The Art of Piano Pedagogy on Facebook

For those of you on Facebook (which is just about everybody these days), The Art of Piano Pedagogy is quickly becoming one of the go-to places for ideas and discussions on piano pedagogy. The member list (1500+) reads like a who's who of active piano teachers from all around the globe. Posts on the front page cover topics on business, methods, materials, and teaching strategies. It's well worth a look if you spend as much time on Facebook as I do these days. And if you're one of the few dozen in the profession who steadfastly refuses to join Facebook, here is yet one more reason to reconsider.

Show Guides for Music Directors

Peter Hilliard at Music Directing the School Musical has taken the time to create two music director's guides for frequently performed shows, covering versions, casting, materials, errata, and advice on trouble spots.These are incredibly useful resources and hopefully he has more on the way.

Annie: A Rough Guide for the M.D.
Thoroughly Modern Millie: A Rough Guide for the M.D.

Speedlinking - 1 February 2011

Image by Carlos Andres Rivera

Here are links to some awesome articles from around the collaborative piano blogosphere:

• If you're a music director, great rehearsals don't just happen, they are planned. Geraldine Boyer-Cussac discusses 5 steps to plan music rehearsals, which is required reading for anyone wishing to make the rehearsal process flow more efficiently. 
• Playing a recital with someone out of town? Kennith Freeman looks at Long Distance Recitals and how to plan them when eventual rehearsal time will be at a premium.
• Laura Lowe has authored a very useful primer on how to be a choral accompanist. Part I looks at learning the voice parts, Part II discusses the process of preparing the accompaniment, and Part III tackles the art of playing a choral rehearsal. 
• Do you really need someone else to tell you if you're playing too loud or not? Gretchen Saathoff's list of tools on how to balance the piano with other performers should help you discover that sweet spot for volume all by yourself, thank you very much. 
• So just what type of collaborative pianist are you? Billie Whittaker has created a hilarious infographic on the many roles of collaborative pianists.

Music Ministry Links

The music ministry is a sector of the collaborative piano world which I have sadly neglected in these pages, so a huge thanks goes to Sarah Jones on Facebook for a heads-up about another excellent collaborative piano-oriented blog: Perspectives of a Church Accompanist. Laurie Iskat looks at important issues for the church pianist, including:

• Warmups for Choirs and Accompanists
• Prelude to a Prelude
• Playing for Invitations
• Using Young People in the Music Service
• Stepping Up the Transpositions
• Seven Tips for Playing Hymn Introductions

If you know of any other great music ministry sites and resources, tell us about them in the comments.

The Definitive Guide to Building and Maintaining a Repertoire List

One of the most important things about being a collaborative pianist is developing depth of repertoire, whether you choose to specialize in one area or play a wide variety of genres. When you're applying for graduate school, a young artist program, or your first staff accompanist position, it's important to be able to present a complete repertoire list so those who are interested in you can get a better sense of the works, styles and genres that you've played so far.

The problem is that very few of us actively maintain a rep list and are able to keep track of what we've played over time. It takes a lot of time and regular updating to be able to offer a complete rep list (especially one as jaw-droppingly awesome as Amanda Johnston's) and this post will tell you how you can start, update, and offer one that will impress at hiring time.

Getting Started

Back in the old days, those of us diligent enough to be updating our rep lists did so on a weekly or monthly basis, when we would frantically search our books and photocopies, find out what was new, and add it to our list, most often a word document that lived on our home computer.

Fortunately, things have changed and the process of rep list-building can benefit greatly from the advances made with cloud computing technology. I recommend using a Google Docs spreadsheet for keeping the data in your rep list, and have created a template that you can use for this purpose:

Collaborative Pianist Repertoire List

You'll need to create and be signed into a Google account to save the template and start adding your own rep to the spreadsheet. The advantage of a Google Docs spreadsheet is that since it's stored on Google's servers, you can update it from any internet-enabled computer or smartphone. This is much more efficient than the old practice of having a word document on your hard drive that you only added to once in a blue moon.

