Practical Ideas for Developing a Warmer Sound

Practical Ideas for Developing a Warmer Sound in Young Bands
Mike Pearce

When you listen to your performance recordings, do you hear a band that plays accurately but with an ensemble tone you don’t like? Do adjudicators’ comments indicate that your band sound could use some improvement? Perhaps you need to work to change the tone of your young band, possibly from bright and shrill to a darker, more mature sound. Consider doing some long and short term things to change your group’s tone quality.

Instrumentation

First, examine the distribution of instrument voices in your band. Do you have an overbalance of middle and high voices, as many middle school bands do? If you have no tubas, or need more than the one you have, start there. Within the band, one place to find tuba players is in your brass sections, but some directors have had equally good luck making tuba recruitment such a big thing that mid-section flute, clarinet, and sax players have switched to tuba or added it as a secondary instrument. One of my best tuba players ever was a petite girl who found lots of satisfaction occupying a pivotal position as first chair tuba instead of being the seventh of eighteen clarinets.

To complement your tubas, further low sound can be obtained through the development of baritone saxophone and bass clarinets. Some fine sounding middle school bands utilize three or four tubas, five bass clarinets, and a baritone sax to balance sixty to seventy piece bands. When they’ve available, adding baritone horn and bass trombone players can also boost your bottom sound. As a stop-gap measure, some directors utilize a bass guitar but this practice shouldn’t be the long-term solution.

If you have a feeder program that’s failing to supply these vital low instrument players, the burden falls on you to find some way to provide them for your band. Rather than being fringe luxuries, think of tubas and as many other low instrument players as you can develop as absolutely critical to your band’s success.

“Balance Down” for a Darker Sound

In many bands, the strongest, loudest, most dominant players are the top chair flute, clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and trumpet players. It’s important to encourage their enthusiasm but also teach them to adjust their volumes to match other sections. For example, you can help them understand that the markings forte and fortissimo don’t just mean “loud” and “louder” in ensemble play, but more accurately mean play at a full volume that matches other sections. Help them listen to see if the trumpet forte matches that of the French horns and bass clarinets, or see if the percussion fortissimo balances that of the flutes. Bringing some of your higher range instruments into balance with lower voices is an important step in warming your band’s sound. Just as many bands tune by starting with the tubas and progressing upward to the flutes and clarinets, you can use the same technique to help your band learn to balance tonally and dynamically to the low register sounds. We’ve all had or heard small school bands of 25 or 30 members that had one bass clarinet or a baritone sax for bass sound. Using the instrumentation available, those bands had the potential to produce an effective concert band sound only if other members of the band knew to constantly balance down to their bass instruments.

Develop a Quality “Concert Band” Sound

Young players can be taught something that mature musicians understand well, that there are different sounds for different kinds of groups. Help your young players understand that, for a large concert ensemble to blend its many individual sounds together, all band members—woodwinds, brass, and percussion—need to play with a sound that can blend. The more players you have who over blow or produce strident, shrill, or very bright sounds, the harder it will be to get a pleasing blend with your concert band.

A good starting place may be to point out that the aggressive, forceful playing that may work well for a lead alto or trumpet in jazz band, may be detrimental in the concert band, or the drummer whose powerful playing is well suited to marching band or jazz band my be overpowering in a symphonic ensemble. As you ask upper register players to back off a bit, work to get your middle and low voice instruments to play stronger. If your budding tubists are timid, do things to draw them out. Praise, tease, bribe, demand, or whatever works, to get the strong bottom sound your band needs.

In some cases, you may need to suggest other changes in approach when your students begin to be serious about concert band playing. Drummers may need to make a conscious effort to lighten up their touch from what they’ve been doing in other ensembles. Brass players can soften their embouchures and produce tones with greater ease and less force. Wind players who start every note with an accent in order to overcome tight embouchures need to loosen up a bit. One approach is to have brass players imagine that there’s a pin head inside their mouthpieces and they’re trying to reach in and grasp it with the inner parts of their lips. This movement helps relax an “exaggerated smile,” tight embouchure, and it produces a brass sound with a softer edge. Emphasize to all wind players that any tension in their playing should be directed toward supplying lots of air from their diaphragms and maintaining support around the sound production point of contact between mouthpiece and embouchure, all without biting down on reeds or over tightening lips and jaws.

As part of your band’s daily warm up, have wind players practice taking deep breaths, then producing initial attacks without strong accents. Help them practice using full air flow with relaxed embouchures and see if the ensemble sound doesn’t improve, then work to maintain the tone quality as the band executes music with extremes of range, dynamics, and temp.

Summary

If you haven’t tried them already, try addressing instrumentation, balancing down, and developing a distinctive concert band sound, and see if the band’s concert band tone changes for the better. The payoff will be an amazingly mature sound with your young band, rave review from parents, and higher festival scores.

