Do you want to be a great musician? A well-rounded musician? Maybe you’re already a good musician, and you want to take that next step. To do that, you need to be able to sight-read well, play by ear, compose or improvise, understand the art of practice, and be versatile in many other ways. The Musician Toolkit explores these tools, how to improve them, and how you can apply them to a variety of gigs and musical careers whether you’re a professional musician or a committed artist who makes y ...
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Composing and Improvising are essential tools for every well-rounded musician, but they are different skills. Quite often, when someone decides to become a composer, they are making up something from their instrument and then writing it down on staff paper. This is actually more of a transcribed improvisation than it is true composition. There's no…
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Creating Value as an Entrepreneurial Musician (with Brian Witkowski) | Ep71
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Many professional musicians and music teachers struggle with charging what their worth, or even what they need to charge to make even a decent living. Brian Witkowski of The Lucrative Artist helps musicians and other artists to develop their "money voice", to change the way they think about money. In this episode, we chat about a variety of ways th…
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Helpful and Harmful Practice Mindsets | Ep70
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Even after you've scheduled your practice time each day and planned what your focus is during that time, the mindset you bring to your practice will absolutely affect how well or poorly you do during your session. There are 5 common types of practice mindsets, 2 which are helpful and 3 which are not. Which one or ones do you gravitate towards the m…
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The Business Side of Private Teaching (with Andrea Miller) | Ep69
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If you're an independent teacher, there are a number of important steps to go from being a hobbyist to becoming a legitimate business. Andrea Miller of Music Studio Startup talks about all of this including making a decision about becoming an LLC and what steps go with that if you choose, making quarterly tax estimates, deductions, and other genera…
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25 MORE Essential Classical Pieces You Should Know | Ep68
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This is a follow-up to Episode 17 from last year, where this podcast introduced 25 pieces of classical music, not necessarily the best or most acclaimed pieces, but 25 that you should know even if classical music is not your genre of focus. Even after 25 more pieces, there are so many that were left out, but this plus the previous episode in this s…
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Instrument Spotlight: The French Horn (with Kate Warren) | Ep67
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The Instrument Spotlight series within The Musician Toolkit is meant to introduce instruments as possible primary or secondary instruments, the challenges, the repertoire, and the capabilities. Kate Warren is a freelance hornist and educator who also serves as Yaffe Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow for the Yale School of Music's Music in Schools Initi…
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This episode is primarily meant as a primer for music students. It gives a very broad overview of music history from the Medieval era through what we might call modern classical music. This episode is limited to Western civilization and some of the common composers. This episode also offers David Lane's suggestion that we should rethink how we've c…
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Learning Different Instruments (with Ronnal Ford) | Ep65
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Dr. Ronnal Ford has learned to play, on a professional level, all of the woodwind and stringed instruments of the orchestra in addition to a few others. He talks about how he approaches learning a new instrument. He also talks about the challenges of being a musician of color in the classical community, and some of the recent opportunities that hel…
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Adjusting Your Goals: Balancing Reality and Ambition | Ep64
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Should you strive for big and hard goals, or safe goals that are fairly easy to attain? What do you do when it becomes obvious that you won't reach a goal by the deadline you gave yourself? This episode talks about these questions, along with the importance of balance, grace, pivot, and the importance of failure and discomfort. Let me know your tho…
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Overcoming the Intermediate Plateau | Ep63
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If you're studying music and find yourself unable to progress, or are progressing too little in your opinion when considering your practice time, don't despair. You are experiencing something very common in music and in plenty of other skill areas: the intermediate plateau. This episode discusses why it exists and 7 things you can do to break throu…
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Improving Sight Reading by Touch (with David Holter) | Ep62
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Anyone who seeks to become better a better sight reader will find a lot of information on what your eyes should be doing as you play, but there has not been nearly as much focus on what your hands should be feeling. If you play the piano or other instrument that involves a lot of movement with the hands, can you manage steps and leaps with accuracy…
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Building a Staircase to Success in Music | Ep61
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Whether it's composing a big piece, trying to master difficult repertoire, or wanting to build a full-time teaching studio when you don't even have your first student, it's easy to see the target far in the distance. Learning how to build and climb a staircase will help you accomplish absolutely any goal you have, big or small! Previous episode ref…
