“For those who would ask, ‘… and just how does art benefit my business?’, I would offer, ‘If your business has important, pioneering work to do, then develop artful capabilities in your associates just as well as technical skills, else you’ll work at half-strength at best, and risk losing all the benefit of […]
Here’s a little movie to give you a sense of some of the different things that have happened during our Thursday night jams. If you’re in the area, please come join us! Email me at nancy@salwen.net to get directions!
I’m going to share a little movie that shows one of my students and I talking over Skype. She is located in Western Canada and I am in New Hampshire, so this is a little bit of a miracle.
When Rovena started she had a hard time singing more than one or two notes at a time […]
This is something we do: 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month we get together and improvise music together. We start Drum Circle style and then see where the magic takes us. You never know!
What’s really cool about this is that musicians, and people with absolutely NO musical experience can play together. The games and […]
Most of us would agree music is good for us; it’s fun and important. It’s a great mood regulator. Music is comforting us when we’re down and cheers us on when we’re happy.
Music energizes us, motivating us to exercise, clean the house and buy things […]
I use improvisation all the time in my singing workshops and lessons because it is through improvisation that we can get comfortable with our voices, and into a state where we can really explore from a place of non-judgmental […]
This photo is from an article about babies and imitation. Imitation is a key skill for both beginning and experienced singers for some of the same reason that it helps babies learn – interesting!
Everybody deserves to sing! People have been singing for […]
I often hear “non-singers” say that they are tone deaf. If there is such a thing as tone-deafness I’ve never met anyone who actually suffers from it. “With life-long certainty I told Nancy I was tone-deaf and within two minutes she had me matching a note she […]
I came across this powerful video today about a series of choruses in England for people experiencing mental illness – it’s part of a program is called the “East Kent Singing for Health Network”. I think this is a pretty extraordinary organization – I’m impressed with how they think about singing in England – community singing seems much […]
Check out this blues improv. It says so much! The value of listening and responding unselfconciously – this is what we learn to do at Music for People. The guidebook for the program is called Return to Child. How cool to sing so unselfconsciously! And to be able to connect so […]