Ep. 16: Todd Reynolds
My guest today is Digital Fiddler, Global Netizen, Reinvention Coach and Cultural Devotee, Todd Reynolds.
How’s that for an into title!
What can I say about this episode…Todd is the ultimate storyteller, both through his music and his words.
While you’re going to get some seriously technical information during this interview, it’s also like, “story time with friends”.
Todd’s going to
give you a straight up masterclass on how broadcast quality microphones work,
you’re going to hear his awesome Jascha Heifetz impression…your welcome.
And if you’re afraid of improvising on your instrument, he’s going to give you an awesome hack use can use today, right now, in your practice room.
And if you’re like me and dislike the term “classical music” Todd is going to explain what HE likes to call, "present music”, and how successful performance is directly related to mindfulness, and even meditation.
Oh, and one more thing…I’ve got a brand new training coming up in two weeks, so you’ll want to listen all the way to the end.
OK…Let’s dig in to my conversation with Todd Reynolds.
About Todd
I, Todd Reynolds, am a solo classical violinist gone horribly wrong. I started on a violin made of a standard elementary school ruler taped onto a Grape Nuts box and grew up playing all the sonatas and concertos that all the other kids did.
I played in church by my father’s side for what seemed like an eternal adolescence, and by some stroke of good fortune, found myself in one of the last classes of the great Jascha Heifetz where he counseled me to sell insurance for the sake of my own happiness.
In college, I became completely enamored with playing the music of living composers - it got me completely hooked on non-historic ways of thinking about music, stretching me beyond my planned trajectory.
But then I won an audition and completely dropped out of school. In my third year of playing Principal Second Violin in the Rochester Philharmonic, I broke. Since the very moment I quit my job, I’ve reinvented myself four times, at least. First as Broadway musician, then as the creator of a new kind of amplified string quartet, then as a ‘composer in the woods’ recording artist, and finally, refocusing as an educator - not that that’s anywhere near the end of things.
Now, and for the past 25 years, I’ve called myself a hybrid musician. I play with some of my long time idols - singer/songwriters, global musicians, minimalists, electronica artists, rock stars, New Music heroes, classical music heroes - I count them all my friends, colleagues and collaborators. I record, teach, and perform with my studio onstage and off, study Indian music, jazz, music programming, psychology, and mindfulness to varying degrees as disciplines. I’m as much a student as a teacher. That will never change. If you ever find the opposite? Run.
Four years ago, I felt the industry changing yet again. CDs - gone, Broadway jobs - gone, commercial work - gone. My health was starting to go as well. My partner, Isabelle, and I moved to a beautiful place in the country, to pull it all together and build a community for teaching and supporting those seeking to do the same - to develop the tools for reinvention and expansion, and to look deeper into what it all means to be a musician today.
You see, we musicians, we’re not our instrument, we’re not the music we studied, we are creators through and through, whatever form that expression takes. It is with the questions that we slay the dragon, not with our virtuosity. The Hero’s Journey exists for us as it does for anyone else, and we need only to walk forward with eyes open and a backpack full of good questions (and great gear), and we’ll find our next dragon.
I’ve created this program, the inaugural one for my new(ish) online academy, for fellow musicians who feel that same nagging suspicion that ‘the box’ they currently inhabit is too small to contain them, that the times we’re living in are calling them forth to something larger, that they too want to think of themselves as creators, as storytellers, as activists, and agents of change.
Todd's Links
Website: toddreynolds.com
Facebook: @toddreynoldsmusic
Instagram: @digifiddler
Twitch: @digifiddler
Todd's gear: kit.co/digifiddler
Email: todd@toddreynolds.com
Other Links
Drone Practice App “Droneo”