Updating Your Rep List

Once you've saved the template to your Google account, you can start putting your repertoire on it. I've listed columns for composer, title of work, title of larger work (if applicable), genre, and sub-genre and added a few commonly known works to give you an idea of how the setup works. Here are some things to keep in mind when adding data to the fields:

• There is no need to insert rows. Simply add the latest data to the bottom of the spreadsheet, click on the arrows on the lettered columns, and choose "Sort Sheet A ---> Z" in order to alphabetize, ie. by composer. 
• When listing composers, it's a good idea to put the last name first for the purpose of alphabetization.
• I've used the genre field for dividing between Instrumental and Vocal repertoire. You can also add Solo to this field.
• You can use the Sub-Genre field to even further segment your rep, ie. sonata vs. concerto, aria vs. art song. 

Presenting Your Rep List

The time will come when you need to present your list in various elegant guises. Here are some ways that you can segment your full repertoire list in order to present it when the time comes:

• Select and copy any groups of fields and then paste and format them into a word document for official presentation. You can also paste them into WYSIWYG editors if you're building a website.
• For a complete alphabetical listing, sort the entire list alphabetically by composer.
• To divide into instrumental and vocal groups, sort the genre field, then the composer field, then copy and paste into a word document. 
• To list a specialization such as violin concertos or lieder, sort the sub-genre field, then sort the composer field, then copy and paste the alphabetized contents of the chosen sub-genre field.
• For even more input, sorting, and presentation options, you can download the spreadsheet and then import it into a database program such as Microsoft Access or OpenOffice.org Base. 

A couple of caveats

1. Update your list regularly. Doing a mass update the night before you send out your DMA application is not a good idea. Setting up your list early as a Google spreadsheet and adding to it via smartphone or internet whenever you learn a work takes less time over the long term and results in a much better, flexible, and marketable product when you need it.
2. Don't falsify the contents of your repertoire list. Only list the works that you actually can play. You're going to get burned if you pad your list. I recall a "cello specialist" I once worked with who only knew a few sonatas and no concertos. The best rep list in the world cannot mask a pianist with repertoire deficiencies. On the other hand, every single one of us has a slightly different specialization, the nuances of which can rise to the surface with a consistently revised list.

Although the template I created on Google Docs was intended for collaborative pianists, a few tweaks can make it work for any singer or instrumentalist. 

Do you have any useful repertoire list and/or spreadsheet tips? If so, tell us about them in the comments.

Two Options for Accompanist Backing Tracks

In the world of developing singers and instrumentalists, there is a huge need for accompaniment backing tracks. Two companies are looking to fill that need, Your Accompanist and PianoAccompaniments.com. From the samples I heard this evening, it appears that both companies offer a very useful high-quality product, although each has a slightly different focus.

Your Accompanist (find them on Facebook too) targets the market for rehearsal tracks for singers, with plenty of downloads of scales, songs, arias, as well as song-learning kits. Your Accompanist positions itself as a resource for early-stage note learning prior to the first rehearsal:

There are lots of ways you can use our MP3s: familiarisation on-the-go, in a singing lesson, preparing for a choir try-out, in an audition, at home, in the car, in the bath, it's up to you. The tracks enable singing practice in situations where live piano accompaniment is not readily available.

Singers know that nothing can ever replace the collaborative experience of working with an experienced accompanist. Preparing for performances means building an artistic relationship and developing interpretations together. Our tracks enable you to learn the piece before you start rehearsing, allowing you to save valuable rehearsal time for interpretation.

The cost for tracks is quite reasonable, priced at £0.99 (roughly equivalent to USD$1.47 and CDN$1.52 at today's exchange rates) and the quality of playing in the samples I heard was quite high (and sensitive too!). One thing that I found fascinating is that in spite of the fine playing and excellent audio, nowhere could I find who had played these tracks - you're definitely engaging with a brand rather than with a specific pianist here. [Update: The Your Accompanist team just unmasked their star pianist in the June 2010 newsletter: he's Michael Baron!]

