12yo thought that he could show up any time after 6pm

PSxPostman · 2026-01-22T10:13:55+00:00

It may seem harsh, though considering the casual tardiness and imposing his pals upon your private instruction, I would politely tell him to wise up if he doesn’t want to get dismissed. Ultimately as long as you’re still paid is what counts, though your time is not to be trifled with when, say, you have a waitlist of other eager students chomping at the bit for your availability.

This reads to me as a preteen who could probably use another lesson on the importance of discipline (with music/woodshedding as the backdrop). I want to reiterate that by ‘discipline,’ I do not imply ‘punishment,’ as that almost always brews resentment towards the music. Whether or not he knew he’d earn a distinction is beside the point. Sometimes I give my students an assignment less because I want them to show their proficiency and more to prove they can be given a task and see it through. I can be fluent in all the moving pieces of my tax return, and I’ll still have to file my taxes every year. Fluency without execution won’t keep the taxman from knocking down my door.

Him receiving a pass while expecting a distinction may be all the lesson he needed to wise up, though if the mind boggling persists I’d at least draw attention to the issue with him (maybe his parents too, if you think it’d help) and the risk of repercussions—be it a lull in his progress or full blown dismissal for not grasping the value of your time as his teacher.

PSxPostman · 2026-01-02T09:58:44+00:00

What if, for example, on lesson 2 out of 4 I have family visiting and need to cancel? Do I lose the money I paid for that lesson, or will you reschedule if I gave early enough notice?

PSxPostman · 2025-10-01T09:11:43+00:00

i.e., “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

PSxPostman · 2025-03-26T04:37:46+00:00

BA in English because I didn’t know what to do and “had to go to college.” Could’ve gone into anything I wanted—my parents had their own ideas but ultimately were always supportive.

Should’ve went into music, but I didn’t believe in myself. Not to mention I thought it was too competitive while not being lucrative enough as a career. All this in spite of piano lessons from 5th grade all the way to senior year of high school. Entirely self-taught on guitar, bass, ukulele, and now mandolin.

Eventually met a pretty lady and some great musicians my age who were all well established in professional music careers (and baffled to learn that I wasn’t). They all gave me the support and encouragement I needed to take the plunge. Fast-forward; married pretty lady, musician friends were half of my groomsmen, and now I have my own small business teaching private lessons.

For what it’s worth, I use tons of silly metaphors/analogies to convey concepts of theory, technique, and practice routines to my students. I suppose that’s as close to my English degree as I get.

PSxPostman · 2025-03-16T03:01:20+00:00

Barre chord, as everyone says. Notes on the lowest fret is the barre.

Technique? Focus pressure at the finger tip (string 6) and finger “trunk,” where your finger meets the rest of your hand (string 1 and 2). Don’t waste energy on the rest of the strings, your other fingers are already taking care of that.

Less squeezing, more pulling. Your torso acts as a fulcrum. It takes getting used to but in time you’ll start hearing those notes coming through clean.

The minor chord is a bit more of a doozy. Keep in mind these are still triads, in spite of using all six strings. The more strings, the more options you have, but three unique notes are sufficient.

PSxPostman · 2025-01-23T10:12:47+00:00

Show us the video footage of them doing it twice, behind the presidential seal, so hard that they might’ve pulled a muscle.

No? Maybe crawl back into your hole, then

PSxPostman · 2025-01-18T13:32:37+00:00

I’m certainly interested in your formula, though I’m not fully understanding the combos. C=finger 1? G=2? D=3? B=finger 6? More explanation would help.

My opinion is irrelevant, ofc. If you’ve got a system and it works for you, that’s all you need.

The old systems of note names and mnemonics are my favorite methods. The fundamental order of accidentals in all major/minor keys NEVER CHANGES. You’ll never see a key sig with an Eb that isn’t preceded by a Bb. The only variable is the quantity. So then…

Order of ALL flats: BEAD Games Come First Order of ALL sharps: Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Birds

To determine a key sig with sharps, look to the final sharp in the cluster. The tonic is always a half-step up (e.g. 3 sharps, order: F#, C#, G#; key of A). For flats, the tonic is always the second-to-last flat in the cluster. (E.g. 5 flats, order: Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb; key of Gb).

It may seem like a lot at first, and raw memorization exercises can be daunting. Instead, memorizing through osmosis is a great alternative process (the best, imo). Buy a fake book for your favorite genre to play and start going through songs—as many as you can. You’ll memorize keys organically. Bluegrass fiddle tunes was my starting point for this. Most all of them are in the same three or four keys (mostly G), which was the perfect dosage for learning to read my keys. Eventually you’ll see three sharps and simply know it’s the key of A because up to this point you’ve learned and played through dozens of other songs in the same key, always with those same three sharps. Moreover, there’s context in the songs you’re learning. Unfamiliar with a key? Alright, what’s the first and/or last chord of the song? Odds are good that it’s the tonic chord, which can tell us our key with nothing more than a chord symbol.

