Hi!

Hi, everyone!

My name is Sam. Confession: I have no idea how to run a blog. However, I do have some goals for this small corner of the internet (here's another confession: the internet totally freaks me out, and I don't understand it). Before I give you my aspirations for this blog, I guess I should give you some backstory.

I'm a music education major at Missouri State University, and, as you probably guessed, I'm a clarinetist (maybe "The Clarinet Club" gave it away). I'm currently student teaching, and it has been an amazing experience so far. At the program I'm with, I have been bestowed with the task to get their young clarinet players excited about playing the clarinet. So, I started (with the help of some of the directors) the Clarinet Club at the middle school. However, this club is super secret. In fact, when we pulled the 7th grade clarinet players aside to tell them about Clarinet Club, we stressed the importance that it is a secret club.

* The words "I swear if you tell any of the other sections about this I'm going to show up to your house at night in a clown costume with a metronome" may have been said by one of the directors. Did I mention that my experience at this placement has been amazing so far?

The kids then decided to call it the Super Secret Clarinet Association (SSCA).

The SSCA

My hope for the SSCA is that students will have fun learning more about the instrument that they play, and maybe even get better at playing it. If kids want to learn how to play Let It Go (so help me), then we'll learn how to play Let It Go. If a kid has been practicing Castle on a Cloud and wants to play for all of us, then that kid is going to play Castle on a Cloud, and we're all going to cheer (which happened, and it made my heart happy). Of course, there are things that I do want to teach them. For example, in our first meeting this week, I taught them bugle calls. This is great for so many reasons, but I'll talk about that somewhere else, some other time.

The Clarinet Club

Okay, this is where I finally talk about my aspirations for the blog. 

I say "finally" because I've been working on this post for at least 2 hours now... I hope this gets easier!

I want to have a readily available collection of materials and resources that I find and create. This aspect of my blog aspirations is slightly selfish - it's basically a virtual file cabinet for me. However, this idea stemmed from the thought of wanting to have a collection of resources for my friends who are or are going to be band directors, and who feel like they don't know anything about the clarinet (because, really, who even does). But, this blog truly is for anyone who is trying to find resources for developing, young clarinet players (even if you yourself are a developing, young clarinetist!).

At the beginning of this blog's life, most of the things that will be posted are going to come from what I do with the SSCA. At some point, especially if there's a demand for it, I'll post different types of things (working with beginning clarinet players, reed discussion, etc.). Even though I've had a fair amount of experience with clarinet at all kinds of levels, I don't claim to have all of the answers (nor am I the be-all end-all of any opinion). So, this will be as much of a learning experience for me as it will be for you!