We are extremely happy to announce that the D'Addario Music Foundation has graciously donated thirty metronome/tuner combo units to the Philippine High School for the Arts! The D'Addario Music Foundation is dedicated to supporting music education all over the world. They are a not-for-profit branch of D'Addario and Company Inc., makers of the "Planet Waves" metronomes and tuners that have been donated.
We are working on some more in-depth posts about our experience at PHSA, but this news became priority number one. We think about our experience at PHSA every day, and talk about it often. We had an amazing time there, and we both feel that the students there helped us grow as people and musicians just as much (if not more!) than we helped teach them. Every student there is very special, and we believe they are all good enough to get into some of the top music schools in the US. There was one other factor, though, that we realized might prevent their development to this level. On our first day working with the students in a master class setting, we asked for a show of hands of who owned a metronome and/or tuner. One student raised his hand, and explained that it wasn’t necessary that they each owned one, because he was willing to share his one metronome with the rest of the students at the school. Shocked at this, we explained that each student should have their own metronome and tuner, and that they would only cost around 800 Philippine pesos ($20). The students were heartbroken, and eventually admitted that this would present a financial hardship for most of them. Needless to say, we struggled at times during our residency to help the students improve their intonation, rhythm, and inner-pulse. Many of the students had hit a plateau where they had become frustrated at an inability to improve. We were positive they could overcome this if they simply had regular access to these tools. We want to reiterate, though, that we were tremendously impressed at how far they had gotten without these tools!
We explained to the students that EVERY music student in the world needs to have a metronome. We both use a metronome every day to improve our rhythm, tempo/pulse, and especially as a practice tool for working up difficult passages from slow to fast. It is useful for tracking progress while practicing: finding your "goal" tempo, your "start" tempo, and knowing which tempos you've gotten to in-between on each day. In addition, almost every musician can benefit from the use of a tuner (well, maybe not pianists:-)). Again, we use these every day while we are practicing to make sure that the notes on our instruments are in tune, and that we will play in tune when collaborating with other musicians.
We contacted around a dozen music stores and metronome manufacturers. Our goal was to provide one metronome and tuner for the school to check out to every single student at PHSA so that they have access to their own metronome at any time while practicing, without ever needing to borrow from another student. While we received some initial negative responses ("We are sorry but we are not able to make a donation at this time..."), within a couple of days, we heard back from Suzanne D’Addario Brouder with the D'Addario Music Foundation with the following e-mail:
"I am absolutely sure that spending time with these students and encouraging their development was both an educational and rewarding experience. It always amazes me what others achieve with so little when we live in a country of such excess. I would love to be able to donate some tuners and metronomes to these deserving students."
We are posting this blog post because just today, 30 metronome/tuner units arrived in the mail, free of charge! We are still working out the details, but we are hoping to get the metronomes to PHSA in the next couple of weeks. We will post a follow-up later in the year on how the metronomes are being used at the school.
We also wanted to add that we received a very positive and supportive response from Brian Charles at Charles Double Reed Company. While we no longer need metronome donations, Mr. Charles has offered his support in other ways. We are working out the details of this donation as well, and will update the blog with news as it comes.
Midori Samson, Bassoon, The Juilliard School
Brian Gnojek, Clarinet, Freelance Musician in NYC
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