Welcome to The Adventures of Bandman! I am very much excited to share this experience with you all. To be honest, I kind of don't even know what "this experience" is. It all really started out of a place of innocence, a place of love, and curiosity. That then lead to a place of hard work, dedication, and service that has gotten me to this point. That leads us perfectly to the question of "Who am I?", well, my name is Myron "The Bandman" Smith and I am a former middle and high school band director turned private instructor and visionary. I taught in a classroom from 2016 to this past spring before making the decision to pursue private instruction, music composition and content creation full time.
Last week was the first week in 19 years that I didn't have to wake up for band camp. To be honest, I'm still processing it all, but it was quite liberating knowing that I did not have to be up early in the morning before dawn and drive an hour and forty-five minutes to school. During that bit of free time, I began to reminisce about my first ever band camp experience. I started marching band in 7th grade in 2005 at Tyner Academy located in my hometown of Chattanooga, Tn. Since joining beginning band the year previous, I knew that I was meant to be on the football field...I mean the band field under the Friday night lights. I would look up to the older kids who were in marching band and wondered what it would be like to be in the Maroon and Gold uniform and march in the stadium as a member of the Tyner "Pride" Marching Band. Since my older sister was in the band as a flag girl the year before, I had to stay after school and wait for her to get out of rehearsal. That wasn't a problem for me because it gave me a chance to watch the band that I wanted to be a part of the next year. I never missed a single rehearsal, I would even practice their field music on my trumpet when I got home! It was official, I knew what I what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and that was to do music. Most importantly, I found the love for something that made me want to work hard to prove myself and be great.
20 years later, I still have the same commitment to the craft, just in a different way. Music has always been my first love and passion so now that I have the time, I have dedicated my energy to help great band directors be even greater by providing services that I would have loved to have when I was in the classroom. At the beginning of the year, my wife and I put together a plan to do just that. I was already teaching private lessons in trumpet, music history, and music theory so I decided to add an additional service to help aspiring band directors get into the classroom and current directors achieve licensure by providing music Praxis tutoring.
My goal is to continue educating and passing along the information that I come across to help the next musician succeed, that has always been the goal. I want to use this blog as a way to document the this next chapter and phase in my journey as well as to inspire you to be the best musician, educator, and human that you can be! Thank you for joining me on this journey, the adventure begins!
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