Instruments of Worship
The Instruments of Worship Podcast, hosted by Casey Rinkenberger, is dedicated to encouraging and equipping classical musicians to lift high the name of Jesus with their instruments and their lives. Tune in every Monday for a new episode!
Instruments of Worship
Creativity in the Classroom with Dave Getz | Ep. 7
Today we have the special privilege of talking to conductor, music educator, composer, and author, Dave Getz. We discuss everything from ministering to students in a public school setting, the blessing of creative work, fostering a fearless and fun learning environment for students, Dave's journey in composition, and so much more! You will not want to miss it!
Links to learn more about Dave Getz...
- His website - davidgetzcreative.com
- His webinar - "Keep Stats, Not Grades! LIVE Webinar"
- His book - "Unlocking Student Creativity Through Composition"
- His musical - "Ruth: The Musical"
- The Morton Orchestra Website
Here is the link to the book Dave mentioned, "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art" by Madeleine L'Engle.
Thanks so much for listening! Make sure to check back every Monday for a new episode!
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Hi friends. Welcome to the Instruments of Worship podcast. This podcast is dedicated to encouraging and equipping classical musicians to let's tie the name of Jesus with their instruments, but also their lives. Today, we have the amazing privilege of getting to talk to Dave Goetz. He is a conductor, music educator, composer, and author. He was actually my high school orchestra director and he's from my community. So I've been able to see how he's played such a pivotal role in developing the arts in our area. And he does it through really engaging and a fun teaching style at the high school. He also keeps very busy with many projects like his book, Unlocking Student Creativity Through Composition, composing his very own musical, which is called Ruth the Musical. And he even has a live webinar coming up on February 26th called Keeping Stats Not Grades. Dave is always up to something creative and glorifying the Lord through it all. So I'm so excited for you to get to meet Dave Goetz in today's episode of Instruments of Worship.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so my name is David Goetz. I am the high school orchestra director here at Morton High School. I'm recording in my office here. I also am the director of the Central Illinois Youth Symphony that serves kind of the greater Peoria area of musical talent. And I've been at at least my job here at the high school since 2012. And I've been working with the Youth Music Illinois organization, which is where the Youth Symphony is housed. Since 2017, I was the conductor of their concert orchestra for about six or seven seasons. And now this is my first season as the director of the symphony.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's awesome. So I would love for you to tell a little bit of your backstory to both musical, non-musical, and even if you want to include how you came to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so that's a lot of stories there. I'll try to keep it condensed here. But I've grown up in central Illinois my whole life. I was born in Morton. I was born into a Christian home. My parents were wonderful, loving, God-fearing parents. And that's kind of always just been something that I've known and has been a part of my story. And we can get into that a little more later. But musically, I started playing the piano when I was five. I started playing the viola when I was in fifth grade. And I kind of fell in love with piano as my solo instrument, but the viola for what it could do in ensembles, chamber groups. And so that kind of had those two spheres of my musical life that I was developing. I went to, well, I started studying piano, I'd say more intensely in high school. I went to a local university, Bradley in Peoria. I studied piano there. That's where I kind of got into the more, I'd say, kind of like competitive classical field of, you know, doing competitions and learning, you know, really high level rep. And that was kind of how I auditioned to get into universities. I went to Illinois Wesleyan in Bloomington Normal, which is a wonderful conservatory. And I went in as music ed, though, and there was a big struggle for me to decide if I was going the performance, education or composition route. Those are my three loves in high school. But I did decide to go with education. So I got my music ed degree, even though I still did a lot of recitals, a lot of solo work. And I actually wrote a ton of music in college as well that got performed. But then coming out of Illinois Wesleyan, that's when I came back and I was actually trying to get out of Illinois. I was really kind of applying to get out of the not because I didn't like where I was, but it was just kind of that point in my life where, you know, hey, you know, try to get to the city life or maybe, you know, just go somewhere new. And that really wasn't in the cards. A bunch of funny stories there, too. But I ended up right back at my alma mater, which looking back now has just been such a wonderful experience. place to be, just to be close to family. And my wife is from Central Illinois as well. So now we're raising our family here in Central Illinois. And it's just really meant a lot to me to be able to give back musically to the community that was invested in me growing up. And so playing my first performances were actually in my local church and just playing music for the congregation and just kind of seeing how that has all developed and now kind of come full circle. It's been a fun story.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we're so glad that you stuck around in the area.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I don't know if I should have mentioned, uh, Casey, but you know, you came through my program. So you were, you know, you were my student for many years. Uh, I didn't know if that was a part of your intro or whatnot, but I think that I had to mention that as well. So I
SPEAKER_02:know, I know totally. I'm curious what that decision was like for you. You said it was a hard one of, do you go the composition performance or, you know, a music ed route? What, what kind of narrowed it down for you?