On the other hand, PianoAccompaniments.com (also on Facebook) features the playing of Kristian Banatzianou and offers a much wider range of accompaniment products at various price points. In addition to an mp3 store, Kristian specializes in customized orders and can make CDs, MIDI, and Wave files, and also can transpose (w00t!). Although this might cost a bit more than purchasing single tracks, customised backing tracks can be a huge time-saver in certain cases, such as when a singer needs to learn a role on the road.

Here's a sample track of Kristian playing the piano part to Brahms' Sapphische Ode (feel free to sing along):



Are you a fan of backing tracks? If so, what are your experiences creating or using them?

Free Rhythm Worksheet Set from Wendy Stevens

A set of free rhythm worksheets from Wendy Stevens at ComposeCreate.com covers a wide range of concepts, including 8th notes, 16th notes, triplets, syncopation, polyrhythms, and compound time. You can print them out, email them to your students, or teach them directly from your laptop. The two-voice drills are particularly interesting, and you can use them as either a two-handed exercise, teacher/student duet, or as a clap-and-stomp.

Was Cosme McMoon Really Edwin McArthur?

There is mounting evidence that Florence Foster Jenkins' legendary accompanist Cosme McMoon was not Edwin McArthur (as was previously mentioned here) but was in fact Cosme McMunn, who was born in Mexico and changed his name upon moving to New York in the early 20's. Both McArthur and McMoon played for Florence Foster Jenkins, but the story goes that McArthur was fired for chortling in recital, and Jenkins subsequently hired McMoon (among others). ParlorMobster has assembled a list of interesting sources, including the following:

• The mystery of Cosme McMoon (McMunn) and Edwin McArthur: the lost composer(s) of Florence Foster Jenkins from Dark Knight Dramaturgy
• What happened to Cosme McMoon after Florence Foster Jenkins died? on Answers.com from Mark McMunn, grand nephew of Cosme
• Articles collected by Max Murray

Donald Collup also credits Mark McMunn in his documentary Florence Foster Jenkins: A World of Her Own. It appears that Cosme was an avid body-builder, worked as a clerk in a bathhouse, and also enjoyed chess. An excerpt from Collup's documentary:

The evidence on the identity of McMoon presented by Collup, McMunn, and others looks pretty convincing, although still largely circumstantial.

Incidentally, if you're in Hartford this month, you should check out TheaterWorks' Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins, which runs until May 23 with Edwin Cahill playing the role of Cosme McMoon (reviewed in the Times a few days ago).

Wikipedia lists Florence Foster Jenkins as "an American soprano who became famous for her complete lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, and overall singing ability."

The Diction Police, a Podcast for Singers and Coaches

Having you recently been cited for an idiomatic violation by voicing that bilabial fricative in the wrong place? A new podcast might be able to help. The Diction Police is the brainchild of Dresden-based vocal coach Ellen Rissinger. The Diction Police's goal:

...to enhance singers’ study of diction by hearing the text of songs and arias spoken by native speakers, to give a broad range of opinions from native speakers on their own language, and to give singers practical tools for practicing and learning foreign languages.

A noble cause indeed. Here are DP's podcasts to date:

• Episode 1: Heidenröslein and Der Gärtner with Nadja Mchantaf and Hans Sotin.
• Episode 2: Italian art songs and a discussion with Fabio Centanni.
• Episode 3: three Zauberflöte arias and a discussion of [ä], [r], and the German schwa.
• Episode 4: Gretchen am Spinnrade with Netta Or, Die Post with Markus Marquardt, and a discussion with Hans Sotin.
• Episode 5: Nathalie de Montmollin on Fauré and an interview with Philip Shepard
• Episode 6: Offenbach and Schumann with Stephanie Atanasov and Markus Marquardt, and diphthongs with Markus Henn.

