Thomas J. West Music

One of the topics that I have pondered the most as a professional music educator is the role of music-making in our modern culture. As a young man in college charting my future, I had an epiphany during a bowl trip with the Penn State Marching Blue Band that this, indeed, this marching and concert band thing, was what I wanted to do. But how does one do that ...

In this new age of transparency thanks to the Internet, regimes in the middle east have crumbled, skeletons are coming out of closets, and many situations that were "don't ask, don't tell" in the recent past are no longer socially acceptable. The more public your life and your work are, the more of a responsibility ...

The following article is a guest post.

I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that there are lots of kids out there who want to learn guitar because they want to play like [insert guitar god here]. The bad news is that there are lots of kids out there who want to learn guitar because they want to play like [insert guitar god here].

This presents ...

I have been offering live private music lessons via webcam since 2008. Over that course of time, the online environment has changed dramatically thanks to social media advances. Despite these trends, my student roster continues to be sporadic and modest in size. I had attributed that primarily to the notion that online lessons had ...

There is no question that trained musicians who offer private lessons deserve to be compensated fairly for the time and effort they put in to teaching private lesson students. There is also no question that in the current global economic slump, less people can afford to pay for private lessons at $40 or more an hour.

I have been ...

While sharing a few articles with the Facebook Band Directors PLN today, I saw the announcement that W. Francis McBeth had passed away.

Read Southern Music Company's Announcement HERE

McBeth had a long and pro...

Even before the final strains of the December Winter Concert float into the air, I am already contemplating repertoire selection for my spring concert. Choosing concert repertoire is one of the most important decisions that the director of a public school performing ensemble has to make. Y...

Things have been pretty quiet on my blog lately, and with good reason. Besides my extremely busy schedule with my primary teaching job, I am currently involved in two projects that have taken up a lot of my available time and energy. The first of those projects is org...

As my regular readers are aware, I teach at a unique school. It is a performing and fine arts center that is a program offering of a K-12 cyber charter school. Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School currently has about 2,300 students statewide. They receive their education on school provided PC's using primarily Moodle,...

There are many things that are not covered in an undergraduate music education degree that every music teacher needs to know. One of the things I learned the hard way is the impact that the community you serve as a music teacher directly affects the philosophy and quality level of the entire K-12 music program.

In my first teachi...