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Are you familiar with Modern/Techno music? This month’s composition station challenges you to try to write an 8 measure Modern/Techno piece. Techno music is a subset of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and often uses common time between 120 and 150 beats per minute. As an added challenge, you can try to use three different chords in your song. You can also try instruments you aren’t familiar with. The most important thing is always to have fun with the music!

Here are a couple songs for inspiration:

A few cool things to know Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King:

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. learned piano as a child from his mother.

He sang in the choir in church growing up.

He appreciated classical music.

Coretta Scott King studied music at Lincoln Normal School, Antioch College, and New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

She played trumpet and piano and sang in the chorus and school musicals.

These are his words about music, specifically about blues and jazz.

“God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from the music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.

And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in a particular struggle of the Negro in America, there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.”

~Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How is that New Year so far? It’s all right if it’s a lot like last year- not quite what we were hoping for but still a lot left to figure out. Many of our resolutions “fail” within the first six weeks of the year, but often our resolutions are set up to be vague and difficult.

I loved learning about SMART goals and what they could do for me. I’m trying to put those into practice for my new year, and the thing is it takes some work to look at the goal and also see how the progress goes. Except- I will tell you I love seeing that progress increase. It’s well worth it for me. Personally, one of my goals was to resurrect my notebook habit: I always have a notebook and a writing utensil near me. I started this again in about mid-December, and it has been helpful for writing lists, not forgetting my tasks, and reminding myself what I wanted and needed to accomplish this day or this week.

What’s a SMART goal? I’m so glad you asked. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound. Pretend it’s a worldwide pandemic, and I’ve been sitting on a couch for most of a year. It’s not achievable to say I’m going to run a marathon in February for most of us. It’s not time-bound to say I’m eventually going to play the guitar as well as Michelle Tuesday (that might not be achievable, either, considering how often I’m practicing).

Here’s an example of something that fits well. I want to play guitar, and I’m going to practice ten minutes a day, five days a week, for a month and re-evaluate my progress. I picked out a specific song I want to play, and I can measure my progress on this song or about chords and scales or progress in a book with a teacher. At the end of that month, I can decide if maybe I can make it work for more than five days a week, or if that’s too many. I can decide maybe it works to practice thirty minutes twice a week and ten the other three days to make my goal. And once I reach that – I can set another one.

Maybe my six-month journey on guitar was all right, but I’m now really dying to learn the violin instead? It’s the same process. On one hand, it’s hard to mark that, yes, I practiced Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and missed three days this week. This system is also about giving yourself the grace to say, well, Friday I made up an extra twenty minutes because I knew I had missed a couple days and I wouldn’t practice on Saturday since I would be out of town.

We are what we practice. When we practice making SMART goals and checking in with them, we will be ready to create more music – or whatever other goals are important to you to accomplish. Don’t get overwhelmed with goals- make them fit you and your schedule.