Using Music Teacher's Helper to Reinforce Goal Setting

My latest article for the MTH blog:

Use Lesson Reminders to Help Students Stay on Target with Goal Setting

If you're new to Music Teacher's Helper, here's a quick rundown on what it does - Music Teacher's Helper is a seamless way to integrate a music teaching website with full online support including registration, student/parent logins, invoicing, income/expense tracking, student scheduling, file sharing, repertoire and practice tracking, and studio announcements. There are several pricing levels, ranging from a free account for 3 students to a Platinum account (for only $24.95 per month!) for an unlimited number of students, SSL encryption (very important these days if you're storing other people's data), and 100MB of storage for studio downloads.

On Being a Paperless Pianist

Today's guest post is written by Hugh Sung, faculty Collaborative Pianist at the Curtis Institute of Music and tireless advocate of technology for both performance and learning. One of the coming revolutions in music performance and education will be happening in the next few years with the increased use of tablet devices for reading music.  If you're interested in investing in an AirTurn Professional Package for your tablet or laptop-based music reading needs, be sure to check out the awesome deal for Collaborative Piano Blog readers listed at the end of the article...

Something amazing happens when a collaborative pianist is freed from the common constraints of physical paper. You begin to realize that you are no longer limited to the size of your duffle bag or the strength of your shoulder muscles when it comes to how many music scores you can carry with you. You're not wasting hours hunting for that obscure encore you played 9 months ago buried in that mountain of music stacked on top of your piano. And, most gloriously, you can lay your hand calmly on the sweaty shoulder of that trembling page turner and reassure them that their services will not be needed for tonight's performance. All the piano works of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, all your Schubert Lieder and Opera scores, all your violin concerti and cello sonatas and flute transcriptions - in short, your entire sheet music library - fits snugly in a single neoprene-wrapped laptop. And since your hands never need to leave the keyboard to turn the page, your audiences are left to wonder, "How in the world did he memorize that entire program?"

Who would ever guess that a small, discreet pedal and a wireless transmitter could render page turns effortless and solve the stress of repeat signs, or worse - the dreaded Da capo? Who could imagine that any piece within a collection of thousands of scores could be instantly recalled and displayed with just a few keystrokes and a simple search bar?

This is the world of the paperless pianist, working with scores in digital format. When physical hindrances are removed, learning and making music simply becomes freer and more effective. To that end, the AirTurn was designed with musicians in mind, offering a simple, plug-and-play hands-free solution for the age-old problem of page turns. The companion program MusicReader enables Mac and PC users to easily convert scanned paper scores, as well as Finale or Sibelius files and downloaded PDFs, into digital sheet music files that can be accessed, read, and annotated in myriads of ways.

To help the readers of The Collaborative Piano Blog experience the freedom of being a paperless musician, we'd like to offer a special 10% discount off of our AirTurn Professional Package, which includes the AirTurn AT-104 page turner transmitter, the MusicReader program, and 2 silent pedals for bi-directional page turns, when purchased from our web store. Upon checkout, apply the coupon code CP10 to apply your discount (coupon expires April 30, 2010).

If trees could clap, I'm sure the ovation would be thunderous!



(Thanks, Hugh!)

Facebook's Accompanist Community Pages

Two interesting pages to check out are the new Facebook community pages for Accompanist and Accompanying. The community pages aggregate both your friends' recent updates and, in a rather egregious invasion of privacy, those from the entire Facebook community in "Global Related Posts". More about community pages from the Facebook blog:

Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Just like official Pages for businesses, organizations and public figures, Community Pages let you connect with others who share similar interests and experiences.

So far, it looks like the Community Pages aggregate content from other Facebook sources, such as pages and status updates, rather than being platforms for directly posting content. If the Accompanist Community Page gains traction, it might end up being a place where people could advertise or request services as well as being a place where I can find snarky status updates for CPB's Quote of the Day. The only problem is that the community page for "Accompanying" aggregates uses of the word not just from the musical context, but in any context, as in accompanying documents, horses, or poached tilapia.

