Dan is...

The ramblings of music student/lunatic.
~ Thursday, July 22 ~
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30 Day Challenge - Day One: A Recent Photo & 15 Interesting Facts Firstly, the photo. Let’s just say I got bored at work waiting for a student. Which leads on to the first two interesting facts: I am a Piano Teacher. I teach in a tiny, white, transportable cube. I shit you not. It has Air-Con and Heating, though, so I’m cool with it. At recess and lunch time, small children amuse themselves by beating their tiny fists against said cube. At first, I would go outside and rage at them. Then I lost interest, and now I just practice really, REALLY loudly or put How I Met Your Mother on my laptop. You know, because I’m responsible. I study composition at the Elder Conservatorium (aka Adelaide Uni; don’t look at me like that, we all know referring to it as the Conservatorium is heaps more fancy and puts the “I play Simple Plan powerchords on my guitar and am, therefore, a musician” bitches in their place), and it is rather awesome. I write an metric fuckton of Piano music, mostly for my Students, and for various ensembles/solo instruments as my course dictates. Basically, if someone asks me to write for them, I will. I also arrange a metric fuckton of piano music/string quartets, the latter of which leads onto funfact number 7. I’m not a lazy piano teacher who sits their kids down with a shitty “[Insert Publisher Here] Method - Now with more Self Loathing!” book from the 1960s; I would rather arrange the songs they want to play MYSELF in such a manner as to teach them a skill rather than sit through hours and hours of the same, shitty pieces with titles like “caterpillar waltz” and “bullfrog jamborie”, when really they’re all just variations of the same fucking themes. I’m not like this because my own piano teacher was shit. Oh God no. Sharon Chng is an amazing teacher who taught me to love music for what it was. If you’re looking for a top notch teacher in the Northern Suburbs, I highly recommend her. I also play ‘cello… poorly. To be fair, I’ve been playing for a term. I’m in  a string group at the school I teach, in which the other ‘cellist is 8 years old. Hurrah! I arrange/write for that too, because - like piano - most of the beginner music is either a) diatonic b) so bland it makes your ears kill themselves. I’m very anal about having an apostrophe before ‘cello. It’s short for violoncello. Deal with it. I’m very anal about grammar full stop. It shits me to tears when people criticize immigrants for not speaking English well when their own grasp of the English language is utterly shite. I am, technically, British. I was born in Bradford, moved to Guernsey, and then to Adelaide’s northern suburbs. Seriously, parents, WHAT THE FUCK. My first word was “Quack”. I shit you not. My first joke involved me shouting “Mum!”, throwing a Winnie the Pooh book into my potty, screaming “POO!” and then laughing hysterically for an hour. I’ve always found myself hilarious. I once killed a man. I vote for the Australian Democrats. To me, they represent everything that’s right about politics. In other words, I worship the ghost of Natasha Stott Despoja. Saying that, though, when she eventually rises from the dead, I’ll be in her good books. All of you will be fucked. Then we’ll see who’s laughing. I can’t believe you’re reading this, what the hell is wrong with you.

30 Day Challenge - Day One: A Recent Photo & 15 Interesting Facts

Firstly, the photo. Let’s just say I got bored at work waiting for a student. Which leads on to the first two interesting facts:

  1. I am a Piano Teacher.
  2. I teach in a tiny, white, transportable cube. I shit you not. It has Air-Con and Heating, though, so I’m cool with it.
  3. At recess and lunch time, small children amuse themselves by beating their tiny fists against said cube. At first, I would go outside and rage at them. Then I lost interest, and now I just practice really, REALLY loudly or put How I Met Your Mother on my laptop. You know, because I’m responsible.
  4. I study composition at the Elder Conservatorium (aka Adelaide Uni; don’t look at me like that, we all know referring to it as the Conservatorium is heaps more fancy and puts the “I play Simple Plan powerchords on my guitar and am, therefore, a musician” bitches in their place), and it is rather awesome. I write an metric fuckton of Piano music, mostly for my Students, and for various ensembles/solo instruments as my course dictates. Basically, if someone asks me to write for them, I will.
  5. I also arrange a metric fuckton of piano music/string quartets, the latter of which leads onto funfact number 7. I’m not a lazy piano teacher who sits their kids down with a shitty “[Insert Publisher Here] Method - Now with more Self Loathing!” book from the 1960s; I would rather arrange the songs they want to play MYSELF in such a manner as to teach them a skill rather than sit through hours and hours of the same, shitty pieces with titles like “caterpillar waltz” and “bullfrog jamborie”, when really they’re all just variations of the same fucking themes.
  6. I’m not like this because my own piano teacher was shit. Oh God no. Sharon Chng is an amazing teacher who taught me to love music for what it was. If you’re looking for a top notch teacher in the Northern Suburbs, I highly recommend her.
  7. I also play ‘cello… poorly. To be fair, I’ve been playing for a term. I’m in  a string group at the school I teach, in which the other ‘cellist is 8 years old. Hurrah! I arrange/write for that too, because - like piano - most of the beginner music is either a) diatonic b) so bland it makes your ears kill themselves.
  8. I’m very anal about having an apostrophe before ‘cello. It’s short for violoncello. Deal with it.
  9. I’m very anal about grammar full stop. It shits me to tears when people criticize immigrants for not speaking English well when their own grasp of the English language is utterly shite.
  10. I am, technically, British. I was born in Bradford, moved to Guernsey, and then to Adelaide’s northern suburbs. Seriously, parents, WHAT THE FUCK.
  11. My first word was “Quack”. I shit you not.
  12. My first joke involved me shouting “Mum!”, throwing a Winnie the Pooh book into my potty, screaming “POO!” and then laughing hysterically for an hour. I’ve always found myself hilarious.
  13. I once killed a man.
  14. I vote for the Australian Democrats. To me, they represent everything that’s right about politics. In other words, I worship the ghost of Natasha Stott Despoja. Saying that, though, when she eventually rises from the dead, I’ll be in her good books. All of you will be fucked. Then we’ll see who’s laughing.
  15. I can’t believe you’re reading this, what the hell is wrong with you.
Tags: ... a friendly geek