SPEAKER_01:It was a lot of teenage angst went into that decision there. And, you know, when you're 16 or 17, you know, just these decisions seem so huge. And looking back, I'm like, oh, you know, it's hard to know. I definitely think I made the right choice looking back. But I kind of decided what could I not live without? And I realized if I didn't, The one thing I didn't want to give up was conducting. I really wanted to be a conductor. I wanted to lead ensembles. So it's like, well, if I give up a music ed degree, I probably am also giving up being a conductor. Not to say that people haven't gotten their other ways, but I was like, if I go into just performance, I'm probably giving up conducting. If I go into education, I'm probably giving up performing. And if I go into composition, I'm probably giving Maybe giving up both or in some facet. I was like, if I go education, I can at least keep playing as much as I want. I can keep writing as much as I want, even if it's not at the professional level. And so that's kind of where I ended up choosing education. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And it's a good encouragement for people that... even though they go one route, doesn't mean that they have to completely give up the other things that they love or they're good at. But going back to when you were young, you said you had parents. Did they put you in music? Is that something that you chose to do when you were five, I guess? Or is that something they really instilled in you?
SPEAKER_01:Well, so I'm from a very big family. I'm the second oldest of five. see I have to even count on my fingers there's eight of us all together so it was a big family and my older brother started piano actually when he would have been six or seven and I was just kind of in that tag along like oh my brother's going to a piano lesson I want to go to a piano lesson and then my dad played piano he was I remember distinctly hearing him play like Turkish Rondo by Mozart March of the Dwarves by Grieg and you know these pieces that Still to this day, I can just picture him playing those. And even as a little kid, it was just like, oh, I want to play those like dad. So there was that modeling. But then when it came to actual lessons and practicing, I think I was that classic kid who would go to piano lesson, hear my teacher play it, and then I would just play what I remembered. I was not a good note reader early on. And I just had a very... I think, vivid imagination. I was very improvisatory. I would often come back and, you know, I would play the piece and my teacher would be like, that's not how it goes at all. And I would just be like, well, that's how I practiced it and that's how I like it. And thankfully, she encouraged that creativity and didn't, you know, stifle that because I think that actually led to a lot of, you know, what I've been able to do as a composer. For sure. But growing up in my house, too, I guess I should say I was homeschooled until ninth grade. So there was also this level of like, well, music is just a part of your school so every day that I did school I did math I did English and I played the piano and then I played the viola and then I you know so it was just kind of this is just a part of my education so growing up in that environment I think lended itself well to you know being self-motivated to practice and to seek and learn at my own pace and so yeah I really do thank my parents a lot for the foundation they gave me
SPEAKER_02:yeah it's so cool how you even as a youngster were you know, you could improvise. That's something that you can't always, it's a little more difficult to teach, you know, that creativity. And obviously still to this day has really been a part of your musical journey. I'm curious though, you said you were raised in a Christian home. So how was it that you came to the Lord? What's a little bit of your testimony?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I remember being in high school and kind of coming to the realization that my testimony was boring. Because I would hear, you know, you'd go to like a summer camp and you'd hear these people talk about these 180s that they did in their lives. And I actually remember going through this phase of like, I just don't have an exciting, you know, Damascus Road conversion story. And I remember I kind of wrestled with that as a younger kid. younger person, just being like, I feel like a Christian should have this, like I was this way. And then I, I completely changed and I'm this way. And, and I realized now God's written everybody's story exactly the way it should be. Um, and my story just, I can't remember not knowing God and really not knowing God's love for me. Um, I, I kind of remember this moment of, you know, being at like a youth group, um, probably early at elementary school even. And one of the dads would kind of come around and ask everybody kind of these personal questions about faith. And I remember then kind of like, I think understanding like the logic of salvation, at least from the Bible perspective. But it was one of those, it wasn't like a foreign concept. Like, oh, I just always know that God just loves me and I love God. And so I'd say where my testimony kind of got more interesting was going to college at Illinois Wesleyan And then finally being exposed to a lot of different worldviews and meeting people that thought of the world very differently, both from culture and religious faith and just family background. And so I actually got plugged into a student ministry because, again, I thought that's what you do if you're a Christian. You find the other Christians. But it was great because I found a bunch of Christians that weren't like me. And that was really great, especially growing up in In Morton, you probably know, everybody's kind of the same here. And so it was really nice to really rub shoulders with people from other different faith backgrounds even. And I actually got to be the leader of that group for my junior and senior year. So I was kind of playing the role of pastor as a college student. And that really... taught me more about my faith than like anything going through like youth group just because I was invited to a lot of the because I was kind of the leader of this group I was invited to a lot of interfaith dialogues and I would go visit other religious groups on campus and be able to talk to like the the atheist and agnostic club and and it really made me realize when you first off people when you when you're a genuine listener to people's worldview they they They will talk to you. And that was kind of something I wasn't ready for because I kind of thought that, oh, if I bring up my faith, I'm going to get persecuted or I have to put on the armor of God to have this conversation. And I found when I just had genuine conversations with people on campus, they were very interested in what I had to say. And I was very interested in what they had to say. And so I think that process really just strengthened that. my faith and being able to articulate it and communicate it and really teach it. I think, you know, I am a music teacher and that's what I've been trained to do, but I, I, I used a lot of those skills that I was learning in my education classes and, and was applying those to how I was teaching the Bible on a weekly basis to my friends and just informally, you know, in coffee shops and stuff like that. So that, like I said, it's, it's not a, Paul Damascus story, but it's my story and it's obviously the one I love the most.