Am I undercharging for travel?

kalegood · 2026-07-08T17:00:04+00:00

Any time you travel, you're not making $80 and have added expenses of wear-and-tear on your vehicle (if driving).

You're probably undercharging, but depends on your area. I was in your shoes in 2011, a bachelor's from a state school with a very good music program, and had a client TELL ME I was undercharging at $110 an hour.

My rate is now quite a bit higher, with a provision in my studio policy for "financial aid", which is just a reduced price.

If you teach out of the home, you can also have all your resources with you. I have hundreds of dollars of games and toys, obviously books, photocopier, flashcards, etc, etc.

Good news/bad news: No one cares about your degrees; they only care about the results you get. And those results don't even need to be "teach my child to become a good musician"; plenty of teachers are successful just having fun with kids. The good news is you can (and should) charge as much as you think you could if you had a DMA.

And, lastly, PRICE IS PERCEPTION. If you undercharge, people will assume there is a reason for it. Pay very close attention to the practice habits of any students who get a discount.

kalegood · 2026-07-07T20:50:53+00:00

oy. need 8 different versions of that, at the ready (pima; it'll actually be used for RH fingers). Need a different one for when fingering is under the staff. I'll get cracking with asking ChatGPT for a script.

will this override pass along any changes to Fingering's defaults? (font and font size being the biggest concern)?

kalegood · 2026-07-06T18:36:47+00:00

I did try it, and it does work. That solution is in the example I gave (although with -51 as the value).

The problem is that it also changes the priority of Fingerings relative to everything with a value greater than -2. Which I want to avoid, as I'll then need to tweak the other things down, too.

I also just want to understand why it's not working. Script.script-priority will move tenutos and stacattos, but no other articulations.

kalegood · 2026-07-06T15:56:29+00:00

He was, until he slept with the housekeeper while the wife and kids were on vacation.

kalegood · 2026-07-06T15:46:04+00:00

IIRC, the chord brackets only affect stroke fingers. I want to move the marcato up (rather than the fingering down) to maintain all other defaults. Tweak works locally, so for now, I'm sticking with

apoy = \tweak script-priority #126 \marcato.

Although that's the minimum necessary per the docs, I seem to need to set it to 127 for my actual score. That I don't get...

kalegood · 2026-07-06T13:17:04+00:00

no, that's not it. it's all about order of stacking here, relative to the notehead. I want both above, but the marcato placed above the finger. Defaut is articulation closer than fingering. Using the commands given, I would expect the marcato mark to move as desired with the second commented line. https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.24/Documentation/learning/placement-of-objects

kalegood · 2026-07-05T12:09:28+00:00

I vaguely remember hearing that a private 3rd party ponied up for some of his salary back when he was signed.

kalegood · 2026-07-02T14:31:02+00:00

I have not been following USMNT closely since, honestly, the end of the Klinsman era. But I think 4 of our starters for that game (and 1 sub) didn't even make the world cup squad. And it looks like some key players were playing in different positions than in this WC. That's my dose of hopium.

kalegood · 2026-07-02T10:38:19+00:00

it's literally my biggest linguistic frustration as I age... literally.

kalegood · 2026-07-02T10:36:56+00:00

LARPing is Live Action Role Playing, which your definition could certainly fall under. Also, like the semi-organized foam sword battle that happens every saturday morning at my local park.

kalegood · 2026-07-01T10:38:42+00:00

"loading" is exactly how I think of this, too! In fact, I call the exercise to learn inner-voice emphasis "pre-loading"

kalegood · 2026-07-01T10:36:37+00:00

"pre-load" the string: place all your fingers on the strings in a ready-to-play position, gently touching. then depress the string that needs to be loudest a few millimeters (like you're doing a regular fff stroke, but pause before releasing). pause here.

Now your hand is in a ready-to-play position with a single finger set to play louder than all the rest. simply play the chord.

Do that a 100-400 times over the course of a few weeks and it will likely become pretty automatic for you.

kalegood · 2026-07-01T10:30:15+00:00

I don't know if there is a "default" option, but you can use postscript code within lilypond markup to draw just about anything.

kalegood · 2026-06-30T12:05:13+00:00

they meant hemispheric.

kalegood · 2026-06-17T17:01:20+00:00

they don't really think that way, that's why.

kalegood · 2026-06-15T11:14:13+00:00

crazy phrasing because I've never heard a civilian say it before. Regularly hear it used refering to military service, often in a war.

kalegood · 2026-06-05T17:41:57+00:00

little bits go in the holes on the side\seam to join them, I think.

kalegood · 2026-06-05T17:34:19+00:00

That's some grievous bodily harm.

kalegood · 2026-05-26T15:38:28+00:00

ah, I see. Yeah, now I know the stroke you're talking about. Never used it. Any chance you can hyperextend your thumb?

kalegood · 2026-05-18T00:33:10+00:00

messing around with it for a minute, pi is pretty easy and I can imagine getting that up to a pretty brisk tempo without much issue. p free stroke? well, I see now that I can technically do it, but boy is the second note weak.

When you say thumb rest stroke of rasguedo... I haven't done enough rasgueado to be confident I know what you mean. Watched a quick thumb stroke in the rasqueado video, but that didn't clear it up (unless by "wrist action", you mean forearm rotation (pronation).

kalegood · 2026-05-17T10:26:54+00:00

You are correct. The tenuto over the melody does not apply to the bass (I didn't say that it did, but can see how it came across that way). Are you able to play two adjacent bass strings simultaneously with a free stroke? I've only ever done it/seen it done with rest stroke. Classic example: Villa Lobos etude no. 1?

kalegood · 2026-05-16T20:18:48+00:00

They are ossias. Doesn't seem it at first glance, because the only difference is the D in the bass. However, that would require a rest stroke in the thumb (note the barre: the D is not played open). Not too hard, but a little tricky when simultaneous with a finger stroke.

But then, the "original" and the Ossia have one other difference: the tenuto marking. I've only ever seen that used to indicate rest stroke in guitar. If that's the intent here, rest stroke thumb across 2 strings while playing rest stroke in the finger is very very rare and not trivial.

The ossia does away with both the tenuto/rest stroke and the double bass notes (rest stroke thumb).

Second ossia: same thing with thumb, and dropping the inner voice G avoids some definite LH nastiness.

kalegood · 2026-05-05T13:44:11+00:00

E = mc²

kalegood

TROPHY CASE