A Blog? In 2023?

Intro

One person writing to a large audience is not new. Until this most recent information age, mass communication was limited by economics, literacy, distance, and politics. The internet age lowered the barrier of entry towards writing to a group. This has become big business: when corporations do it, we call it “marketing”. When individuals do it, they are “influencers”, and whole ecosystems have appeared around this new way of talking to the masses.

Building awareness is a huge challenge for a small shop like mine. Thinking I have valuable viewpoints and advice to share, I have decided we should also communicate “en mass” to help others, while shining a light on some of the things we are doing different at the shop. The reading public gets tips, tricks, and ways of looking at teaching, performing, and the musical arts in 2024, while we get some promotion and extended awareness in market. A fair trade.

However, When I mentioned my choice to publish a blog as part of The Texas Flute Guild, reactions were lukewarm:

“Yeah, that’s great, but what are your social media links? THAT is the way to get heard.”

“Do people still have time to read a blog? Why don’t you do (some other option)

“Dad, a blog? Blogs are lame” (paraphrasing one of my kids)

Are they lame? Is there room left for long form articles in today’s age of instant information and connectivity?

I think it depends on the intent and audience; hence this introductory first post. We will get to the purpose of this blog eventually, but, for now, trust that I am not directly trying to sell you something.

At one point in time, blogs were new and fresh. Then they were replaced by even lower barrier of entry options. With a couple of clicks, you can be on social media, building connections and sharing your opinions to lots and lot of people. It is slick, easy, and mindless. Lately blogs seem to have come back, with some key differences in tone and purpose. But they never really went away.

A warning: if you are here for a twitter, I mean “X”, style “quick fix” for flute playing or your life in general, you are probably in the wrong place, or at least on the wrong blog post. Taken as a whole, these articles should get you thinking differently about playing the flute, teaching the flute, and the classical flutist’s place in this 21st century world. I offer a worldview that puts as us as an essential part of the school, the economy, and your neighborhood.

With that out of the way, lets talk about blogs, why I like them enough to choose to write one, why I think anyone reading this should also start one, with some links as to how to make your own, for free, without giving away ownership over your thoughts.

The internet as a $0 variable cost printing press

Circa 1999, while Prince was singing about parties and people were preparing for the end of the world (remember Y2K?), the internet was much smaller but felt much bigger than now, the World Wide Web was only occasionally on the nightly news, and some non-technical folks were enjoying the advance of over a decade of internet infrastructure investment. Some lucky people were ditching their modems for “high speed internet” in their homes. Communication between far away places was almost free once you bought into the machinery involved and plugged it in. Even high school students were making their own simple web pages as a project that anyone else who was connected could see. It was pretty cool.

A blog is just a static website, the kind you may have written in high school, with a program that does the formatting and web site heavy lifting. You can make in pure HTML, like that 90’s high school assignment, but using a static website generator makes the process easy, non technical, and allows the writer to focus on writing instead of reading code.

What did people do with these blogs? Mostly, did the same things they do now: cat photos, and good, and dairies of their day, but there was also some wonderful thoughts and ideas posted on blogs. The Wayback machine website is a fun and useful place to fine snapshots of old websites and blogs:

https://web.archive.org/

With this ever growing form of media, a problem arose. When everyone can be heard, you don’t have time to read everything. How do you decide what to read? Social media, with its implied culture, seemed to be the next answer, but it led to its own set of issues and problems.

A blog vs Social Media (microblogs)

(from the xkcd website https://xkcd.com/ Great comics with some nice nerdy social commentary…

You might ask, why shouldn’t I just use social media to communicate with the flute community? Social media came from advances in web technology. Originally called micro-blogs, the idea was that one website can give you bite sized communications from a large group of people. If you ration expression to small chunks, you can read more thoughts from more people in a given time frame. You can also interact with these posts by agreeing or sometimes disagreeing with that post. Commenting was baked in, giving the appearance of conversation. With some platforms, you could limit who you see and who you see first; on others, a net sum of the positives and negatives make the top of a “feed”, letting us see what was trending at that moment in time. In the time it took to drink your morning joe, the thoughts of lots of people could be consumed and, in closer to real time, respond and link to other people’s thoughts in an organic and additive way.

The downsides of social media are numerous. The size can be limiting: ideas and statement lack context or context is implied t is limiting to not be able to express yourself fully. Not having necessary context encourages the cacophony of “armchair experts”, who can only argue the superficial, even though it seems really deep to the layperson.