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's so cool. I have a very similar story to yours. And I think even now looking back, just how I can see the Lord's hand in things that I didn't even know when I was growing up and just the Holy Spirit's just rolling, keeping me, you know, through that whole time. And I'm so super thankful for that. But I kind of want to transition or tie in together. Now you're a teacher in a public school and also a believer. And I'm just curious what that's like for you. I know that me doing more private teaching in the music world, there's maybe a little more level of freedom in what I can and can't say or how I can maybe minister to my students. But I'm curious just for you, you have more limitations. And so what is ministering or being a light in your setting as a public school teacher? What is that like for you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that has been a very interesting journey to walk because I can't just speak my mind freely always. And there's been, I can even think of students that I've had over the years who have approached me and kind of said something like, well, since I know you're a Christian, I want to ask you this question. And usually what I say is like, how? Who told you I'm a Christian? But it's one of those things. I do believe, like the Bible says, people will know, hopefully, by your actions, right? And what you're saying. And I'd say the one thing that has been, that I didn't anticipate, being kind of a believer in this role, is there's been, obviously, being worked in schools, there's, unfortunately, this has happened so frequently, there's these school shooting tragedies. Which have, you know, unfortunately occurred so frequently in my teaching career around the nation. I usually will just, I'll talk about that and just talk about like how sad and terrible this is. And often what I've done, even as I say, I'm going to just be, I'm going to go to the choir room after school and I'm just going to play music. And if anybody wants to come sit and listen. You can do that. And, and, and I've had like incredible responses to that, or just like students will come up afterwards and be like, you're the only teacher who talked about this in class today. Like none of our other teachers mentioned this event or like, so like, you know, when students are wrestling with these, you know, very real things that the Bible talks about where it's like, you know, the world is, is it can be an awful place. It can be dark. There's evil here. And even though I'm not addressing that from like wearing my pastor hat to be
SPEAKER_00:like,
SPEAKER_01:this is, you know, why this is happening or this is just like, say, hey, let's just acknowledge that this isn't the way the world should be.
SPEAKER_00:And
SPEAKER_01:yet when you listen to meditation by Massonet, you're like, that is how the world should be. Like the world should be like that piece. And so let me just play this. Let me just listen to it. I'm going to play it. Whatever that brings up to you, let it do that. And I can even remember specifically when one student after I got done playing it, And I mean, I'm sure you've played this piece, but like nobody wants to say anything. Like you just don't want to break the spell that that piece puts over you. And he broke the silence and he said, thank you. Like, just like, that's what I need. A quote, I'll say this now because I'll probably say it later too. I'm really impacted by a quote by the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, who said in one of his novels, beauty can save the world. And I'm like, that's not a Bible verse, but I think it's just, it's so rich in like, God's making all things new, like eventually beauty is going to win. And so the more beauty that we can interject into these moments, I think it does something profound. And I found that when I've done that, I've seen an incredible response from students that I didn't anticipate. And if I was in a youth group setting, you know, I'd probably use different language and describe it differently. But I think being in this position where I'm at, I have that unique opportunity to especially as someone teaching music, to use music as an avenue of the gospel that you can't really put into words.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Wow. That's super interesting. I didn't know that you did that. And it's so true that even just showing the evil versus the good and the beauty that... Ultimately, God is the author of the good and the beautiful, how that can even speak to your students. That's really creative and really awesome. And how God is the creator of music and how you can even almost share the gospel through it. And so without having to say a word or having to preach a sermon, that's really impactful. I even think from my own experience and being in your class, just I think you stand out as a teacher who has a lot of joy. And I know that from just talking to other people in the public school setting, it would be extremely Very taxing job, a very almost emotionally draining, I could imagine at times and, you know, constantly busy. And but you get to interact with these students day after day and really have an impact on your life. And especially you, you don't get them just for a semester or a year. You get them hopefully all four years. So can you speak to how do you have joy in a classroom? How can that impact your students? And do you ever get burnout? Like, how can you how do you deal with that? I mean, as a believer, but also just as a public believer. school teacher.
