Originally published August 11, 2012. Updated, revised and republished December 8, 2025. Fermata is Italian for “stop”. It’s used much like we use “stop” in English: a “bus stop” in Italian is a “fermata dell’autobus”. In music the “fermata” indicates a hold, generally at the discretion of the conductor. It’s…
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All I Needed to Know about Music I Learned from Bugs Bunny!
Originally published April 16, 2009. Updated, revised and republished May 29, 2025. I’ve come to realize that when I was a kid, an important, defining “or” is “Bugs Bunny/Loony Tunes” or “Mickey Mouse/Disney”, as in “which one did you like”. On a side note, another important one of these is…
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Opera Crash Course
Originally published April 6, 2009. Updated, revised and republished March 21, 2025 Update: It is a rare and wonderful thing these days to find that something you found online nearly sixteen years ago is STILL available. It's an even more rare and wonderful thing to find that the person that…
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Let’s take it from the top
Originally published April 4, 2009, revised and republished February 7, 2025. This is the first post in what I hope will be an interesting and educational project: an amateur music blog. My model is the myriad of amateur food blogs that are out there. If people without formal culinary training…