Information on social media is also temporary: how many times have you scrolled and searched for something you read a week ago only to not be able to find the post? Changing what we feel is permanent, like on the internet, is a wonderful way to adjust “popular opinion”.

Not to get dark, but, researches in social sciences are warning us of potential damaging societal and neurological maladies associated with social media. While a full analysis would be outside of my scope and expertise, I do recommend a frightening documentary called “The Social Dilemma”

https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/

Combined with the platforms making some information and opinions easy to find and others next almost impossible, which some would call censorship, social media offers a false democracy of ideas. As opposed to this false promise of reach and permanence, self hosted blogs allow uncensored thoughts with a lifespan controlled to the author for as long as the author wants.

Texas Flute Guild might end up eventually on the standard social media, in that our friends and customers will post things there about where we are and what we are doing. I have also toyed with being on “mastadon”, which doesn’t limit what one can say and gives the user more control.

https://joinmastodon.org/

If you want to follow the Texas Flute Guild page… here is a join link: https://mastodon.social/invite/cy85AVJj

It can get a little technical, and doesn’t have the “automatic friends for free” feeling of the main for-porfit services, but seeing a truly free option that is older than most social media sites does make one wonder…

At least in the beginning, I want ownership and control over my thoughts, especially when both Bobbi and I are sharing knowledge and experiences we earned through our decades long careers. What does a writer have if he or she doesn’t have ownership over their own ideas and thoughts? Why bother otherwise?

(EDIT: yeah… I broke down and made some of the “mainstream” social media accounts. I held my nose while doing it, and I will be mostly posting events on there and pushing people, once they know we exist, to both this blog and other services… gotta live in the world, right? I’ll only be sharing really good advice on free and open places, however. We’ll see how it goes…)

Ownership of thought

This criticism of Social Media deserves its own section. Getting and holding interest has become more difficult the larger social media gets. This gave rise to the “professional blogger”, promising quality content for the reader. We all assume these creators, with dreams of fame, own their content, but this is not always true.

This is no free lunch, they say, and the more platforms that do the work for you, the less you own that content, as if it is can be taken away or censored at any point, is it really yours?. When once the internet was compared to the American Wild West, now we talk about “walled gardens”. Like many things in the real world, informational feudalism has replaced the freedom of early adoption.

For an eloquent article on this topic, along with one of the guides I used to build this blog, I refer you to this blog post:

https://smaller.fish/posts/hugo

I have found this blog takes time with no immediate praise for your effort, but it is worthy wor, but you can confirm you truly understand a concept if you can explain it in writing. It is good food for your brain, instead of the “cotton candy” mostly found these days. Anyone can post a couple sentences on a topic, making social media easy. Can you write an article on the topic from basic principles, or will you find yourself lost in unconnected facts?

Having an answer to “how did you do that?” or “why did you do that?” matters. Writing is practice for teaching, and, yes, the public can tell the difference.

Who should decide what is “true”?

Without drifting into philosophy, something I am also not equipped to address, I do want to bring up a disturbing trend I see all around me but distilled on social media, in flute playing, flute teaching, and flute sales: People are taking other people’s word for what is true.

The process matters. Music is learned through a collection of corrected mistakes. Taking someone else’s word, even your teachers, sets you up to understand the why behind the what.

This probably deserves its own article and might get one at a later time, but there is very functional belief lost on the unthinking performer. “Correct” is not a point in space to move towards: it only looks that way at the horizon. Proper, well defined answers in the arts is a region of non connected spaces. Otherwise there would be one way to play, one flute to purchase, one way to live, and so on.

This region of “right” gives freedom to the performer, but you have to get far enough down the path to see the end goals. Short cuts keep students from seeing this truth, and empowers a few members of the elite to have the answers. If you make people thread an unnecessarily small needle, of course students will be anxious about performing and communicating on stage. And, performances by that type of student will lack authentic intent: something that can be faked in a vacuum, but is blotted out by the light of originality when put side by side.

Deriving your own truth in the Arts is always a more productive route than just taking someone else’s word for it. The alternative is abdicating their responsibility to justify both their technical and artistic decisions to other.

Innovation has been a buzz word in education for decades, and, in all manner of speaking, we are losing the battle on many fronts. Imagine a world where arts education led the way toward independent yet critical thinking, tolerance of other ways of doing things, and innovative solutions. That is a culture non musicians would support in the schools.