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A Better Way to Practice Slowly | Ep60
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If you've had a music teacher at any point in your life, you've probably heard the advice to "slow down". It is truly excellent advice...if you approach it a certain way. If your idea of practicing slowly is to make everything proportionately slower (as if someone filmed you full speed and then put the video in slow motion), this is only one way, a…
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Goals, Motivation, and Organization (with Melissa Slocum) | Ep59
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Whether you're a teacher or a performing musician, you'll only go as far as your goals, your system for dealing with lack of motivation, and your organization. The guest for this episode is Melissa Slocum - piano teacher, business coach, and podcaster. We talk about a variety of topics in this episode, including better ways to think about goals, a …
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The Circle of 5ths and All It Reveals | Ep58
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No single visual aid shows more aspects of how music works than the Circle of 5ths (sometimes called Circle of Keys and Circle of 4ths). Besides its more widely known uses for showing the order of sharps and flats along with the keys in sharp and flat order, it also shows scale degree frequency, primary and secondary triads, chord groupings, and mo…
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Physical Wellness for Musicians (with Angela McCuiston) | Ep57
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So many musicians sit for hours a day, or perform a similar motion repeatedly, or maintain their arms in a fixed position...or some combination of those three, and they lead to injuries or fatigue in more than 90% of musicians at some point in their career. The majority of issues are correctable and even preventable. The guest for this episode is A…
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Scales, Modes, and How to Use Them | Ep56
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Basic classical music education introduces students to a major scale, 3 types of minor scales, and a chromatic scale. If you continue a little deeper, you might get a passing introduction to the modes (such as dorian and phyrigian), the whole tone scale, pentatonic scales, and maybe the diminished scale, not to mention non-Western and even syntheti…
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New Year’s Goals Part 2: 10 Musical Goals for 2024 | Ep55
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On Episode 53, we offered 12 areas you want to consider reducing or eliminating in order to clear room on your slate. This episode follows up to offer 10 specific musical goals that you can add to your own goals in order to become a better more well-rounded musician this upcoming year! Prior episodes mentioned: New Year's Goals Part 1: Letting Some…
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3 Personal Favorite Pieces of Christmas Music | Ep54
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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all our listeners! This short episode is an introduction to David's 3 favorite pieces of Christmas music: Samuel Barber: Die Natali Benjamin Britten: Ceremony of Carols Les Brown & His Band of Renown: Nutcracker Suite *In the episode, Episode 54 is promoted as part 2, but that episode will be a special Christma…
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New Year’s Goals Part 1: Letting Some Things Go | Ep53
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This week's episode and next offer some suggestions on New Year's goals. Episode 55* will deal with suggested goals for getting things done or accomplished, but this week's Episode 53 is important to check out first. Before you can really get things accomplished that matter to you the most as a musician, you have to make room in your life by auditi…
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8 Tips for Becoming a Better Teacher | Ep52
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David Lane is about to celebrate 24 years of being a private teacher for piano, composition, and theory. He offers 8 tips for becoming a better teacher, some easy-to-apply things that he was not doing from the very beginning, each of which has made him a better and happier teacher. Let me know your thoughts on this episode at https://www.speakpipe.…
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Composing for Television Series (with Sherri Chung) | Ep51
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Sherri Chung is a composer of numerous television and streaming series, including Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, Kung Fu, Riverdell, Based on a True Story, and more. We talk about her career but also about creativity, the importance of a full education in music composition and orchestration (rather than just specializing in one type of music) and…
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Two Mindset Skills to Transform Your Musicianship | Ep50
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To become a great musician, it's helpful to spend time studying scores, reading books, getting guided instruction, and other things that cost a lot of time and/or money. However, there are two mindset skills that are free and don't require an expert to teach them to you, and those skills are gratitude and curiosity. In this episode, I explain why t…
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From Impossible to Inevitable - Get the Ball Rolling | Ep49
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If there's something big you want to do like learning a challenging piece, writing a large-scale work, starting a band, opening or expanding a teaching studio, or something else that you keep putting off...it sometimes seems like you just can't even get started. All you have to do is get the ball rolling. It's a combination of finding the simple fi…
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Producing an Album and Continuing Education (with Conner Cherland) | Ep48
