Thomas J. West Music

If you are a high school band director in the U.S., you most likely have had to take an active role in recruiting and retaining students for your band. There are many obstacles and roadblocks that discourage students from joining or remaining in your program. It goes without saying that having a strong feeder program at the elementary and middle school leve...

Throughout my experience as a musician, I have grown through many different kinds of experiences. I began as a child enjoying music performance. In order to remain involved with the kinds of performing groups I enjoyed as a student, I became a music teacher. Gradually over the course of my teaching career, I found myself increasingly interested in teaching m...

Because of the flexibility of the Music Professional Learning Network website, there are even more ways to filter and handle the content. Yesterday, I created a video and blog entry to take you through the basics. There are even more ways of makin...

Students with special needs are being included more and more in the public schools. Teachers often hear statements to the effect that music is a universal language, and music is great for everyone. As a result, students with disabilities are being included in music classes and lessons more often than other areas. Music is seen as an equalizer.Unfortunately music teachers aren’t ...

The Music Professional Learning Network is just over a week old, and the response has been nothing short of explosive. Over 300 users have registered, over 700 status updates have been generated, and over 100 forum topics have been created!

One of the common questions that new members have had as they grow accustomed to the site is "What's the best way to keep up with all of the great ...

Over the three years that my website has been publishing articles, I have written many special topics on music learning and how modern neurology is providing powerful information on the way we master a musical instrument. I have also done more than one article on

It's amazing to me how my attitude stacks the deck in my favor and seredipity is the result. Back at the end of April, Hal Leonard Books was promoting the newest version of Janet Horvath's monumental book Playing (less) Hurt. They had a little contest on

Today, a YouTube video came across the #musedchat PLN on Twitter. It has earned a spot on the video page of my website! Yes, it's that big of a deal.

As an ensemble music director at the secondary level, one often takes for granted the importance and power of having a good role model for student musicians to emulate. Most high school programs with full-sized (or at least decent-sized) ensembles have at least one player in each section who serves as a role model to the rest in terms of technique, tone, style, and e...

In a recent Music Education Chat on Twitter, the topic we were discussing was "What is your criteria for selecting great repertoire and weeding out poor repertoire?" In the midst of that chat, the discussion turned to the practice of allowing students to have input i...