SPEAKER_01:I'll take the last part first there. So it's easy to get burnt out of being a teacher. So I'm not going to just say every day is butterflies and roses. But being a music teacher is different. There still really isn't a day I haven't just enjoyed coming to work because I know I'm going to get to make music. I'm going to get to help a student maybe play this piece more in tune, or I'm going to help them understand this rhythm. I actually teach theory now. I have a theory class, so it's like I can help a kid just understand music better. And so that part of it is fantastic. And I think anytime you've done a job for 13 years, you start to find things that you wish weren't a part of your job. And there's the teacher read tape and all that stuff. So I don't want to just paint the picture that Mr. Goetz is always walking around here just with a super big smile. But I do think just also as a believer, work is a very sanctified practice that God gave us. And even before the fall, if you read in Genesis, the first thing God did was give Adam a job. He's like, name the animals. It's a creative job. It's like, use your imagination and grow this garden. So I think just the fact that before we even entered our kind of fallen state, God wanted us to be being creative, being imaginative, growing things, nurturing things, making things. And I think from that standpoint, I just look at what I get to do and And I actually just shared this last week at something else I was speaking at that the two things I've done the most in my professional life are be a musician and be a coach or an athlete in cross country. Both of those things have direct verses in the Bible that talk about those things. Like, you know, if you're a computer programmer, it's hard to look at like Paul's letters and be like, how does this apply to me? But like, I can look at like psalms and say, I'm going to play skillfully today on a streamed instrument, and then I'm going to go run the race with perseverance. I mean, those are two things like every day I can say I am checking, like I am fulfilling some biblical verse here. Not to say that every day I do it well, but I think just having that perspective that it's very easy for me to say the things that I thankfully get to be good at, but also get to do every day are things that God very specifically made a part of the human experience for a reason.
SPEAKER_02:I like your point that even before the fall, work was a blessing. I think most people think of the curse after the fall where work was not a blessing anymore. But I did an episode on work and worship and how those things do not have to be separate, you know, and we get to work with the Lord alongside us. So I'm curious, practically, I explained in my intro that you have a very fun and creative teaching style. Could you kind of explain that to the audience? How is your teaching different than maybe any other music school teacher?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's different because I'm crazy. So and I have always just thrived in the spontaneous. I mean, you can go back and ask my parents. So as a little kid, like I, I've always been comfortable with like public speaking. And even like, I know this is a classical music podcast, but like performing and auditioning, like I, I wouldn't really get stressed out about those I wouldn't get like physically anxious I would just get this like excited like yeah this is a big game I get to go you know perform at my best and I would still get that like I think appropriate level of nervousness but it was never this just like crippling anxiety which I I'm thankful for that gift and I try to help students develop that too but I know that's not everybody's story and so I think I kind of take that into my teaching of just I am 100% okay. And I would say even a lot of my best ideas that I've had teaching, I get them when the bell rings and I know the students are coming in five minutes. And I just think, oh, this would be an awesome way to teach this concept. And I can imagine most teachers would be like, oh no, I need to think about this and come up with a lesson plan, make sure it hits the standards. And I'm just like, nope, this is what we're doing today now. And I've just learned now to trust my gut to know those are actually when some of my best ideas come. And so I think my students have learned to expect the unexpected in my class and just know that there's, you know, anything is pretty much fair game with Mr. Getz. Now, I'd say I have, you know, gotten a little, I think even spontaneity can become routine. And so, but I think that's something if students know that that's something that's going to be a part of the class, then it doesn't throw them off. And so I think I think a lot of that I owe to my homeschool background. And I know you have that too, Casey. But just like knowing that I grew up learning at my own pace. And if I didn't understand something, it was either wait until mom was done answering all my five other siblings questions before she got to me, or I'm just going to dive in and try all these strategies. And that's really what I see. I would say the most that I've been kind of shocked by being a teacher is by how students are just so afraid to try anything that might have the slightest bit of risk of failure. And that just baffles me growing up in the environment I did, because I'm just like, I, like, even when I would get a new video game, I would just, I would throw away the instruction manual and just be like, I'm just going to learn this until I am able to do what I do. And, you know, when I, when I want to learn a piece, like I, one of the earliest pieces, I remember learning you know, that was substantial was, um, a piece by a composer got chalk. I don't know if probably not very familiar to most people. Um, but he's a virtuoso pianist and he wrote a piece called the banjo. And when I got the music, it was in like six flats and it was super fast and all this stuff. And I just remember thinking like, Oh, this will probably take me a year. And it wasn't like this, like, oh, no, this is so hard. It was just like, oh, this will just take me a while. So I think when I look at like my teaching style, I'm trying to get students to see like Mr. Goetz is not afraid to just try something. And a lot of those ideas are bombs. It's not like every new idea I come up with is great. But I think I want to show them what it looks like for an adult to enjoy their work. experiment in their work, say when they've had a bad idea. I think those are all things just students need to see adults do. And I think as a teacher, we often think that our job is to like deliver all the content in our brain to their brain, but it's really to just show them how being a musician is just being a human.