Intonation and the Young Band

Beyond Their Years: Intonation and the Young Band

Chip De Stefano

Playing in tune is a skill. It must be taught, developed, and polished as our students mature as musicians. Too often, particularly in young bands, good pitch is either left to chance or is so director and tuner centric that students are unable to make the on-the-spot adjustments necessary during live performance.

Intonation skills are second in importance only to tone quality. Because of this, training our students’ ears is deserving of the time necessary to do it correctly. By focusing Anthe long term, and training our students how to listen and adjust their pitch, ensemble intonation will greatly improve while the responsibility of good pitch is shifted from director to student. In addition, your students will have the skills and confidence needed to compensate when unexpected intonation issues arise in performance.

Tone First, Then Tune

Nothing is more important than the quality of sound our students produce. It’s very difficult to tune pitches with a bad sound. In addition, good tone can mask minor intonation problems. Students must have quality instruments and equipment, proper embouchure, good breath support, and the aural concept of the characteristic sound of their instrument.

When using a tuner, it’s important that the student’s instrument be completely warmed up. Students must tune their best sound. While looking at the tuner, the young student will automatically try to bend the pitch to satisfy the tuner without actually adjusting the instrument all. It may be helpful to ask your students to play their tuning pitch with their best sound without looking at the tuner. From there they will be able to get the proper reading and adjust accordingly. Click Link to continue reading.

The Problem with Music Advocacy

Posted on 28th February 2011 by Jordan Wagner

Here is an interesting viewpoint on music advocacy that may ask us to rethink our approach as to how we fight to keep music in our schools. Click the link above to see the entire text.

Have we, as an interested group in music education, damaged our own efforts simply by labeling it as "music advocacy?"

I, along with many music educators, am very thankful for "VH1 Save the Music," and other music advocacy efforts. But only those who are already passionate about the value of music education truly champion those efforts. Although the term, "music advocacy," has its place within the circle of music supporters, it is a misrepresentation in general society.

The word, "advocacy," indicates helping an underdog. It places it in a category of sympathetic efforts toward something worthwhile in need of saving. Contemplate the term, "child advocate." What pictures come to mind? Visual images of children in need pulling on your heart-strings of giving, right? We love them and want to do more for them, but invoking emotions of sympathy only reaches a few. Think of all the phrases that include the word, "advocate," or "advocacy." What is your instant emotion? pity? charity? sympathy? empathy? left-wing? righteous? desire to fight for the cause?

Why do we feel that way? It indicates a need to fight for the defenseless, vulnerable, needy. Who puts on the gloves and does the defending? The one's closest to the underdog. Those with a deep compassion and emotion connected to the victim. How do they fight for the victim? They work to bring the world's attention to the problem. They paint graphic pictures through word and images that guilt people into giving. Those most passionate for the defenseless work tirelessly, attempting multiple methods to reach the masses, but only winning a few.

Music is not the underdog in reality, just in the education system, and in lack of funding. In our efforts to improve the perception and financial support, we sabotage the greater mission to revere and admire. Music is not something to sympathize, but to admire and seek to aspire to greatness.

What if we turned sympathy into admiration? People love winners. People love champions. People want to be part of the winning team. It inspires them to go after their dream and admire those who did and succeeded. For example, I'm not much of a sports fan, but when the local high school team begins advancing to the state playoffs, I'm there with the rest of the town. Everyone loves a winner. Sound familiar?

Directing the Small School Concert Band

Directing the Small School Concert Band

Clicking the heading above will link you to an article from the 2011 issue of The Instrumentalist magazine. Written by Derek J. Jones, the article outlines solutions to many of the problems faced by the directors of small concert bands at small schools. I teach at a small Lutheran High School, and the enrollment of the school will have dropped from 230 to 160 by the end of next year. As a result, the amount of students in my music program (one band and one choir) has dropped from 110 to about 60 over that same period of time. I need to begin to look for additional ways to help the small ensembles perform at a high level and feel successful, even without all of the personal and instruments present in past years. This article in particular does a great job outlining ideas for recruitment and arranging of music for small bands.

Noteflight Composition and Review

A Bicycle Built For Two

While there was nothing glaringly wrong with using Noteflight as compositional software, I did not find a user-friendly feature that made it stand out from the crowded market of music computer programs. The note entry functions were average. I would like a faster way to insert chords into the score. Also, it is difficult at times to highlight the specific items that need revision once the score has been finished. Editing and deleting take a bit more time and patience than other programs I have used before. I do like the layout of the program. It is visually appealing, and all of the tools are readily available at your fingertips.

Even though I will probably not use this software for myself when composing music, I do like the idea of creating music that is available for all to see and use on the web. The idea that students could collaborate on projects with each other, or professional musicians intrigues me, and I would like to experiment with that in my classes.

Performing Your Best When it Counts

Performing Your Best When it Counts

For some reason, I have had a problem getting my students to perform at their best for a majority of our public performances. I have tried a variety of preconcert routines in order to get them prepared, and it seems that none of them work. I look forward to implementing some of the suggestions given by Bill Moore in this article.

