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How to Build a Resource Database

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Without Using a Clunky Database Program

Databases? Seriously? What is this all about and why would you need this? Let me ask you a few questions:

  • If somebody finds out you play an instrument and asks you to play something for them and your mind goes blank … what do you play?
  • Do you have a plan on how to improve on your instrument? Do you know what exercises/pieces to practice? In which order?
  • Do you have quick access to all your relevant information? Can you quickly pull up the exercises, sheet music, repertoire pieces etc.?
  • You know you have the perfect exercise/piece for a student somewhere – but don’t know where that elusive somewhere is?
  • You’ve just purchased a plugin/VST because it was such a great deal, only to later realize that you’ve already purchased the same plugin two years ago and had totally forgotten about it.
  • During some soul-searching moments you ask yourself why you keep getting analysis paralysis when looking at your 17 SSL console emulations and 12 EQ and 26 compressor plugins. Where are the times where you simply focused on the music?

Welcome to the club! I’m not making fun of you, although you have to admit it’s a somewhat hilarious situation. We have more choices and tools available than ever, yet it’s getting more difficult to simply focus on creating. Guess why?!

In this article I’ll share some general strategies as well as step-by-step breakdowns of how to set up resource databases without actually using clunky database applications. So no need to worry – we won’t have to put on jackets with elbow patches to channel our inner engineer. 😉

We’ll stay in somewhat semi-nerdy territory and the concepts and tools to actually do that stuff are easy to use and accessible.

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Use Evernote to Quickly Find Anything in Your (Music) Magazine Collection

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Keyboards magazine cover November 1987
My 1st Keyboards magazine from November 1987

Hi, my name is Marko and I used to be a music magazine addict. 🙂

No kidding.

It started in 1987 with my first (German) “Keyboards” magazine.

A year later, soon after I had started playing guitar I also bought my first guitar magazines. In the early 90s I had a subscription to “Guitar for the Practicing Musician” and was getting the magazine shipped to Austria until I moved to California for my music studies.

On my bookshelves there are issues of:

  • Guitar Player
  • Guitar One
  • Guitar School
  • Gitarre+Bass
  • Guitar Techniques
  • Sound Check
  • Keys
  • Electronic Musician
  • and various other mag experiments

Crazy, I know.

Update: Not anymore. I’ve since digitized all my magazines by scanning them. I’ll write a “standard operating procedures” type of post and once that’s done, add the link here.

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Evernote – How to Track Your Students’ Progress

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When you teach a lot of students, it’s hard to keep an overview of what you’ve already covered. Once in a while I would hand out a “new” song only to hear from my student that we’ve already played it a year ago. The opposite also happened as well. I say something like, “That’s similar to the 2 string octave arpeggio shapes we’ve already discussed” only to get a startled look and the reply that my student doesn’t know what I’m referring to. And rightly so, because I haven’t covered it with him, but with some other student instead.

No big deal, right? Or is it? You get old(er) and bad memory and dementia are inevitable, n’est-ce pas?

Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with bad memory. It’s simply a fact that mix-ups can and do happen when you teach more than a handful of students.

Part of the problem is that when at the end of a lesson you picture doing something with a student in the future, that vivid image might get stored similarly to an actual past experience in your mind. So you might think that you already covered something while actually you just recall an imagined future lesson.

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