SPEAKER_00:And
SPEAKER_01:these are all human things we do. And along the way, we're going to make some great music. But, and you talked earlier too, Kate, you said like, I have the same students for four years. So I call that actually, we call it the 720. Like I have them for 720 days. And only about 16 of those days are going to be concerts. So I tell them, we think these concerts are the important part of our program. And I mean, that's what the public sees. But I always tell them, like, you are going to be shaped by the 720 days that you're just in this room. Some days we're going to be playing and working really hard. Some days we're going to be being goofy. And like today, today, we were just doing a trivia on name the most popular love songs, because it's Valentine's Day, and you know, things like that. So it's like, so, but I just think how they see me going about my job is teaching them more than any piece we're going to learn.
SPEAKER_02:And I think that's so important in today's world, even in the classical music sphere. We think that perfection is the goal. And that's certainly not the case. And I love just how it sounds like you were pretty fearless growing up and even now just to try. And that's so important when you play music. You can't actually get into the emotion of a piece if you're just trying to make it perfect. You have to have a level of perfection. not being afraid and just going for it and having a good time. So can you think off the top of your head? I know the one that I'm thinking of just have some of the fun ideas that you have that you've used in your classroom. the one that stands out to me is like I believe it was always on the first day of school or maybe even every semester there would be you just happen to break out into a rap or some sort of you know Broadway musical style song you know just something that was like I remember the first time I experienced it I grew to expect it about every first day of the semester but my first time I was like he's actually just improvising this I was so shocked and it was so much fun can you think of anything else that kind of in your classroom has become a super fun thing. Any fun ideas you could share with other music educators?
SPEAKER_01:Well, so it is funny that you say that, Casey, because that's the tradition still does continue. I'm sure. And what is so funny, though, is like you said, that I can always tell that the freshmen have absolutely no idea how to react when I do this. Because so basically, if teachers want to copy this is I just I have a song that I've already written and I just put it in GarageBand and delay it by about two minutes. So when I hit play, the track just plays nothing for about two minutes. Then all of a sudden just this music starts. And then I just, so I treat it almost like a musical, you know, like you're just talking and all of a sudden music starts and then you just go into song and I act like nothing happened. And so, but you can just tell, like, again, I think this goes back to just like, you know, the public school system does kind of beat a little bit of the creativity out of kids because you'd think this would be like this oh what a fun experience but these freshmen just look around like am I supposed to enjoy like can I actually like is it okay to like have fun and now again there's enough older upperclassmen there that are expecting it. So, but yeah, the first few times I did that, you could just tell there was this look of like, we don't know what to do when an adult is enjoying their job. Like we don't know, like, like Mr. Guest just looks like he's having so much fun. What am I supposed to do? Can I have fun? So that's where I get, I'm just trying to teach them that yes, it's okay to enjoy that. But the other thing I like doing is we call it a creative rehearsal challenge. And this again is where I, I'll usually delay a sound or something. And I usually do it by about like 15 minutes. So, you know, we start class, I hit play on my computer and nothing happens for 15 minutes, but then all of a sudden this music starts and it signals this creative rehearsal challenge. And I actually learned this from another podcast and I can't remember where it was from, but basically you just have a list of, of, challenges that the orchestra has to do so it might be like everybody um like switch parts with someone in the orchestra or or switch an instrument with someone in the orchestra or um play pizzicato only for the next five minutes or um i'm trying to get some other ones we've done like you have to sing you you can't you have to just vocalize your part for two minutes so it just i call it shaking up the snow globe like sometimes you just have to shake things up and you know if you've been having a tough week of rehearsal sometimes you just need a Well, this is obviously going to sound bad because you're all playing each other's, you know, raw parts. So don't worry about sounding good. Just worry about enjoying this. And usually the next day's rehearsal is already a lot better just because you can tell people are more relaxed.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I know you've also created just like in terms of balancing the fun, but also trying to be productive and make some music. I know that you've, you know, created the... practice challenge i think your students are going through it now and is there still gift cards do they win gift cards if they complete this challenge
