What is that saying "Jack of all trades, master of none" ? I'm definitely one of those people who does bits of this and bits of that. I do (and have done) so many jobs, always trying to look for that perfect "life balance" and probably working more hours than an average 9-5 day job in the process :)
There is one thing that is constant in my life (wanted or not) and that is music. I have a kind of love hate relationship with music. I grew up wanting to be a star (a drummer) I loved every bit of playing in bands, writing songs and listening to a whole range of styles. I travelled Western Australia playing in towns full of red dust and jovial spirit. I studied hard to get accepted into "West Australian Academy Of Performing Arts" and graduated with a distinction in song writing (interesting when your major is drum kit). Whilst I learned many things in my time there, I lost many things too, the biggest being passion for music and in turn I lost my way and myself. I become numb to the basic love and enjoyment as it was replaced by text book techniques, dissecting every movement you made, every sound you heard. It was a telling time in my life and I gave away my life long dream and love and let it drift away. I deliberately distanced myself from music BIG TIME.
Being a highly emotional person means that music often brings me pain, not only from heartfelt lyrics but even particular chord progressions that "strike a chord" somewhere deep down. I left it all behind and stopped playing, listening and writing.
THE SHIFT
When I took off on a plane to China for a life and career change, music was far from my mind. I had no idea that heading of to teach ESL would see the delicate rekindling of a thoroughly wet down fire into a slow burning flame that came about through a fascination for the Traditional Chinese music. I could hear it everywhere. The odd looking instruments that played such simple tunes (that sounded like the songs I wrote as a child on all the black notes only along the keyboard). Gentle melodies and warm woody tones. Nothing to bend my mind around. I didn't know these instruments nor the way the musicians themselves came at (approached) the music...I had nothing to dissect and for the first time in a long time I could purely listen and enjoy.
The Power Of Guzheng
I set about purchasing a Guzheng (a traditional Chinese musical instrument) and when I got it home, I reveled in the feel of the wood and the round mellow open sound that literally flowed like water out of it's beautifully crafted shell. Like the black notes on the keyboard, it is pretty close to impossible to make this instrument sound bad....That is not to say that making it sound amazing is not an easy task. For me though...that wasn't an issue. I loved that Guzheng and whilst had to leave so many of my possessions behind in China for the big move back to Australia, that is the only one thing I truly miss. Here is a little video I recorded back in 2010 one of my first songs I learned on Guzheng.Onwards
After the revelation that I could indeed love music, I also purchased a keyboard music work station and set about composing my own songs again. This was for no reason other than the fact I wanted to. No gigs to go to, no songs for song writing class to be handed in for homework, no rehearsals or performances... This was just for me. A heap of stuff I wrote over there and to this day here now, is oriental inspired. It is perfect in its simplicity and I love it for that reason and so many more. I had no idea that my new career teaching ESL to 11-13 year old middle school Chinese students and my old music career were in the first stages of starting to merge to a whole new pathway.
The Art Of Creation
So days of teaching saw me drawing on some performance skills to "sell" my class. No mono tones and dreary theory allowed, my days melded into a constant search for lesson material to match or better the previous lesson. Students would definitely not allow a drop of any proportion in quality. If this happened, I would be held punishable by a fate worse than a rowdy classroom of 60 teenagers and that was a class of 60 teenagers bored out of their brains, talking, studying other subjects and successfully managing to make you feel like you were a T.V. on for background noise, as they did more important things.
This only had to happen once or twice for me to realize that I had to find a successful game plan and stick to it.
Chinese kids (like all kids around the world) love computer games. I learnt fast that there were PowerPoint ESL games to be found online and that were a huge hit with my classes, unfortunately I also found out (in class....which is not recommended) that they were full of glitches, crashed regularly, had spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and content could be touch and go as to level appropriateness. So the next trade I taught myself was obviously "Designing PowerPoint Games".
I watched and read every thing I could find online, joined in forum discussions and became a PPT Guru. And what do all good PPT's have....Good music....and BINGO!
Getting More For Your Buck
Some time throughout my teaching and designing lessons and learning games process I stumbled upon a web site called "Teachers Pay Teachers". This is an American based website that teachers can use like an online store to sell their own lessons. Somehow I'd ended up paddling along this stream of teaching (which surprisingly came easily to me and I enjoyed) and creating (lessons, music, sound files, designing). It was all kind of interlinked and whilst like anything I do it's no fast flowing body of water, It flows along nicely on it's way to....who knows where?
To view my products, games, music etc. there is a TpT store widget over to the right of this page or visit this link Clever Fox Lesson Box Store
Some links to my Sound Files also here Sound Files
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