Here are the links again (FB ID req'd):

Accompanist Community Page
Accompanying Community Page

The NMC Music Map

Here's how it works: click on a composer's name and the Music Map launches in full-screen with a list of composers whom the composer influenced and those who were influenced by. Click on more composer names to see the map develop with much visual awesomeness featuring clips of recordings from the NMC catalog.

The NMC Music Map

About NMC recordings:

Established with the aim of recording the best of contemporary British music to the highest artistic and technical standards, NMC Recordings – which celebrated the 20th anniversary of its first release in 2009 – was founded in 1988 with funding from the Holst Foundation and assistance from the Society for the Promotion of New Music. Following the success of two pilot releases the following year – Jonathan Harvey's Bhakti, and a disc of contemporary piano music performed by composer Michael Finnissy – NMC became an independent registered charity; it has since established itself as "Britain's most important producer of CDs of interesting new or recent and neglected work from this country" (The Sunday Times).

Lots of Free Resources at Music Tech Teacher

This evening, one of my student's parents introduced me to Music Tech Teacher, a huge compendium of free music education resources started by Karen Garrett (a 2006 Time Teacher of the Year!) for her work with the students at Central Park School in Birmingham, Alabama. Here some of the major pages at MTT, each of which contains a huge number of links:

• Home
• General info - some fascinating reading here, with a story of the program, information about funding sources, equipment, and activities
• Student work - free MP3's of compositions recorded by students in the program. Some incredible listening here.
• Lessons - curriculum information about the program
• Quizzes, Games and Music Help - this is a huge resource, where you'll find well over 100 quizzes and games for various facets of music learning, as well as some valuable information sheets
• Worksheets for Young Musicians - over 50 resources here.
• Links - a huge list of links to other music education resources, products, and people.

Kudos to Karen for the enormous amount of time that has gone into this project!

(Thanks for the heads-up, Miriana!)

Free Fingering Diagrams for Major and Minor Scales

I've already taught using a brilliant scale-teaching aid from Natalie Wickham: free pdf downloads of fingering diagrams for major and natural/harmonic minor scales. If you're using your laptop in the studio, just resize one of the diagrams so that the scale you're teaching fills the the screen, then put the laptop on top of the piano. That'll teach'em to learn F# minor harmonic with the right fingerings, once and for all.

Links to both sets:

Major scale fingering diagrams
Natural and harmonic minor fingering diagrams

I can hardly wait until Natalie creates a melodic minor fingering diagram set, which will require a system for notating several melodic minor scales (such as F# and C# minor) which use a different fingering ascending than descending in the right hand.

Update 4/13: Natalie has indeed created a chart for the melodic minor scales. You can find it here.

On Adjudicating for the First Time

My latest article for Music Teacher's Helper looks at ways to make your first adjudicating experience a positive one:

16 Ideas for First-Time Music Festival Adjudicators

[Update 13/8/2022] Here is the new home of this article on the Foley Music and Arts blog:

16 Ideas for First-Time Music Festival Adjudicators

The Ultimate Guide to the Toy Piano Scene

Last week I played on a wonderfully resonant Jaymar toy piano in Chan Ka Nin's one-act opera Ice Time for Tapestry New Opera's Opera To Go. On opening night, I had the pleasure of meeting Elisha Denburg, a member of Toronto's Toy Piano Composers, who subsequently got me connected with the thriving community of toy piano composers and performers on Facebook and the web. What follows are some useful links about the instruments, composers, collectors, and performers who are creating an ever-increasing body of work for these enigmatic instruments. Note: some of these links require either a Google or Facebook ID - you'll find this noted in parentheses. I'll be adding stuff to this post as new information comes to light...

[Update: a huge thanks goes to Xenia Pestova for the time she spent compiling corrections and link info!]
[Update: thanks also go to Wendy Mae Chambers and Liz Parker for contacting me about adding further links.]