SPEAKER_01:yeah there's always a some prize for uh yeah consecutivity of practice uh you did mention like i should mention uh and i'm not trying to like sound arrogant here but like our orchestra is awesome like we went to all state four years ago we go every year to a u of i festival and play in krannert uh the Paul down at U of I. And we're playing Tchaikovsky's Serenade right now. And what I always tell teachers is I've gotten these results by rehearsing less. I've literally eliminated the number of times I'm rehearsing with my students in order to include these more, I just call them culture building things. I want to build this culture to where when we do have a big rehearsal day, like the students are ready for it. And, and rehearsal doesn't just become this monotonous thing. Like, Oh, every day we go to orchestra, we just get our instrument out. We play a scale, we practice our piece, we put it away and we do it again. It's like, no, no. When we rehearse, we're really going to get stuff done. And I, cause I think that I want them to see like excellence is a part of being a musician. Like we don't just want to throw a sloppy product on the stage. Like we want to learn this as best as we can. But we're not at least the method I, or the culture I've kind of built is like, we're going to do that by, we call it working hard at having fun. To have the most fun, you have to work really hard to get to the point where the fun is at its premium.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. I know. And I think what you're describing is for people who don't know, you have a way, I think because of all this stuff that you're describing, of attracting students to your program and its growth has been, I feel like, significant. And And students want to practice more than, you know, if they're having fun and enjoying and it's a team, the orchestra is a team, then they want to be a part of it and more engaged. And I think that's kind of the culture that you've you've built. But I'm just curious because I think this if I am imagining correctly for a music educator, it would be like, how do you also encourage excellence when students? Maybe some of your students don't practice on their own or they don't take individual lessons like that would be so difficult to to know that balance of how do you really try to grow your program to greater excellence in that sort of a setting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, for the first part of my career, I always assumed that was the grade books job. Like, if you don't practice, you're going to get a bad grade. And, you know, because I do, oh, students just hate bad grades. So if I give them a bad grade, then they, you know, they'll practice more. But then I decided, I kind of changed my mind. And I was like, I don't want students to practice to not get a bad grade. Like, I want students to practice because you know, for the right reasons. And I haven't perfected this. So please don't think I'm a savant at this. But the story I say, or the example I always use is if you blow off a math quiz, that doesn't affect anybody else in the math classroom. Like your math grade is your math grade. And if you get an F, the person next to you can still get an A. But if you're in the cello section, and you don't know how to play in the key of B flat major, and all of a sudden you see two flats in your music and you're just putting your fingers down in the key of D major well now you're messing up your stand partner you're probably messing up the core like you your negligence has spilled over and it's now affecting the people around you and I think coming I should I haven't even really talked about this a lot but a huge part of my upbringing too is sports like I have always been a huge sports fan like I coached for 10 years and there is no way that Right. Right. the culture of orchestra is such like, oh, I can just be in the orchestra. If I just use this much bow and don't know my finger patterns, I'm sure the person in front of me is going to play it right. So that's fine. And I'm really trying to just dispel that mentality from at least my group. And even today, I can remember I said, I want you to go home. We have a three-day weekend coming up. And I said, if you don't touch your music for three days, you're going to come back on Tuesday and we're going to be fixing everything we just did
SPEAKER_00:today.
SPEAKER_01:So I said, so you can either make a decision to say, I don't want to be the reason that we're going to go off to go back and fix this. And if that's your mentality, then I just say, you're not being a good teammate. It's not that you're not being a good musician because music's hard. Like if someone is genuinely trying and you're like, and teachers can spot this a mile away. I can tell right away a kid who is trying to play in tune and is missing the note versus a kid who doesn't know the difference between D major and B flat major. It's so obvious to me. And because of my position, I'm able to have those individual conversations with those kids. And usually it's the underclassmen. You're trying to mold them into the type of musician you want them to be. But I would say by the end of the year, we get there. And there's peaks and valleys, and we go through it all. But usually by May, we get where we need to go.
