rdole
TromboneRunner
Living life, playing trombone, running and exercising to change/improve my life.
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Freelance PSA #2: Taping Parts
Freelance PSA #2: Taping Parts
The stage!
The lights!
The audience!
The life of a gigging musician! Exciting! Travel the world! Create a network of fellow musicians in every city and town and region!
This is all true but there is a less glamorous underside to the exotic life of a freelancing musician. This underbelly side of the business, people do not see or even think about.
This dark side of the musical arts, although…
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#giggin musician#gigging trombone#professional musician#professional player#professional trombone#professional trombone player#taping parts
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Freelance PSA #1: Time
Freelance PSA #1: Time
Time.
Time should be a friend of the musical freelancer, but too many times Time is viewed as the enemy. “There isn’t enough TIME.”“What TIME is the gig?”“What TIME should I get there?”“What TIME should I leave for the gig?”“Can I play in TIME?”“Do I have good TIME?”
Many of these questions do not get asked enough by many people freelancing as musicians. I’m going to leave the more musical…
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DMA Update, Spring 2022
DMA Update, Spring 2022
Well, hello everyone!
It has been a while since I’ve written anything or given any update to those I don’t regularly run into anymore. I don’t peruse FaceBook anymore because I just found it depressing to discover people that I know are actually racist bigots and were hiding their true self from our interactions. So, I left FaceBook to just concentrate on my studies and music. I kept my FB…
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NEWS! (of the life changing kind)
NEWS! (of the life changing kind)
Well, I guess it is high time to let this personal news begin to scamper out into the wilderness. I have a pretty darn big announcement to make, so let me get right to it by knocking down some of the “what could it be” thoughts you may be having at this moment.
The news is NOT:
Another pregnancy. We are happy with out two beautiful children. Adding a third would damn near be impossible to…
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#college teaching#doctorate in music#family musician#trombone education#trombone performance#university teaching
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Recital, Feb. 23rd! 7:30pm!
Recital, Feb. 23rd! 7:30pm!
I’m very excited and happy to announce that on Tuesday, February 23rd at 7:30pm, I will be presenting a joint recital with my pal and radio co-host, Matthew Altizer. Although on this recital, we won’t be playing a piece together, we have a stellar program of really interesting and fun music for you!
You can view this recital LIVE by going to the recital page for the Butler Arts Center: Duckwall…
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2020 Was No Fun. Let's Look Ahead to '21!
2020 Was No Fun. Let’s Look Ahead to ’21!
Well, what a year. Like a stalled out hurricane hitting the coast, 2020 arrived, stayed for a while, dumped on all of us, and is finally moving on. Or more succinctly, we are moving on to 2021! Before I fully embrace 2021, I’m going to pull some positives from 2020. We all could write pages and pages on bad things that happened and we could write even more pages about the good things that DIDN’T…
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Keep Indy Creating Relief Fund
Keep Indy Creating Relief Fund
youtube
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Pandemic Practicing
Global Pandemic.
Stay-at-Home Orders.
Gigs Receding Into Oblivion.
Oh My!
What are we to do? How can we go from playing rehearsals or concerts 4-5 times per week to playing nothing? How will we keep our chops up and running? And WHY should we keep our chops up and running if there are no gigs on the horizon?
Well, to quote my friend Jim Pugh, we practice today so our practicing…
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Freelancing 2020 and Beyond
Freelancing 2020 and Beyond
A full indoor wedding gig during COVID…a bad decision.
It is hard to know where to start when discussing the *new* freelancing situation many of my musical colleagues and I find ourselves. We have been put in a near impossible position to choose between our financial livelihood and our health and well-being. I realize that musicians and artists are not the only people having to make this terrible…
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Forced Vacation: Week 3 and 4
Forced Vacation: Week 3 and 4 How is the time going by so slowly AND so fast?
I sat down to write this blog around April 10th, now it is April 20th. Where did the time go? I wanted to write a blog post a week about this new paradigm in my freelance career, yet I can hardly seem to find the time to do it!
Where does the time go?
I know everybody has different situations and different responsibilities during this ‘shelter-in-place’ moment in our world, but one thing that…
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Here is a new scale sheet that we can work on during our ‘Forced Vacation’!
ii-V-I is so much fun!!!
ii V I scales – SCORE
Forced Vacation…New Scales! Here is a new scale sheet that we can work on during our 'Forced Vacation'! ii-V-I is so much fun!!! ii V I scales - SCORE
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Freelance Notebook: Week Two
Well, how is everybody doing? I hope that everyone is finding projects to do, books to read, and music to explore. Above all I really do hope that everyone stays healthy and as positive as possible.
The most interesting thing that I have found during this ‘new era’, is that I find myself overwhelmingly exhausted at the end of the day. Other than a walk or two with the family, I haven’t left the…
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Social Distancing Warm-Up (w/DOCS!)
Please download these two documents to play morning warm-ups with me!
I’m all set up, ready to go for the beginning of my Forced Vacation Morning Warm-Ups! I hope to do this more often than not, and I hope you join me whenever you are able!
These 2 documents are the two I will be using, please feel free to download it, print it, and use it for our times together!
