Music Ed Insights

Alan takes Steve through a personal project that started with one question: Is there a better debut album than Van Halen? What followed was a scoring system, dozens of albums, some surprising results, and a reminder that great singles don’t always make a great album. Along the way, Alan found that the real value wasn’t the ranking—it was noticing his own biases, listening more carefully, and redis...

Alan and Steve talk with veteran South Dakota music educator Ryan Stahle about moving beyond using artificial intelligence as a glorified search engine and actually learning to talk with it. Ryan shares practical examples from his own teaching, including creating targeted warm-ups, speeding up student feedback, organizing individual lessons, and even building tools to solve problems he hadn’t expe...

Alan and Steve introduce a simple way to understand DiSC using two practical questions: Are you faster-paced or more moderate-paced? And do you tend to start with skepticism or warmth? They explain how D, i, S, and C styles can help music educators better understand students, colleagues, parents, and themselves—without putting anyone in a box. Instead of labeling people; it’s learning how to adapt...

Alan and Steve talk with interdisciplinary artist, educator, and Bezerk Productions founder Linda Sibio about the unusual path she has taken from her own experience with schizophrenia into decades of work using art, voice, movement, and writing with people experiencing mental-health challenges. Linda leads them through exercises from Cracked Eggs and The Insanity Principle—saying ordinary words th...

Steve and Alan talk through practical ways to make audition recordings that help your players give the best possible impression. From choosing the right opening excerpt to avoiding music that is too risky, they explain why first impressions matter and why “defense” — tone, pitch, blend, and rhythm — often matters more than flash. This episode is especially useful for directors preparing honor ense...

What makes teaching music in a small rural school uniquely challenging—and uniquely rewarding? In this conversation, Michael Genslinger, host of Rural Music Matters, joins Steve and Alan to explore the realities of K–12 generalist teaching, limited local resources, and the revolving door of rural positions. Along the way, they highlight how community, creativity, and a willingness to “do it all” c...

Slow, lyrical music can be beautiful, but it also exposes everything: tone, pitch, attacks, releases, balance, breath, bow control, and focus. Alan and Steve discuss when lyrical programming helps students grow, when it creates too much risk, and how to build in moments of sustain and phrasing without going too far. Whether through a full lyrical work or a shorter expressive section inside a faste...

In part two of this two-part conversation, Dr. Scott Jones returns with Steve Shanley and Alan Feirer to apply the idea of teaching for independence to the most practical – and often most emotional – parts of the job: grading, evaluation, and repertoire selection. Building on Part 1’s skill buckets and culture work, this episode explores: What grades should represent in a performance-based class R...

Alan and Steve share ways to make student leadership check-ins more useful, focused, and efficient. Instead of asking vague questions like “What’s going well?” they suggest more specific prompts that help students give feedback teachers can actually use. They also discuss how small groups, clear time limits, and well-placed questions can keep these discussions from turning into gripe sessions.

In part one of this two-part conversation, Dr. Scott Jones joins Alan and Steve to explore what it means to teach for musical independence—not just prepare students for the next concert. Scott shares a practical framework for helping students read, listen, adjust, and make musical decisions on their own, with special attention to rhythmic independence, notation, intonation, style, and embodied mus...

Tariffs affecting equipment? Why on earth is PD so generic? Your cohosts have some thoughts - and dare we say - insights that are current and relevant. 

Veteran band director and wellness advocate Lesley Moffat joins Alan and Steve to talk honestly about loving your job so much it starts to break your body—and what to do before (or after) you hit that wall. She shares her journey from 14 prescriptions, surgeries, and constant pain to a healthier, sustainable version of the same career, including the moment she realized, “I love my job, but it’s ki...

Adult learning expert Dr. Julie Ressler joins us to unpack imposter phenomenon—why some of the most competent, caring educators still feel like they’re faking it. Drawing on her research with high-achieving professionals (including school-trained musicians and leaders), Julie explains why she prefers “phenomenon” over “syndrome,” how IP shows up in teachers as overpreparing, perfectionism, and fea...

Alan and Steve check in halfway through summer and somehow get from community band concerts and arranging music to “dad books,” artificial intelligence, young people wanting less gimmick and more authenticity, and whether we might be seeing a small return to kindness in public life. Steve has a theory that AI is the new World War II book for middle-aged dads. Alan has been working with hundreds of...

Alan and Steve talk with Susan Smith live at the Iowa Bandmasters Association Conference about small band empowerment, smart repertoire choices, adjudication, and what it means to teach the students in front of you. Susan challenges the idea that smaller programs should have lower standards, reminding directors that success is about culture, musical growth, and meaningful experiences—not just size...

Alan and Steve respond to Mia Silverio’s Prof G article “What AI Is Doing to School,” which raises serious concerns about students outsourcing writing, attention, and critical thinking to AI. Rather than treating the article only as doom and gloom, they see an advocacy opportunity for music educators: band, choir, orchestra, jazz, and other fine arts classes still require students to think, listen...

Recorded live at the 2026 Iowa Bandmasters Association conference, Alan and Steve sit down with conductor and educator Cynthia Johnston Turner for a candid conversation about what really matters in the band room. Cynthia unpacks how she moved from a fear‑ and product‑driven rehearsal culture to one centered on psychological safety, inclusion, and community—without lowering musical standards. She s...

Alan and Steve dig into a common teacher frustration: students who don’t take deadlines seriously. Alan shares a practical approach to setting deadlines that actually mean something—by clearly explaining the “why,” distinguishing between preferred and true drop-dead dates, and avoiding fake or inflated due dates that desensitize students. Steve adds perspective as someone who struggles with deadli...

Alan and Steve talk with educator and mind‑shifting coach Mitch Weisburgh about how music teachers can help students—and themselves—move from limbic “survival mode” into resourceful, resilient, and collaborative mindsets. They explore how to respond when students say “I can’t do this,” how to use music itself as a powerful self‑regulation tool, and how small shifts in language, silence, and curios...

Alan and Steve share a fast, practical debrief tool you can use after a concert, contest, trip, marching season, or school year: WWW/TALA — What Went Well and Take A Look At. Built on Alan’s longtime approach to project improvement, this quick tip shows music teachers how to gather useful feedback in just a few minutes, avoid over-talking the debrief, and save the right notes so next year’s planni...

DJ, author, and music business professor Amani Roberts joins Alan and Steve to unpack how today’s students are listening to and creating music—and what that means for K–12 music educators. In this episode, they discuss: Why teens prefer singles and short-form content over full albums Strategies for teaching deep listening using artists like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar The rise of beat-making a...

Student trips are more expensive and more complex than ever—so are they still worth it? In this episode of Music Ed Insights, Alan and Steve return to the very same Disney resort room where they recorded a student travel episode two years ago to unpack what they’ve learned from nearly 30 years of group travel. They explore the non‑negotiables that make trips work: staff‑led communication and hype,...

Alan and Steve talk with Athens, Georgia–based music educator and Tones Collective co‑founder Cortez Daniel about what he’s learning from teaching “today’s kids” in K–12 and community settings. Cortez shares how his work in public schools and with organizations like Evergreen Children’s Chorale and Tones Collective informs his approach to accommodations that maintain rigor, preventing learned help...

Just in time for spring contest preparation, Alan  and Steve  unpack one deceptively simple idea: “There’s one rule in music – make it sound good.” If that’s true, what does it actually look like in rehearsal? Steve breaks the rule into six practical priorities great ensembles share: accurate attacks, correct pitches, the best possible tone, solid blend, clean releases, and a clear melody that’s n...