SPEAKER_02:Can you also maybe explain for people? I know that I believe you were the first one to implement boot camp and maybe what that's like at the beginning of the year and maybe how you see the impact of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so this I realized, again, not just a three day weekend, but summer vacation is a three month weekend. And I was just seeing students come back in August and be playing bootcamp. at their April level. And I'm not talking about the next April. Like, wow, just taking three months off of anything is just a terrible way to see long-term growth. And so I also don't want to be a, I just don't want to be someone who's like, micromanaging practice minutes be like okay go home and just tell me every day you're practicing and how much you're practicing like that's just so much work for me and I don't want to be that because again I instead want to just teach them that hey if you want to be a good teammate you'll work at it and you'll work at it for the team not just to impress me you'll work at it for each other and so I just said okay instead of just being mad at everybody for not practicing over the summer like I'm just gonna let's just every summer just say hey we're gonna commit the first 10 weeks pretty much or eight weeks to two days a week. We're just working on fundamentals and it's individual work. It's not doing it corporately. It's just every single person's working at their own pace. And I mean, I do, I do keep very diligent records of like how far they're getting through their, you know, packets or whatever. But, but I think just, again, it's putting the ownership on the student to say, and I always tell them this too, like you're in charge of your grade. I'll be in charge of your progress. I'll work really hard at tracking you and showing you where you're at, showing you where you can be. I just want you to show up every day, give your best. When you know you need to work extra, you're going home and you're putting in the work. But other than that, my job here is to make everybody play together at their best. And so I started doing boot camp to kind of just brush the summer dust off and get us ready for that first fall concert.
SPEAKER_02:Totally, totally. Okay, so I kind of want to transition to then your composing, because I think that's so fascinating. What was your first exposure to composing? I'm just so curious.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I mean, it was really those first piano lessons. I mean, I would, I would kind of because I wasn't a strong reader. I just think I did have the gift of like, I could hear a melody, I could kind of hear where a phrase should go. So I would kind of start playing what I remembered my piano teacher playing and then like, oh, it probably goes like this and I could resolve a progression or I could resolve a phrase to the tonic and stuff like that. But it wasn't really till probably middle school. My parents got me a MIDI keyboard that connected to a computer. I mean, this is like dinosaur software now, but I could like literally just play something and then see the notation pop up on the screen. And I say it was it basically gave me this really quick closed feedback loop. of learning music theory because I would play something, see how it looked, hear how it looked, be able to alter it, hear it again, play it back, alter it. And so, so I basically like, I learned how to resolve diminished seventh chords, not knowing what I was doing. It was like, Oh, it just sounds better if it goes here next. And again, it's that trial and error method, right? Just, I wasn't afraid to just like, Oh, let me just throw a bunch of notes on here, see how they sound. Okay. Now let me mix them up and see how they sound better. Um, And so that just kind of grew then into wanting to know the names of like, okay, why does that progression sound this way? Why does this chord sound different? If I voice it differently, it sounds different, you know? And so the analogy I use, cause I have a student composition club here at school. I try to teach kids to do this, but the analogy I use is just playing with Legos. Like when a kid first sees a box of Legos, The parent doesn't sit them down, explain what each shape is, explain how they connect together. It's like, here, just play with this, you know, stay out of trouble for 10 minutes. But then as a student does it more, pretty soon they're going to want to make a shape that they can recognize and say, I want to make my house or I want to make the Empire State Building. And then pretty soon, if they want to make something really complex, they need to buy a kit, you know, or like research. How do I actually make something really complex? And that's where just as a high schooler, then I started really learning music theory because I wanted just to know how this worked. And so that then led into not only being able to hear compositions in my head, but being able to build them from scratch. And I think oftentimes we ask the question of composers like, oh, did you just hear this whole piece emerge? I can think of two pieces in my life that I wrote from start to finish. Only two. Every other one was... Slow construction, slowly putting things together, trying different things, putting them together different ways. So I do think if you work at it enough, you'll get those moments of inspiration where just like something comes and you just got to write it down before it escapes. But that's very rare.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:For me.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm sure everyone. Do you want to explain a little bit what the Composers Guild is like and even your approach to teaching composition? I would assume the fear of failure would be really... looming for a lot of high school students.