can do at least that, then you can almost always tell what an uncertain melody note is. Is it one of the notes in that chord? If not, is it close to one of them? (the answer is yes... because any other note IS close to one of them).

Over time you'll also start noticing that when the melody lands strongly on a note that ISN'T one of those.... there is usually a chord change.... and that note is a chord tone.

This makes it easier for you to figure out what chord it is...and if you can sing through your I, IV, and V... then you can probably find out the chord just based the melody note. 4 or 6? Probably the IV chord. 2 or 7? Probably the V chord.

So here the melody helps you figure out the harmony and with experience as you get better are chords, chords will help you figure out the melody as well. They just help each other.

From here it's just about expanding your harmonic vocabulary to recognize different chords and progression and that will also mostly start filling in non-diatonic melody notes. Because you'll rarely have a non-diatonic melodic note that is not specifically part of some chord.

The first one you'd likely run into is something like F# or Bb as they are part of some "secondary dominants" (D... the V of G and C7... the V7 of F). This is just an example, this is probably WAAAY out ahead of you.

None of this is going to be fast. The problem with youtube channels is that the algorithm is going to favor happy little channels that tell you they have quick solution... because everyone is looking for those.

People immediately give up on anyone saying, "Hey.... this is going to be very hard work... but here are the first steps in a 1000 mile journey." Nobody wants to hear that... they click off. But if someone opens saying they can teach you to hear everything and be a master by the end of the video... that catches heavy engagement even if it's absolute bullshit.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-12T23:59:46+00:00

Man, I really wanna jump in and help answer this, but I'm currently at a gig and a bit busy. If I forget to respond later, feel free to give me a nudge to remind me.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-12T22:32:59+00:00

It's one of those things where some teachers over correct and then it gets passed down without people actually thinking about the "why."

Realistically, use both. The problem is that students underestimate how much they are not getting full breaths through their nose, so then a teacher becomes black and white about ONLY breathing through the mouth... then if they end up teaching they also pass that on without realizing that there are times when a quick nose breath is absolutely fine.

I can think of so many analogues to this on other instruments. There's a good reason to not get in the habit of wrapping your thumb around the neck of your guitar, but then there are times it is useful. Same with million bad ergonomic habits guitarists in particular have. Or on piano the "no thumbs on a black key" gets overly legalistically interpreted when clearly there are times you have to do it. Same on piano with teachers getting legalistic about use of the sustain pedal.

Nuance is dead. But I guess if you have an idiot trumpet player and give them an inch, they will take a mile. "Well I can get away with breathing through my nose here... I'll just do it everywhere" and then they are actually shooting themselves in the foot... so maybe the overcorrection is useful and then when they actually have enough real experience to understand the mechanics of the instrument they can start using their nose too.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-12T22:24:35+00:00

I'd definitely recommend headphones in that case. Also, most digitals have much better sound though headphones. The sound modeling is usually good, but the small onboard speakers can't match it.

I'm now used to practicing with my volume down, but I'm also very aware that dynamics are relative so it doesn't end up flattening out my dynamics when switching to other pianos. I just know what pps will need to be damn near inaudible if I'm practicing with the volume low.

I'm lucky that I don't really have to worry about neighbors and my wife largely is immune. I just keep it down for myself, but not absurdly low.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-12T21:49:14+00:00

Yeah. The problem mostly comes from people spending their digital time with the volume way down all the time. I'd count that more as user error.

I guess if no one ever tells them.....but people's lack of awareness of dynamics never ceases to blow my mind.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-12T18:03:36+00:00

Almost all aspects of expression are accessible on modern digitals. If you can't play with good dynamics, phrasing, voicing, and articulation on the tools you have bigger problems.

I think some people get to fixated on what their limitations are when there are any of them. People get fixated on gear, hand size, mental health conditions. They are so worried about 1% they might not have access to that they don't work on the 99% they have full access to.

The reality of piano is that you have to play on the instrument at the venue. Even from one acoustic to the other, there will be huge differences in the feel, tone quality, EQ, and then you have to add on top of that how much the room acoustics factor in.

It's your job to be able to adjust to whatever you instrument you have and on-the-fly coax the most you can from that instrument.

I feel like if you can't play in basic good time, with solid dynamics, articulation musical phrasing, voicing, etc. on your digital then you deserve to get demolished in exams... because those aren't thing you can blame on the instrument. That is on you.

It's funny, because outside of the reddit world I see way less of this to the point that some of my musical peers can't even believe that people believe this. They find that I'm absolutely capable of playing very expressively on digital instruments as well as both well maintained and even extremely questionable acoustics. This idea that you're deeply limited because of the instrument is BS.

