Orinsaxophone - Eek!

Just so you know, a normal response to a child breaking something is to first check to see if they got hurt and then if they’re old enough make them help clean it up. And then afterwards explaining to them how to avoid doing that in the future. At no point is yelling necessary to make them understand why they shouldn’t do that.

"you'd be seen with me in a public place like a department store?"

seymour and audrey, best T4T lovers to ever exist. i'm just testing the waters for my LSOH designs, but i like these two a lot so far!

[ID: a digital painting of seymour and audrey from little shop of horrors, facing each other and smiling. seymour is chubby with light brown skin, short dark curly hair, and glasses with a bandaid on his cheek, wearing a tan sweater over a light blue checkered shirt. audrey is skinny with pale skin, short wavy red hair, blue eyeshadow and a black eye, weaing an off-the-shoulder black dress and full-length gloves. the background is turquoise and 3 white lines.]

how it feels to stop tossing and turning and get up to piss

Today, May 17th, would be Howard Ashman's 75th birthday. If you aren't already aware, Howard Ashman worked with Alan Menken to create the wonderful musical Little Shop of Horrors, which has had an undeniable affect on myself and my life. Ashman would go on to work with Menken on multiple Disney films; The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and he even did a lot of early work for Aladdin. He sadly passed away in 1991, during the production of Beauty and the Beast.

Howard Ashman was primarily a lyricist, but he was also a very talented and passionate storyteller. He had such a strong grasp on what made a compelling musical, and in all of his work you can feel an earnest passion for what was created, I think. I personally have a lot of love for the stories him and Alan Menken have brought into the world.

I'd like to conclude my post with words posted today by Alan Menken himself:

Howard Ashman would have turned 75 today. And I'll always ponder what we might have shared and the new works we might have created together in those 35 extra years. Still I somehow know, deep in my heart, that his spirit has been an integral part of everything I've accomplished since his passing. Happy Birthday, Howard!

- Alan Menken

i had a vision

YOU GUYS ARE ALL FUCKING PSYCHOPATHS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON

If you are thinking of going to college to study an instrument, whether you are an education or performance major, start developing a healthy relationship to practicing now.

When you get to college, you will be expected to practice way more than you currently do. You may be the best musician at your current school; that will likely change in college. You won’t be the only person who is practicing daily anymore.

Your band directors and your private lesson instructors will want you to practice as much as possible. You may see your peers practicing 4+ hours per day. You will feel a lot of pressure to practice more no matter how diligent you already are.

Practicing is a skill that you need to learn. There are a lot of aspects to practicing that you will learn for yourself; however, from a health perspective, these are the three main skills you should learn.

All of these are from the perspective of a band kid. These may or may not apply to strings, piano, etc.

Make sure you have good playing posture

If you didn’t have a private instructor, it is very likely that you learned to play your instrument from a director who played something else. To avoid stress injuries, it is essential that you perfect your posture before you go to music school.

No matter what instrument you play, you need to have a relaxed posture with no tension. Your shoulders should be down and back; you should sit straight up without straining; you should not be gripping your instrument any tighter than you need to support it. I have a tendency to push my clarinet up and out from my body while I’m playing, and I grip it very tightly during technical passages. These issues led to me getting carpal tunnel twice in two semesters.

Along with this, look up some back and wrist stretches to do before and after playing to relieve pain and prevent injury.

Motivate yourself to practice without shaming yourself

You cannot bully yourself into wanting to practice. Shaming yourself for not being a good enough musician, worrying that you’re falling behind, comparing yourself to your peers, all of these things will cause you an immense amount of stress and make you dread practicing. It will become a chore and a punishment, not something that you do because you love playing and want to improve.

It’s similar to how motivating yourself to exercise just to lose weight is an unhealthy and, often, ineffective strategy. You’re thinking of exercise as a punishment for not having the body you want, rather than something you do because you love yourself. I was never able to make myself work out until I started doing it because it improves my mental health, rather than because I thought I needed to lose weight. And even if the shame does motivate you to work out, it will be hard to give yourself a break if you need it because “I have to do this.” It’s the same with practicing.

Learn to practice because it is time spent on something you love, not because you’re a failure without it. Practicing is absolutely essential to a music degree, but it doesn’t have to be a source of stress and shame.

Know your limits

You do not have to push yourself as hard as you possibly can to be a good musician. Steady progress is far more beneficial for your musicianship and your overall health than burning yourself out or getting injured from over-practicing.

I cannot consistently practice for more than two hours per day. Whether I practice all at once or break it up into multiple sessions, that is my physical and mental limit. Your limit may be higher or lower than that; that is perfectly okay. Practice for an amount of time that you can be consistent with every single day. When you know how much time you are going to spend practicing, you can design your practice sessions to fit your goals within that time frame.

However, it’s also important to give yourself breaks when you need them. There are going to be days where you just cannot get yourself to practice; you are allowed to take days off. While consistency is key, everyone needs breaks once in a while. You should also watch out for signs of pain or frustration while you’re already practicing. If you are in pain or getting frustrated, distracted, and tired, you can (and should) stop. “No pain, no gain” is a lie. Take breaks before your body takes matters into its own hands.

My strategy for figuring out if I genuinely can’t practice or if I’m just having executive dysfunction is to give myself a short warmup that I play every day - in my case, all the major and minor scales (I alternate between NM, HM, and MM each day). It takes about 10 minutes.

If the issue is that starting things is hard, I’ll get invested in practicing and I’ll continue my session. If I still don’t want to practice after doing scales, I take that as my sign that something is wrong and I need to take the day off.

whys he so hot i cant handle it

hey.

Sometimes it feels like you've lived your whole life in a house that's always a little bit on fire. Like it's usually just in one room and you make sure to wet the walls around it so it doesn't spread and that usually works. You were expected to take more responsibility over fire containment when you were like seven because it's not like you can expect your parents to always be 100% on guard about making sure the whole house doesn't catch fire, and you figure that's just how things are like.

And sometimes as a kid you visit your friends' homes and some of then whisper to you - grimacing with embarrassment - about how they're not supposed to tell anyone this, but there's a whole room in their house that's currently on fire. And you're like yeah it's ok I'm not supposed to tell people about the way our house is a little bit on fire all the time, too. And then you visit some other friend's house and there's no trace of fire anywhere, and you think "wow, these people are really good at hiding their house fire."

And one day you show up to work like "hey sorry I'm late, I forgot to wet the walls before going to bed last night and my whole house burned down", and you're startled by the way people react, acting like that must be the worst thing that has ever happened to you. And you're just like "chill, it's been years since the last time this happened, and it wasn't even that bad this time", and that just makes people more shocked, acting like that's the weirdest and most concerning thing they've ever heard anyone say, which only confuses you more.

And then someone tries to explain to you that people aren't supposed to have an ongoing house fire. Most people actually never experience a house fire in their lives. Like not even once. Not even a little bit. The normal amount of having your house be currently on fire is zero.

The older I get the less I can comprehend grown-ass adults being mean to kids, people in customer service, and especially teenagers in customer jobs. Saw some kid in a fast food place in an uniform that clearly stated "work training" and how I feel is almost exactly the same as seeing a little puppy in a harness that says "guide dog in training, do not disturb".

Like oh my god little baby has a job! Good job small baby!