Forced Vacation Warm up – SCORE
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Social Distancing Trombone Warm-Up
Keeping up a schedule is not easy. I’m trying to keep my kids on a school day schedule (read about THAT adventure here), but keeping myself on a schedule is a different story. In order to get myself motivated, showered and dressed, I’m starting a
TROMBONE WARM-UP Facebook LIVE session!!!!!!!
This is taking place at 10am EST on my FaceBook music page: Richard Dole Music
Won’t you join me? Click…
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Pandemic Parental Pedagogy
Teaching at home due to school closures while a health emergency rises globally is a scenario I never thought I’d have to worry about five and a half years ago when I became a parent.
Yet, here we are.
We are 4 days into our ‘At-Home Learning’ lifestyle and we are doing A-OK! No problem here at all! Griffin, age 5, and Ellington, age 3 are well behaved beautiful angels. They never talk back,…
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Coronavirus Collection
As long as we listen to and heed the advice of the health professionals, the Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization, we can get through this as calm, rational, and informed citizens.
I am not a medical professional, but I trust medical professionals and the advice and information they provide.
Each day there are more articles, more information (and dis-information), and questions/concerns put out there about the COVID-19 global pandemic that make figuring out what to do, how to do it, and what to KNOW more and more difficult! I wanted to compile a quick reference list with…
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Amid all of the worry, panic, and ‘social distancing’ we find ourselves in, I thought it was perhaps a good idea to begin to focus on all of the positive things that can happen during the week or two (or three) we freelancers have off of work. I think I’ve wallowed in my own self-pity long enough. It’s time to turn this energy I’m putting into worrying about lost work into some actions and projects that will be beneficial when all of this is over.
In addition to all of the extra parenting with Stacy I’ll be doing (both my kids ages 5 and 3 are home for the next 3 weeks…), I’m going to break up my isolation by trying to better myself in four ways:
Practicing
Reading
Listening
Writing
I want to come out of this ‘Forced Vacation’ with some embers in the fire. I want to hit the ground running when the social distancing is lifted and gigs, rehearsals, heck just regular life is reinstated.
Here’s a brief rundown of what I’m putting together for myself to do in order to keep occupied these coming weeks:
I have all my horns ready to go at a moments notice!
Practicing: Lot’s of practicing will be happening in the coming weeks. I have a bass trombone recital scheduled on December 8th at Butler University (please come on out!), so I plan on getting my tempos and phrases together so I can get the edited piano music to my pianist ASAP. I’ll also be learning/relearning some jazz standards. Of course I’ll be practicing all modes of my scales all over the range of each horn. Although I don’t plan on taking any orchestral auditions in the near future, I’ll mix in some of the top 20 bass trombone orchestral excerpts, because why not! It’s fun!
This app, TonalEnergy, is great! I try to use it at least 25-30 minutes each practice session each day. So far, I’ve only missed 2 days in 2020.
Reading: Each year I set goals in the app/website ‘Goodreads‘. This year I set a goal to read 40 books. So far I’m up to 12. This break will present a nice opportunity to sit and get some serious reading done. I’ve been going back and forth between some lighter/fun books and some heavier political or intense fictions. I try to mix it up, but maybe during this time, I’ll dig into the presidential biographies that have been piling up! Of course I’ll be keeping up with the daily news by reading portions of the NYTimes, The Guardian, Reuters and NPR.
Someday, I’ll get through all of these. Better get to it!
Great books ready to go on the Kindle!
Someday, I’ll get through all of these. Better get to it!
Listening: This category is two-fold.
First I’ll be listening to some great music I need to know. Some of the music will be new releases I receive as host of a weekly jazz radio show ‘Have You Heard‘, some of the music will be of artists I want to get to know better. I’ve created a ‘Forced Vacation’ playlist on Spotify and I invite you to add music to it! I plan on listening to a bit of everything!
Secondly, I’ll be listening to and catching up with some amazing podcasts! There is so much great material out there, it’s sometimes hard to choose where to start, but I can guarantee I’ll be keeping up with Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett Or Leave It, Stay Tunes with Preet, 1A, and Fresh Air. This is a lot to take on, but if there is some extra time, I’ll throw in an episode of 1619, The Wilderness, or Hardcore History.
Writing: This is also a two-fold plan!
First, writing with words. Big words. With this blog. I intend to write here about freelancing, trombone playing in general, parenting and perhaps other random thoughts that I just want to write about.
I’ll also be writing more music. I want to expand some of the tunes I’ve written and start building a ‘catalog’ of original music for the various ensembles I work with. I also have some ideas for new projects I’ll need to write for, and I’m quite excited about actually having the time to do that!
Although I’m losing work over the next 3 weeks (as of 3.14), I have plenty to keep my mind and curiosity busy so that when this COVID-19 isolation is over, I’ll come out of it a much improved musician and person!
Thanks scary virus for being a catalyst to better my life!
A positive take on the canceling of gigs! How we get through this is what matters! Amid all of the worry, panic, and 'social distancing' we find ourselves in, I thought it was perhaps a good idea to begin to focus on all of the positive things that can happen during the week or two (or three) we freelancers have off of work.
#bass trombone#freelance#jazz trombone#listening list#reading list#social distancing#trombone playing
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