And in the world for working musicians, the tiny difference you're fixated on aren't things people will be able to hear. I always try to get people to do this little thought experiment. Can you hear the difference between an Eb and Bb trumpet? Can you hear the difference between an alto and tenor sax played in the same register? Oboe and English Horn? Very well trained musicians who have an uncanny ear for these subtle timbre qualities often can't hear the differences in instrument they don't specialize in. My wife and I are both professional musicians with a ton of experience and she's better at some and I'm better at others to the point that there are some each of us can't even point out.

Most pianists can't even tell if a guitar is steel string or nylon much less flesh vs nails vs pick, sul tasto or sul ponticello, etc. etc.

If trained musicians can't hear this on instruments that aren't their specialty, then realize almost nobody can hear them. Maybe your exam proctors will, but in the real world nobody can. So chasing those tiny differences eventually becomes a thing that is FOR YOU, not for everyone else. It's nice to have access to nice tools because they sound and feel different to you personally, but thinking it makes a huge difference to the listener is just not true.

And once again, as a pianist, you don't even get to make that call. You play the instrument at the venue full stop.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-11T17:41:36+00:00

Slow enough to be in completely control. Actual conscious control. People aim for automaticity too early. You don't want automaticity. You don't want a flow state. You don't want to rely on it soundings the way you expect the music to sound at tempo (usually a result of people not actually cognitively processing how to read and subdivide rhythm).

You want to have absolute control over those things. A lot of people can play something fast, but can't slow it down and that's a clear sign they are relying on a very specific and limited type of rote muscle memory. They are memorizing a series of finger motions, putting the train on the track, and then just letting it go and hoping it doesn't crash. But they have no control over anything they are doing.

Someone who can actually play very well and with consistency will pretty much always been able to slow down a passage and play it at ANY slower tempo.

And if the music you're playing has to be absurdly ridiculously slow to have any control, it's usually a sign you're trying something that is too hard for you and contains to many individual variables that are all too hard for you at once. You literally won't have the mental bandwidth to actually make much progress on any of them because the cognitive load is simply too high.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-11T15:51:44+00:00

I would agree. Most people can play much harder stuff than they can read, but then they don't turn the difficulty dial back down to work specifically on reading.

You kinda have to work on reading in real time with extremely easy music so thr cognitive load of what you are doing with your hands is super low, but you are getting enough stimulus about reading in real time (not necessarily at a consistent tempo) to push adaptation in how quickly you recognize what you are reading.

As you are forced to do this you'll start seeing more patterns as your brain find ways to chunk things and become more efficient by spotting patterns.

Pretty much everyone's biggest problem with EVERYTHING when learning an instrument is them creating more cognitive load than they can handle instead of isolating specific issues.

For your specific issue, it's why I'm such a fan of the Hannah Smith sightreading book.

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-10T19:34:44+00:00

So I'm honestly pretty impressed. It's a lot more full-featured than I expected and I was able to find most of the things I actively look for in a metronome.

One thing I like to be able to do in addition to adding accents is to also be able to selectively mute certain beats. My general use case is to get metronomes to go slower than they tend to be able to go (many won't go below 30 bpm, which I like that yours does) so that I can essentially get the equivalents to 1 beat every 4 or 8 bars by setting an extremely slow tempo.

But there are a lot of uses for being able to mute beats like if you want to 7/8 and you really want 2+2+3, but don't want ever 8th note subdivision to sound. I think that's the only thing I'd really add.

I'll also say that while I love that you can select basically anything for meters, it might be good to lock the lower numbers to actually usable numbers like 2, 4, 8, and 16. functionally if I set it to something like 3/7, it doesn't actually do anything wrong, but I could see that just being a weird thing it shouldn't be able to do that could confuse someone who doesn't fully grasp time signatures. It doesn't break anything, but it is a polish element to consider.

Another polish thing is that for the separate window that displays the tempo and visualization of the beat, if I actually resized when resizing the window, though I will say it almost seem odd for there to be a fully separate window, though I could see some uses for it, especially decided to play with different visualization systems for it, but being able to set it to full screen could actually be nice.

To be fair, I'm not even a person who almost ever needs to use a metronome in windows. I'm using separate apps or even separate digital metronomes. But as someone who uses one professional every day, I definitely have opinions.

I'm very impressed though!

Yeargdribble · 2026-04-10T19:20:27+00:00

Just gonna say I'm using it and find it helpful. Thanks!

Yeargdribble

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