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I'd say that's the biggest thing I have to dismantle. And I'll even tie this back to faith too, because I mean, I believe that, you know, we were made in the image of God. And the first thing God did was create. That's the first thing we know of God that he did is he just created stuff. And he's like, and this is good. You know, he's like, he created good stuff. And so it's like, so I think when we are creating, Christian or not, we are echoing God's tuning, like 440 hertz. If a strain is next to its natural frequency, it vibrates. And so I think that's why every society in human history develops music, develops art. We can't help but to make stuff. And so I think the problem, though, is we get kids that by no means of their own, label themselves non-creative. And they get told, probably by an unfortunate adult somewhere along the line, like, oh, you're not very good, or that wasn't a good drawing, or you don't have a good voice, or you're not as good as this person. And so students just adopt this idea that, oh, if I can't just hear a symphony in my head, I'm not a composer. Because the only composers I know are Mozart and Beethoven and Mendelssohn or Bach and they were just geniuses so that's clearly not me so we call that the genius fallacy because I just say look at me like if I can compose music in my Mr. Getz craziness like anybody can learn how to do this and so it's getting students to buy into the fact that anything they create is worthwhile. You have to write 10 bad songs to get to the good song. I always say, why do we think that your first step into composition is going to produce something on the level of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata? For some reason, that's the standard kids have when they start. They don't really have that in other things. When you start playing the violin, you don't think you're immediately going to play Heifetz. But when we compose, it's like, oh, this is, this isn't anything like what, you know, I can't do counterpoint. So this isn't for me. So I really try to get them to see that like the Lego table, like there's just a very easy sequences to go through to get to the point where you can do what you want to do. And every step is worthwhile and everything you create is worthwhile. I mean, there's pieces I write now that I go back and pull from my high school, like composition started folder and say, oh, now I know how this should go. It's unfinished for 16 years. And now all of a sudden I'm using it and it's ending up in a movement of a piano sonata somewhere.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Okay. So can you kind of describe just some of the things that you have composed in the past?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've written a lot, probably most for string orchestra. I write a lot for my groups. I've written one Like full three movement piano sonata. I wrote a brass quintet for my senior recital. I've written some larger ensemble works. Some of them have gotten performed, some haven't. My biggest work is a musical that I wrote in 2018 on the Book of Ruth. But other than that, I just kind of dabble here and there. When I get ideas, I write them down. And then when I have, I don't have as much time to sit down and compose now. I got three little kids. But I still try to keep just a log of ideas, even just like humming stuff into my, you know, voice memos app. So I always like to keep a bank of ideas going.
SPEAKER_02:Totally, totally. Well, I think it's so cool that you are giving even high schoolers a chance to dabble with this because I don't think it's something that a lot of high schools, at least in our area, have. So props to you for making it accessible to high schoolers. So to wrap up, I'm just curious what a piece of advice or just encouragement you would give to a Christian in the classical music world would be.
SPEAKER_01:I would say... Stay curious. I think what I've loved to is I think I just approach every year like what is going to be new this year. And some people, you know, when they find out I've been teaching like 12 years, they're like, oh, well, do you just recycle everything every four years? And it's like, well, I could. but I, I literally can't like every year I have to just say like, what is in store this year that I can learn. And I think, again, that's an important lesson for kids to see is like, I don't want them to ever see Mr. Getz is just being complacent with where I'm at. And, um, you know, so whether it's, uh, you know, trying to write for a new instrument or trying to, I still try to learn a new kind of piano piece every year just to kind of try to keep my stills up. I can't play list anymore, um, but I can still get some easy Chopin in,
SPEAKER_00:um,
SPEAKER_01:And I've been a student of the concept of creativity lately. Most of the books I'm reading are about the creative process, both from a faith and non-faith perspective. I'd say the one book I think every Christian artist, musician should read is Walking on Water by Madeline L'Engle. That just really, really has given me so much to think about in the past six, seven years. So I think it's just staying open to the fact that you are Your story is still being written. God's still got chapters that he's writing. We don't know how long the story is or who's going to come into your story at any year. And so I think it's just staying curious and staying open to what's down the road.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's great. Thank you. And then I'm just curious, is there any music that you're listening to that you think somebody else needs to check out?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I'm huge into soundtracks. That's my, uh, my jam. Uh, I've been listening to, uh, the Rudy soundtrack. That's my like go-to motivational soundtrack ever since I was a senior in high school. Um, but, uh, right now it just probably what's like how to train your dragon is huge in my, that's in my rotation, uh, anything by all the famous John Williams stuff. Um, but why I think my students, you know, they make fun of me when I'm listening to soundtracks all the time, but What I love about the soundtracks is not only do you have the story in your brain that you can visualize, but I also think about as I'm going through my day, I like to think about what would a composer score to this? And so it gives me that kind of just freedom of imagination. So, yeah, that's kind of what I enjoy listening to right now.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome. And the new How to Train Your Dragon movie is coming out. I
SPEAKER_01:didn't even know that this year. So I'm kind of excited to see.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Dave. I know people will be just so encouraged to hear from your wisdom and your story. So thanks for coming on and just being an example of what creativity looks like being a Christian, you know. So thanks so much.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thank you for having me on, Casey.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you think of someone who might be encouraged by this podcast, feel free to share with them and make sure to download, follow, and subscribe wherever you are listening.