Innovation always starts with examining basic assumptions. Without innovation, the classical fine arts will either die, or be consumed in artificial museums in certain places for certain people. The performing arts are fragile things, needing respectful and well educated stewards.

By letting others decide truth for your art, you are giving away the power of that art. And, we are doing that a lot these days.

So, what is this blog about?

The nucleus will be the flute with a vast variety of subjects orbiting: flute teaching, playing, flute design, the business of music. Depending on the article, things it might become technical, but you won’t need any specific knowledge of a subject to understand, just an open mind. The bulk of the blog posts will be qualitative, leaving any math or jargon to an appendix at the end of a post.

The scope of the articles should start with something specific then extrapolate to the broad, communicating a way of thinking: a framework for figuring out what you want then developing the tools to get there. A tapestry of ideas, a philosphy, should emerge, beneficial not to just flutists, but to any artists and who wants to support themselves while producing and creating.

I count myself fortunate in many ways. I had a wonderful, rich upbringing in the arts, with great teachers, and have had many opportunities in my career to grow in unique ways. This blog reflect that journey, helping others with their struggle and leaving energy to do the important work of the artist. I hope to make easy some of the struggles I see with the current generation of flutists and inspire them to have hope. Many hours of unproductive practice can be saved with a little thinking.

There is a trend in education to limit scope when times get rough. I disagree with this choice. It is when things are uncertain that we should look more to unrelated topics, with the hope that the spark of creation ignites the fuel found in history.

The internet is one of the most powerful and all encompassing tools ever devised by humans. It was sold to us as the dawn of a new age, lifting all peoples by giving access to information and easy communication. Distance no longer mattered in communication between individuals. Race, caste and family matter less than ideas. The citizen can be an artist, a journalist, and a scholar without leaving their computer. We should be living in the age of the polymath but instead see a push toward specialization. I hope these articles will help change that trend for the better.

Who is this blog for?

I see these main audiences for this going forward:

• Flute Teachers, who are looking for inspiration and another viewpoint on their work and that’s work’s place in the artistic economy. You are important… vital… to the survival of the art you teach.
• Flute Students, who are looking for a perspective (hopefully a functional one) for their journey.
• The parent(s) of flute students, looking for connections between what they already know to these specific things needed to support
• Band Directors, especially those with “weak flute sections”
• Professional flutists, looking for community and fresh ways to look at their challenges, along with a call to service.
• Professors of Flute, who look to balance the technical triage in teaching freshman with the daunting task of preparing the Senior or Grad Student for the next step: it is hard to show what the “real world” is without closing options to them.
• … and more….

On a side note, for any of these audiences, if you are think a topic you read would be an lecture/round table for a group, I am available to meet with anyone who needs help. The structure and my role in that communication depends on the intended audience. For example, if you are a college professor looking for content or logic driven views on a variety of topics through a combination of lectures and round table discussions, I have and am able to visit colleges, both in person and virtually. If you are a band director, I can help frame what I teach in a way that fits the classroom and your goals. If you are a teacher, I am available to help with a studio class, which can be fun and educational for your studio. If you are a flutist or parent of a flutist, just contact me: I help people like you for a living!

(shameless self plug finished)

I have toyed with the idea of “tags” for audience, but I would rather write to everyone who might be interested as my audience. It is tragic how much truth is out there that only a few can read, only because of not knowing a glyph. I think these topics can be discussed by everyone. and everyone’s viewpoint is important if we are to solve the challenges in 2024.

We’ll see how things go.

What about “comments” or “building a community”?

Social media, by its structured interactions, makes everyone hyper aware about their “audience”. It matters more the size of your reach than what you say. This is very dangeous to things that truly help people.

A blog like this one allows me to focus on explaining my point of view and thoughts fully, with less important

It is my belief that people who need to read what I write will read it, as others will send it along. It costs nothing than telling someone to read it.

In the days pre-internet, the most agile way to communicate with large numbers of people with similar interests was to have an article published in a magazine. I aim to imitate that style, writing to many striations of the flute interested public at once. Good ideas expressed well spread quickly. That is why those in the establishment fear the thinking person.

The consequence of a basic blog is that is is one way communication. I will think about making a comment section later, but for now, if you care enough to engage with me, write an email: [email protected].

