by Gary Powell
Category: Music Business Insight
The “Shared Role” Model of Music Education
by Gary Powell
The role of the music educator is being transformed. Music education has always offered a rich environment for listening, analyzing and experiencing the most masterful compositions in history while students study under expert tutelage. Transitioning a student from academia to a global market economy, however, presents new and specific challenges for us as educators which we are seldom able to wholly grasp. Why not? Higher education emphasizes and demands compliance, not just for the student, but for any person working within the institution. The successful student, in order to prosper within this educational, system, is unconsciously creating a thought process that will most certainly work against success in the less compliant world – a world where your ever maturing and less compliant self actually lives. 
You will probably, like me, find yourself needing to turn the page quickly, without even knowing you are being taught from the wrong book. In this societal time of personal imprudence, systemic corruption and waste, and the uncertainly of leadership, the teacher and the student now find themselves as unlikely roommates in their freshman year at WTF University!
by Gary Powell
The role of the music educator is being transformed. Music education has always offered a rich environment for listening, analyzing and experiencing the most masterful compositions in history while students study under expert tutelage. Transitioning a student from academia to a global market economy, however, presents new and specific challenges for us as educators which we are seldom able to wholly grasp. Why not? Higher education emphasizes and demands compliance, not just for the student, but for any person working within the institution. The successful student, in order to prosper within this educational, system, is unconsciously creating a thought process that will most certainly work against success in the less compliant world – a world where your ever maturing and less compliant self actually lives. You will probably, like me, find yourself needing to turn the page quickly, without even knowing you are being taught from the wrong book. In this societal time of personal imprudence, systemic corruption and waste, and the uncertainly of leadership, the teacher and the student now find themselves as unlikely roommates in their freshman year at WTF University!
Social-Media is Your Convention Floor
by Gary Powell
Austin psychotherapist, Amy Person, gave me the perfect metaphor for explaining how we might maintain a professional presence within our social networks, whether it is Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Twitter, or some other social site. She contends that your social networks are an ongoing 24-hour a day convention for your business. To make the point, I’ll write only about Facebook. Please apply this idea to all your social networks which you intend to use professionally.
by Gary Powell
Austin psychotherapist, Amy Person, gave me the perfect metaphor for explaining how we might maintain a professional presence within our social networks, whether it is Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Twitter, or some other social site. She contends that your social networks are an ongoing 24-hour a day convention for your business. To make the point, I’ll write only about Facebook. Please apply this idea to all your social networks which you intend to use professionally.
Big Sails – No Wind
by Gary Powell
At full sail, we can realize and create our purest artistic vision at our highest performance level and understanding. We can then come to enjoy the benefits from the realization of working at that highest and best use. I’m suggesting that in between fate, hard work, discipline, luck, favoritism, and talent, we can occasionally find our wind and be at full sail. In these snippets of time when chance collaborates with our fullest and best expressions – we forget time, place and even the context of our artistic origins. Life floats on the gentle and effortless waves of creativity and success, and we have indeed found our wind.
by Gary Powell
At full sail, we can realize and create our purest artistic vision at our highest performance level and understanding. We can then come to enjoy the benefits from the realization of working at that highest and best use. I’m suggesting that in between fate, hard work, discipline, luck, favoritism, and talent, we can occasionally find our wind and be at full sail. In these snippets of time when chance collaborates with our fullest and best expressions – we forget time, place and even the context of our artistic origins. Life floats on the gentle and effortless waves of creativity and success, and we have indeed found our wind.
Your Outlook on Life is a Direct Reflection
of How Much You Like Yourself
I photographed this little shop window in September, 2007, while visiting Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. I’m not sure if this statement on their storefront window is true, but I found it appealing nonetheless. I walked in with cheery confidence and bought a groovin’ t-shirt which has indeed made me like myself more. Fortunately, there were no guitar stores on this street or I might have fallen into a narcissistic coma.
I photographed this little shop window in September, 2007, while visiting Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. I’m not sure if this statement on their storefront window is true, but I found it appealing nonetheless. I walked in with cheery confidence and bought a groovin’ t-shirt which has indeed made me like myself more. Fortunately, there were no guitar stores on this street or I might have fallen into a narcissistic coma.
The New 1776
by Gary Powell
This site is a very personal self-help manual for me. When beginning my career in music, the kind of mentoring insights, like the ones found here, were either absent, misleading, or simply wrong. Within this site we have visited Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Aristotle, Rosa Parks and even Joseph Stalin. All of these people have a connection to the American holiday of July 4th; all positive ones, excepting the latter. 
Joseph Stalin represents the worst of what human beings are capable of when our institutions, governments and lizard-brain fears become enmeshed.
by Gary Powell
This site is a very personal self-help manual for me. When beginning my career in music, the kind of mentoring insights, like the ones found here, were either absent, misleading, or simply wrong. Within this site we have visited Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Aristotle, Rosa Parks and even Joseph Stalin. All of these people have a connection to the American holiday of July 4th; all positive ones, excepting the latter. Joseph Stalin represents the worst of what human beings are capable of when our institutions, governments and lizard-brain fears become enmeshed.