-Matt

Short video clips of musicians and other entertainers discussing their successful performance experiences was the introduction to the keynote address by Bill Moore, author ofPlaying Your Best When It Counts.

What are the images, sensations, and feelings that come to mind when you think about your best performance? After encouraging us to contemplate this question, Mr. Moore had us turn to the person next to us and share the images that came to mind. Then he turned the question and asked how easy it would be for us to describe an image of our worst performance. Isn’t it ironic how easily and vividly we can describe our worst experiences, but our vocabulary is lacking when we attempt to describe our best performance?

Mr. Moore’s goal today is to give us three tools to help draw out of students the performance capabilities that are already within them. Three mental performance skills that are part of that picture are the least understood and developed of the performance equation.

“Athletes are players who practice. Musicians are practicers who play.” Having worked with athletes for 20 years, this statement really hit him. He was shocked during his first time working with musicians to discover that they rarely performed, especially in light of the vast number of hours spent practicing. This has huge implications not only for whatyou practice, but for how you practice. The mental skills needed to put into the system are not the same mental skills needed to get it out. Skill acquisition requires different mental skills than skill performance.

Practice Mindset
Self-instruction
Self-monitoring
Analyzing cause and effect

This is all well and good until you get to performance. But when you get in a performance setting, any of these three characteristics, if employed at that point, will kill you!

Performance Mindset
Courage – training your will to adapt
Trust – the performance skill; let go of control
Acceptance – proceeding or experiencing something without judgment as to good or bad, right or wrong

If these skills are not practiced during practice, they will not show up in performance. The performance mindset is not a personality trait. Anybody can learn and develop the performance mindset. Mr. Moore has worked with a number of different types of personalities to get there. Some are more difficult than others, but all can make it! He shared an analogy of a girls’ tennis team who are incredibly sweet and kind in real life, but on the court will tear you apart. You can develop a performer self that is different than who you are.

My Students Aren't Listening: Is it them or me?

My Students Aren't Listening: Is it them or me?

Four young ladies from the MTNA Collegiate Chapter at the University of South Carolina presented this engaging session. They began with a simple, but lively rhythm activity that involved all the attendees.

Michelle Wachter, Abigail, Birling Wylie, Anna Hamilton, and Sarah Evans, advised by Dr. Charles Fugo, comprised the presenters. Michelle began with a brief history and overview of educational psychology. Educational theorists discussed included: Edwin Gordon, Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, Jean Piaget, David Elkind, Robert M. Gagne, and Jerome Bruner.

The next portion of the session, Potential Distractions, was presented by Abigail. She invited us to think of something that has happened in our lesson that caused a disruption in the flow. Then she asked us to turn and share our story with the person next to us. The best approach to avoiding disruptions is to be preemptive. She recommends:

• Establish a routine.
• Create a musical environment.
• Begin with an easy musical activity.

An activity prior to pulling out the book helps focus the student and prepare them for the work that they’ll be doing throughout the lesson. Despite our best intentions, outside distractions often detract from the focus of the lesson. To deal with outside distractions:

• Reassess pacing – consider whether you are moving too slowly or too quickly from activity to activity.
• Redirect with a smaller and more clear objective.
• Share lesson plan and order.

Abigail shared that often excitement in the moment can cause us to tune out important information. She gave illustrations of students who might stop in the middle of a piece to ask a question about the pedals, or to look more intently inside the piano.

Sometimes students ask to play other pieces:

• Evaluate level of engagement.
• Reassess pacing.
• Create a musical environment for every piece – they want it to sound musical.

If a student asks when the lesson is over:

• Reassess pacing.
• Share the lesson plan and order (this is what most students are accustomed to in their school classrooms).
• Be mindful of outside distractions.

Ideas for ending the lesson:

• Make the ending clear.
• End in a musical way.
• Encourage students to tell parents about the lesson.

Abigail makes the new concept of the lesson a really big deal so that the student is clear about what they learned that day and can relay it to their parents if asked.

Anna showed a video clip to illustrate how she uses an opening activity each week to begin the lesson. She also uses a similar activity to end each lesson. Another video clip showed a young student and Anna waving scarves while doing an imitative singing exercise to introduce the student to stepwise melodic patterns. Then they went to the piano and played some of the little exercises on the piano.

The next clip was of a young 6-year old who was doing an improvisation activity to end her lesson. After a few measures, the student stopped playing. Anna encouraged her to continue but she refused. After demonstrating an idea and reminding her that she used to make music just fine. The student indicated that she was nervous, so Anna let her play at a separate piano and then she was willing to continue. Now seven, the student has continued composing and improvising and has even had some great opportunities with other musicians.

Anna showed several other clips working with students and dealing with distractions in the lesson. She said that it’s most effective when working with young children to focus on just one thing at a time. One of the greatest advantages that we have today is the ability to create resources to use with our own students.

Anna illustrated this by having a volunteer from the audience join her at the piano for a song she wrote to introduce loud and soft, forte and piano to students.

The session concluded with a list of available resources on the market for young children and time for a few questions from the audience.