It you really want to respond, you might consider writing blog of your own, linking to what I said, then comment using a long form response. Part of putting your thoughts online should be the courage to allow others to comment publically and perhaps being wrong. For too long we have accepted silence as superior to the wrong answer. This blog, this decision to create, takes a stand against that line of thinking. In the long term, long form debates through essays has been a tried and true way and eliminating bias and allowing the truth to rise to the top. It is peak democracy, and anyone reading this can also participate. What are you waiting for?

Build your own blog… for free

If you want to build your own blog here is how I did it:

This blog is hosted on cloudflare for free, written in Hugo, and uses github to backup the code/push new posts. It sounds more complicated than it really is: It took a little research, a couple of decisions, a couple hours of playing with it, and a little swearing until I fixed errors. I am not a computer scientist, and I figured it out. You can too.

I think the only cost was the domain name, which I already had for the business: you don’t need one, but it looks better and an be purchased for about $10 a year.

The modern web is so filled with con-jobs surrounding “free”: they are free until you want to do something real, then you see the expensive attached strings. Our addition to things with no upfront cost is a reflection of our insatiable quest for the new and modern. It is cooking your own dinner vs a fast food “free lunch”. Which would you rather have long term? Which is more healthy?

This isn’t the only way to make a free blog on the internet. It is just the way I did it.

Some rational regarding decisions I made:

• I used cloudflare because I already had an account and a domain registered there. They also do so much traffic that they can give away the small amount of processing and storage to hold such a small site, so my hosting costs nothing.
• Even thought I am a bit of a python lover and nerd, I chose Hugo as a framework because it was a better tool for a beginner, and also free. There are web frameworks and static site generators for python, although most are overkill for this project. Hugo is also “easy-ish” to change and to create a workflow around for someone who doesn’t write on the internet for a living.
• I chose Github because that was what the articles I read did and forced me to learn some github commands.

I now can type an article on about anything with a keyboard with minimal internet connection, push “go”, and the process I created does the rest. It gets out of my way and allows me to write when I have time.

Feel free to do it my way, or do some other way and tell us all how you did it. Just don’t pay for something just because someone said you have to. Just do it… if you want.

Why again are you going this?

If you made it this far, congratulations. You have made it through a long form article. You read a developed topic, using premises and logic to explain what, why, and for what purpose.

How old fashioned… and impossible to do in 144 characters, unless they were all Kanji, and then very few would be able to understand the poetry.

So, why do this?

I would like to share metaphors that worked so well in my teaching with other flutists, teachers, parents, and band directors. I hope sharing this information will help others. Mine are not the only answers, and I will share not just for others to imitate, although I encourage you to try them, but instead to come up with your solutions. The logic behind teaching is more important then the particular solutions, and new and unique solutions to the particular challenges presented to each generation of flutists is far superior to blind faith in a “school” or particular flute teacher.

I would to inspire and challenge all of us to be better: better flutists, better business people, better artists.

I would like to communicate in a way that is in keeping with the values we have at the Texas Flute Guild. If teaching a person to fish is superior to giving fish, perhaps the why of fishing technique might be the most valuable of all. This is the gift I would like to give. All for the high cost of your attention and reflection on my words and ideas.

I also would like to celebrate how any of us, at the cost of a little time, a little technical know how but no money, can write and have the opportunity to be understood by a large audience without a reliance on “big tech”. We take so much for granted, including ideas. Don’t worry, if your ideas are good, people will read them.

In that same vain, I would like to calibrate my views in the long run with others: both to influence others way of thinking both also to perhaps change my own. I have thought deeply about the topics I write about, but I am not the only one with some answers. I also do not think I have a monopoly on solutions. I would like to

For my customers, I would like you to know where I am coming from and know that I do know something about the flute. I take what I do in my company very seriously. I do care about both the overall health of my market and the health of the arts in general. Silence to issues in the arts is the genesis of the problems we face, and, though trite, I think the answer always lies in the way we prepare the next generation. We are collectively failing them post COVID, and are creating an environment of “haves and have-nots” not just in expensive flutes, but more importantly, in information and worldview. We can do better.

But..the most compelling reason is: I’m writing this blog for the same reason that I started the shop. I do this because I choose to, which makes all of the difference.

Jason Blank June 2024

Did you like this article? Do you agree or disagree? Have a flute question I haven’t covered (yet) or a request for a future article? Or, do you just want to say h?

Feel free to email me with questions/comments/rants: [email protected]

Copyright 2024 Jason Blank All rights reserved, however:

Feel free to use and distribute this information: I want it shared! Just be sure to link back to me, give credit where credit is due, and take what I write in the context with which it was intended.