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Conner Cherland is an L.A. based musician who left a job in the tech industry 7 years ago to become a full-time musician. He talks about his tools to success, including his commitment to high-volume creation with the understanding that not all songs are keepers, a great networking tip he's used to get big wedding and party gigs, and also the work t…
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Tactics for Memorizing Music | Ep47
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In Episode 42, we talked about the importance of memorization as a musician, but didn't really talk about HOW to memorize music. Like almost every musical skill, memorization is very easy for some musicians while very difficult for others. This episode talks about the importance of getting your eyes in the right place, mindfulness, engaging your se…
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5 X 5 Practicing for Consistently Accurate Performance | Ep46
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Frequency and consistency are 2 hallmarks of great practice for musicians. That is to say: If you practice often, and you play your music the same way every time, you have the most important fundamentals of practicing well! 5 X 5 Practice is an easy-to-remember template that combines both frequency and consistency. In essence, you choose a techniqu…
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It's not uncommon for a teacher to hear this from a parent who is discontinuing lessons. "They won't practice unless I tell them to do it." Sometimes we're talking about a 7 or 8 year old child. Parents and, sometimes, teachers can have unrealistic expectations for how much children should CHOOSE to do the challenging work with practicing their ins…
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Conquering Finale...and Other Notation Programs (with Jason Loffredo) | Ep44
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Whether you're a composer, a teacher, or a performer, having a good music notation program that you know how to use well is a great tool! If you're convinced of that but don't have one already, one of the questions that everyone There are a lot of music notation programs to choose from, but there are 3 big ones: Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico. Jason …
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Here's a motivational episode for you for when you feel like your opportunities are too small, or nothing you do really matters. A great exercise for when you have any kind of success is to write down, step by step, all the opportunities you accepted that led to this point. Step by step. Not just what you did as a child studying music that led to y…
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Improvisation and Memorization (with Geoff Westley) | Ep42
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Geoff Westley is an active international performer, a pianist with a unique approach to programming. His concerts are 100% his own original music, and he doesn't write any of it down. In this episode, we talk about his approach to these concerts, thoughts on improvisation in general, how improvisation is a "lost art" among many classical musicians,…
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10 Non-Musician Books Every Musician Should Read | Ep41
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David Lane shares 10 of his favorite books that aren't about music, but they speak to a mindset or a strategy that absolutely will help musicians in their quest to be better at practice and be better at improving themselves in every way. The books discussed: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway The Right Call The Infinite Game Effortless Grip Atomic Habi…
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Designing a Website That Works (with Taylor Rossi) | Ep40
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One tool every musician should have in 2023 for getting gigs or students is a good website, one that actually generates leads and revenue. Taylor Rossi is a musician as well as a web designer. She talks about the things that musicians are doing too much of and what they're not doing enough of to have a better website. We also talk about SEO and gen…
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The Musician Examples You SHOULDN’T Follow | Ep39
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This podcast is committed to exploring all the traits that the most successful musicians around the world tend to cultivate, whether it involves the skills associated with making and understanding the music, or the mental, emotional, and social skills that go into having a successful career. There are so many great examples to emulate, but there ar…
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Deciphering Written Rhythms (with David Krosner) | Ep38
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One of the tools of musicianship that was mentioned in Episode 1 is the ability to play well any written rhythm. Why so specific? Why WRITTEN rhythm instead of just saying that we should be good at rhythm. It's because they are completely different skills, and you're probably already good at one of them whether you know it or not, but the other one…
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Composing Your Own Practice Etudes | Ep37
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This is a full episode response to a listener question. On an earlier episode about practice, it was mentioned that composing an etude based on a tricky measure or group of measures is a good way to not only conquer that measure, but passages like it that you might face in the future. A listener asked David Lane: How do you compose your own practic…
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Relocating as a Musician (with Robonzo) | Ep36
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If you're a working musician, chances are that at least once in your life, you'll move to another area. You're moving to an area with established musicians and trying to get your foot in the door. What are some of the things you can do? Robonzo is a drummer who has established a working network in the areas of Fort Worth/Dallas and San Francisco, a…
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Accomplish More by Being Specific | Ep35