Information, Collections, and Manufacturers

• Toy Piano Wikipedia entry - This is a useful place to start with a lot of information about the origin of the modern instrument, its characteristics, and appearances in modern performance and culture.
• Schoenhut Toy Pianos - Shoenhut is the pre-eminent maker of toy pianos.
• Miniature Piano Museum Toy Pianos Collection - Photos of a fair number of toy pianos from the Miniature Piano Museum.
• Toypiano.org - A site dedicated to the promotion of the toy piano as a musical instrument.
• Miniature Piano Enthusiast Club - Some interesting information and photos from Janice Kelsh's collection.
• Wearable toy piano - Just be sure you don't electrocute yourself mid-phrase.

Communities

• Toy Piano Performers on Facebook - This looks like the community to watch in the next while, with a rapidly expanding corpus of photos, recordings, videos, and event listings (Facebook ID required).
• Toy Piano Composers on Facebook - (FB ID req'd)
• Toy Piano Time - A Google discussion group about all things toy piano (Google ID req'd). 
• TOY MUSIC / MUSIC FOR TOYS / MUSIQUE A JOUETS - Also on Facebook (FB ID req'd).
• Contemporary Keyboard Society - A blog devoted to numerous extended keyboard projects, including toy piano events.
• Toy-Box Trio - Dana Wen on toy piano is joined by Harlan Glotzer (concertina) and Nate Lee (tuba).

Performers, Composers and Ensembles

• Margaret Leng Tan - a toy pianist whose work elevated the instrument to a vehicle for serious composition.
• The Toy Piano Composers - a Toronto-based collective of composers that specializes in creating works for toy piano. The Toy Piano Composers consist of Dan Brophy, Monica Clorey, Igor Correia, Elisha Denburg, Glenn James, Nancy Tam, Chris Thornborrow, Fiona Ryan, and Christian Floisand.
• Isabel Ettenauer - an Austria-based toy pianist.
• Eiko Sudoh's YouTube channel - lots of works for piano and toy piano here.
• Phyllis Chen - pianist, toy pianist, multimedia artist.
• Wendy Mae Chambers - toy pianist and composer
• Elaine Lau - Toronto-based pianist and toy pianist.
• junctQin - Toronto-based toy piano trio (junctQin also has a MySpace page)
• Twink: The Toy Piano Band - cool music featuring toy pianos - you can listen to samples of Twink's uber-cute music here.
• Toy Piano Performers - a photo collection on Facebook (FB ID req'd)
• Karlheinz Essl - Composer of many works for toy piano.
• David Smooke - Baltimore-based composer of many works for toy piano.
• Stephanie Chua - Toronto-based pianist and toy pianist.
• Chapi Chapo et les petites musiques de pluie - check out this site for lots of music, events, and videos by Chapi Chapo.

Works and Performances

• No No Nonette - a MIDI-controlled work for 9 toy pianos.
• Kun, 64 Toy Pianos at the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, 2009 - a project of Wendy Mae Chambers in collaboration with Schoenhut Toy Company.
• Three Pieces for Prepared Toy Piano by Steve Layton, 1981 - (MP3 file)
• Toy Pianos (plus) - a blog post by Miguel Frasconi with an audio recording of a recent work and a video of his keyboard collection.
• SMILE (HQ) - a trailer for a recent Toy Piano Composers recital. (FB ID req'd)

A search for "toy piano" on YouTube will yield lots of fascinating performances (too many to post here) but below are some particularly fascinating ones...

Clio Montey's Barcarolle played by Xenia Pestova:

Isabel Ettenauer performs Kalimba by Karlheinz Essl:

Eiko Sudoh plays John Cage's Suite for Toy Piano:



Phyllis Chen performs her composition Double Helix for toy piano and bowls:



If you have any more notable toy piano links, events, or stuff, leave a comment or send me an email at collaborativepiano [at] gmail dot com.

