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.

Keeping a Steady Pulse

Keeping a Steady Pulse

This is a challenging issue! Some students naturally have a great sense of pulse, and some…not so much. Assuming that the issue really is a lack of pulse awareness and not a symptom of another problem (poor fingering, note-reading difficulties, etc.), there are a variety of things that you can do to help your students (and yourself!) improve in this area.

1. Learn conducting patterns and try conducting along with music as you listen to it.

2. Learn about Eurhythmics and incorporate elements of it in your teaching. Things like dancing a waltz or minuet, marching to a beat, swaying in rhythm, etc. are effective approaches for internalizing the pulse.

3. Play lots of duets and ensembles! A lot of method books also have accompaniment recordings available so that you can play pieces along with them. I have had a student using the Scales, Patterns, and Improvs bookthis year and we have seen huge progress in her sense of pulse!

4. Here are a few other specific activities I’ve used that have been helpful:

• Have a Heart – Feel the Pulse!
• Call and Response Improv
• Rhythm Runs
• Rhythm Back and Forth

Practice Incentives

Monday Mailbag – Practice Incentives

I am a huge proponent of practice incentives and have been developing practice incentive themes to use with my students each year for quite a while now. It is amazing how much this has contributed to the overall spirit of enthusiasm and excellence among my students. Having a cohesive theme to tie together the lessons, group classes, recitals, and studio atmosphere is so much fun! Plus it also makes lesson planning much easier because I establish the general lesson plans and structure into the incentive theme so that it’s almost like it runs on auto-pilot throughout the year.

If you’re interested in putting together your own practice incentive theme, you may want to read this post on 4 Components of a Good Practice Incentive. I’ve noticed that using this type of framework in my studio also helps me maintain enthusiasm and freshness in my teaching. I highly recommend incorporating different practice incentive ideas for the sake of both teacher and student!

Teaching Eighth Notes

Monday Mailbag – Teaching Eighth Notes

(Click Above for Link) by Natalie

How do you teach eighth note rhythm patterns to students? Any tricks?

I’ve used all sorts of approaches for this over the years. In fact, I distinctly remember a phase I went through where I would use different food names for rhythm patterns. One of my students was struggling with rhythm, so we spent a good deal of the lesson learning and saying things like “ap-ple pie pie ap-ple” and so on. Her mom – an accomplished pianist – was observing that week. As we concluded the lesson, I congratulated myself on this clever approach that I had picked up from some workshop. When the student returned the following week she had the rhythmic counts written in throughout her who song and explained matter-of-factly that her mother said the other approach was silly and she should count it. So much for that cleverness!

I quickly reached that same conclusion for myself and have reverted to being a firm believer in just learning to count with numbers right off the bat. Usually to first introduce eighth notes, we set the metronome and tap along with the beat. Then I have the student imitate me in tapping two times per beat. Lastly, we attempt to tap the beat in one hand and two times per beat in the other. I make a point to explain that eighth notes do NOT mean that you play faster. The tempo is what dictates the speed, not the notes themselves. When you see eighth notes, you just easily play two notes in the space where you would normally play one quarter note. The goal is to avoid two things:

The short-long rhythm that many students play, rather than an even distribution of the beat between the two notes.

Tension in the student when they see eighth notes and think that they have to play faster.

Ultimately, they have to both understand the division of the beat intellectually and be able to feel the beat intrinsically. Much easier said than done, right?! But this is why we start with tapping and often incorporate other body movements as well. The more they can feel the beat, the better!

There is another method I heard about a while back from my friend and colleague, Amy, called Takadimi that sounds and looks interesting, but I haven’t investigated it in enough detail to know if it’s something I would switch over to or not. Do any of you use Takadimi or some other approach to counting? Any tricks you’ve learned to help students learn eighth note rhythms effectively?