Hello, and welcome. I'm Bob Kintner.
For as long as I can remember, music has been at the center of my life —as a child at the piano, playing organ in church starting at age 13, working with children, youth and adult choral programs. Correcting the plight of musicians trapped in the "thinking" brain. Understanding such things as the role of "fear of failure" in both musical performance and sports. Brain stuff.
Over the years I came to believe something simple: music does not just entertain us. It steadies the heart, calms the body, and comforts the soul. This website is where I share what a lifetime in church music has taught me that to do so, music of all forms needs to be stored in and flowing out of the "feeling" brain.
I am a 93 year old retired career classically trained church musician. I was trained by artist teachers in both piano and organ as a child and teenager. I dreamed of being a concert pianist. However, my parents did not believe music was a suitable vocation. So undergraduate degrees in science and a year of medical school before changing career paths.
During the time (1955-1956) in medical school at Indiana University School of Medicine, I was involved as a lowly technician recording data for research being conducted on a group of athletes at Indiana University by physiologist Dr. Sidney Robinson Jr. to improve their performance. What I observed and learned began my life long study of the brain and how motor skills are learned. Mastering any form of music making involves motor skills. Dr. Robinson allowed me to observe some of the training. Classes in Yoga training and some form of Eastern Meditation. He also encourage me to read about the role the semi-circular ear canals and the proprioceptor sensory system play in mastering motor skills. During those months I became aware that much of how classical musicians are nurtured and taught is not compatitble with how Dr. Robinson was saying motor skills are best learned.
I left medical school and was fortunate to enter graduate church music training. I ended up completeing a two year program in church music a masters degree in organ perforamnce as well as a seminary degree M. Div. I am also an ordained minister. I was to discover there was little interest in those years of what brain science sugggested as well as research emerging from the fields of Sports Psychology and Sports Medicine has to say about music making. In the 1960s, 1970s, there was an influx of new foreign methods for training children. In 1964 I became the musician, organist and choir director for Central Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. At that time a very large church with many children, youth and adults in its large choral program. I embraced the Orff-Schulwerk approach for working with children and began years of experimenting and inventing my own methods of how to deal with sacred music making at a "feeling level" in the brain.
(This is just a starting point. Every word can be changed — sign in, go to your Posting Room, and press "Change My Story".)
— Bob Kintner