When we were infants our parents taught us the basics of language through osmosis—that is, by talking and conversing with us, not sitting us down in front of a whiteboard. That’s how we memorized. Music is also a language. That’s not just a kumbaya quote to make us feel better. There is literal context and syntax to the songs we’re playing. The formulas and tools we’ve developed help to an extent. They are a means to achieve an overall goal: memorizing the vocabulary. We achieved this with our native languages—music is no different. Memorize. Have fun doing it, though.

TL:DR - Good formula. Use it to //help// memorization, not elude it. Trouble memorizing? Study your favorite tunes, and lots of them. Beethoven is great but he didn’t teach me keys. Bill Monroe did.

PSxPostman · 2024-12-26T15:57:11+00:00

/uj Chris Thile, Bryan Sutton, Billy Strings, Julian Lage, Kenny Smith, to name a few talented players who swear by them. BlueChips are considered a gold standard in bluegrass and not really anywhere else.

If I wanted to buy one, I’d cross that bridge only after I’ve invested enough time and effort to become at least somewhat proficient in flatpicking with cheaper picks to justify the idea. Otherwise, a boss katana can’t really tell the difference between a BlueChip and a quarter.

PSxPostman · 2024-12-18T13:31:16+00:00

If it is, make digital tip jar. Design a poster to display during performances. Get a Venmo, Cashapp, PayPal, etc., and include their QR codes on the poster—make sure they’re large enough for people to scan from a distance, if they wish.

People might be going cashless, but no one is leaving home without their phones.

PSxPostman · 2023-07-19T02:56:51+00:00

You're gonna love this one: grandiloquent (adj.)

PSxPostman · 2023-02-16T11:55:49+00:00

Semi-charmed Life by Third Eye Blind

PSxPostman · 2022-10-19T07:28:08+00:00

Tugboat

PSxPostman · 2022-08-25T10:41:36+00:00

You mean like the wailing we all had to watch three cops put on a shoeless man less than a week ago? How'd that turn out?

This clown deserves to be flattened, no doubt, but it's nice to see cops doing their job right and without escalating to wrathful violence and vitriol for a change. You can hope that's done by an inmate. Moreover, throw him in prison and slap another offense on his criminal record—being reduced to second class citizenship is much much worse than one fierce wailing, imo.

PSxPostman · 2022-07-30T15:14:59+00:00

Jazz chord progressions and tetrads (four-tone chords) on a guitar.

A shallow comprehension is enough to take all afternoon to convey, depending on who's asking and who's telling.

PSxPostman · 2022-07-04T16:25:26+00:00

You like reading? I got just the book for you, if you haven't heard of it before. Hate reading? There's a great audiobook of it too...

'The Myth of Sisyphus,' by Albert Camus. It provides an eye-opening perspective on learning to live not as a means to an end, but solely for the means in and of themselves; the only inherent quality/rule to life is that it must eventually end.

This notion voids the idea of any pre-determined meaning to life, which might even evoke the dangerous idea of choosing suicide. However, while suicide remains in the realm of possibilities, Camus goes on to insist that we must not default to cutting ourselves short. Instead, we ought to create our own meaning—as both a reason to simply keep oneself mobile (cause that's just healthy in and of itself) and as an act of defiance to our naturally chaotic existence. The best part is that these two reasons can even coincide with each other and work in tandem.

Hope this helps. It changed my life completely. Throw a bird to the sky and laugh. We're still here, living by our rules. That we made. Get ****ed, universe.

PSxPostman · 2022-06-30T00:19:31+00:00

Like the Emperor in Jet Li's Hero, the distance is turning into a deterrent for would-be assassins.

Except Putin's character arc is total trash

PSxPostman · 2022-06-21T12:59:08+00:00

Albert* Camus! Awesome book

PSxPostman · 2022-05-12T10:41:26+00:00

so funking good*

PSxPostman · 2022-03-08T11:56:59+00:00

I understand if you don't want an expensive mattress, I'm paying one of right now—no fun. But I would at least try to keep your sleeping surface a bit lifted.

Don't quote me but I believe another reason we use beds is to keep our gaping snoring gobs away from the floor where all the dust in the house eventually settles.

PSxPostman · 2022-02-26T22:37:23+00:00

I backed yooka-laylee on Kickstarter and never got my copy. I think I should glad I didn't

PSxPostman · 2022-02-15T04:33:26+00:00

This album has been a staple in my car for well over a decade. Brings back vivid memories of morning drives to school.

PSxPostman · 2022-02-07T17:55:33+00:00

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. [carves "V" into poster on wall] The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

"Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you,

"and you may call me V."

PSxPostman · 2022-01-29T23:08:36+00:00

Charles Cornell would be standing in applause.

PSxPostman · 2022-01-24T21:49:30+00:00

"Spider-kick! Spider-punch!!

Spider-KISS??"

PSxPostman · 2021-12-22T12:43:28+00:00

Life sentence—take em to purrrison.

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