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Whether it's setting big goals for your life or even what you want to accomplish the next time you sit down to practice your instrument, one of the most powerful mindset tools you can employ is to be as specific as possible in what you expect to accomplish. It helps to be realistic about what you can accomplish with your current skills and the time…
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The Craft of Conducting (with Michelle Merrill) | Ep34
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Every musician should know a little about conducting. But what does a conductor really do, especially when working with professional musicians? How do they prepare for rehearsal and for a performance? Our guest this episode is Michelle Merrill, a conductor who previously served as Associate/Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra unde…
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Self-Improvement Through Performance Review | Ep33
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In the corporate world, it's customary to receive a performance review from your supervisor. A good review is objective, noting what you're doing well already and what needs improvement. When you're a solo musician or private teacher, a performance review is an important step that often gets ignored because...well, you're by yourself. However, by s…
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Collecting Instruments on a Budget (with Eric Perrotti) | Ep32
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Eric Perrotti is primarily a guitarist, but with a passion for learning as many instruments as possible, enough so that he has collected over 200! However, he has done so with a very modest budget. He talks about the approaches he has taken to learn all of these instruments in a self-taught way, as well as his strategies for finding great deals and…
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Where are you in your knowledge of music theory? It all starts with the fundamentals (a very broad category that takes a while to master) and there are multiple levels of each branch to know before you move on to other areas such as part-writing skills, analysis, and counterpoint. This episode will give you a checklist of skills and experiences. Ch…
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Playing Guitar for Pixar and More (with Andrew Synowiec) | Ep30
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Andrew Synowiec is a session musician, primarily as a guitarist, who has appeared on recordings of a variety of artists and bands, including The Who, Barbara Streisand, Megan Trainor, and M83. He's also performed on the soundtracks of several films and television series, including Cobra Kai, Frozen, Coco, A Good Day to Die Hard, Little Fockers, and…
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What Apps Do Musicians Use? | Ep29
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Whether it's a virtual metronome or tuner, notation software, games to improve your music theory or ear training, or more...musicians have plenty of choices and sometimes the need for apps to help them have a better practice experience, to learn skills, or simply to make the music. This is far from a comprehensive list, but includes categories of a…
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Composing for the Harp (with Danielle Kuntz) | Ep28
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If you're not a harpist and wanting to compose, the harp can be a mysterious instrument. It can play all of the notes of a chromatic scale, but only 7 in a time across all octaves. It has a similar range to the piano with a similar 2-staff system, but the harpist uses fewer fingers and approaches the notes from a different angles. There are pedal d…
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The Power of Quarterly Goals | Ep27
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Problem 1: Not having long-term goals puts us in the trap of focusing only on day-by-day or week-by-week tasks. We get things done, but we're not moving towards anything bigger. Problem 2: Long-term goals can be overwhelming, exhausting our patience and our discipline. Something that's going to take 2 or 3 years or longer can be very tough for stay…
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Basics of Studio Recording (with Liz May) | Ep26
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One of the tools every great musician should have in their toolkit is knowledge and experience of studio production. If you use a professional engineer in your projects, you'll be able to understand the process and communicate better. Often, you may be doing a DIY recording project, and want to get the best final product that you can. This is a hug…
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Heavy Metal 101, Part 2 (with Eric Schwartz) | Ep25
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This is the 2nd of an epic 2-episode look at the genre of heavy metal, both in terms of music history and theory. This 2nd episode takes more of a look at the history of heavy metal since 1980 through the lens of subgenres. Leading us on this journey is Eric Schwartz, a classical musician and lifelong metal fan who is a co-host of the podcast Heavy…
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Heavy Metal 101, Part 1 (with Eric Schwartz) | Ep24
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This is the first of an epic 2-episode look at the genre of heavy metal, both in terms of music history and theory. This first episode compares how heavy metal came to be and developed throughout the '70s and into the early '80s, and then compares its attributes with Baroque through Romantic era concerti, as well as what metal offers that distingui…
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30 Things I Would Tell Myself 30 Years Ago | Ep23
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It's graduation season! 30 years ago, host David Lane graduated from high school. Like so many adults, he's learned quite a bit since then, with some lessons harder than others. From advice about practicing his instrument, finances, health, marketing, networking, and more...here are 30 things he would tell himself 30 years ago if he could go back i…
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