ACMP - The Chamber Music Network

Finding other musicians to play chamber music with can often be a challenge. Enter ACMP: The Chamber Music Network, a world-wide chamber music community that puts chamber musicians of all levels in contact with one another as well as offering grants for community initiatives, workshops, and home coachings. About the ACMP Directory:

The Directory is at the heart of ACMP–The Chamber Music Network. Use it to establish new friendships in your area and to meet fellow musicians when you travel. You can locate people by country, geographic region, instrument, and self-grading level. Members expect to be telephoned or e-mailed to arrange a morning, afternoon or evening of music-making. Initiating and responding to contacts is what the ACMP network is all about.

Your involvement is a matter of personal choice. You may be content to invite others for a one-time session, or you might wait for someone to call you. Think about using the Directory to organize a chamber music party or to find an extra player to expand your regular chamber music group.

Membership consists of two levels: free directory listing, which gets you the directory, guide, and newsletter, or the $25 annual full membership, which gives you options for discounts on products and services, as well as access to the ACMP's extensive grant program. You can also make a contribution online.

A New TAFTO Location

A few weeks ago, Drew McManus relaunched his multi-year archive of articles from the Take A Friend To The Orchestra series as a mini-site within Adaptistration. The TAFTO articles are a great resource for anyone looking at ways that musicians and arts leaders can engage with audiences, and vice versa. My 2008 contribution looked at the variety of experiences I had participated in with Tapestry New Opera Works, and if you haven't read it before, you can find it here.

How To Use Google Street View for Pre-Audition Recon

I'm currently working with a lot of musicians who are doing auditions in the next few months, often in cities where they've never been before. Part of the trepidation of auditioning for a school of music (or interviewing at one for those in the job market) lies in the unknown factors of effectively navigating to the school's front door, early if possible and with a minimum of surprises.

Fortunately, there are plenty of free tools that can help you not only find where you're going and how to get there, but put you virtually at the location of where you're going. One of those tools is the Street View layer of Google Maps. What follows is a tutorial on how to find your way around in Street View.

1. Go to Google Maps and type the address of your destination in the search box. For the purposes of this article, type in "26 Gibbs Street Rochester NY", which will yield the location of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. After clicking on the Search Maps button, you should see either a map or satellite image, with your destination highlighted. At any point in your search, you can click Get Directions to get both a map and road-by-road directions from your start point to the final destination.

2. On the left-hand side of the page, click on the "more" link on the right. Below you can see the link circled from the search results:

3. After clicking on the "more" link, click on "Street View", which will call up the Street View layer on Google Maps. You can now rotate the camera 360 degrees in each location, as well as double-click the circles on the road to navigate to different locations up and down the street. The square on the upper right-hand side of the picture enables a fullscreen view, which greatly enhances the awesomeness of Street View.

The picture at the top of this article shows the front entrance of the Eastman School of Music. If you're auditioning at Eastman and you've never been there, you will learn from Street View that Gibbs Street is one-way northbound, which means that an East Avenue approach is easier than one from Main Street if you're looking to drive to the front door. You can also tell from the picture that there is at least some metered parking on the street, although from looking at the map view it might be easier to find parking just north of Main Street or in the parkade on Scio.

Wandering around your destination on Street View (double-clicking on the circles, remember), you can also tell that the Eastman campus is quite compact, and with coffee just down the street at Java's Cafe. If you've done the Street View walk before you actually go to your location, you'll remember the locale of where you're going in three dimensions instead of two, in addition to feeling a weird sense of déjà vu when you actually get there.

If you want to go a step farther, you can even visualize yourself confident and in control on audition day when Street View surfing, so that when you get there for real, you can recall the feeling and focus more effectively. I do this all the time when performing and adjudicating in new places.

This recon method is effective not only for auditions, but for performances, exams, job interviews, and recording sessions as well. Don't forget to either print out the driving directions or save them for later viewing, so that when you're on the road, you'll have the directions at your fingertips.

How do you use Google Maps, Street View, or other map programs (such as MapQuest or Bing Maps) in your musical life?