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| It may not look like much on the cover, but I think you'll be impressed. |
Well, let me come right out and say that so far I am a big fan of the entire Creative Director series. Let's talk about Ed List, The ART system itself, and if you're interested, you can find out what to expect with the first book in the series. It's definitely where you'd want to start.
Who is Edward Lisk?
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| Ed Lisk, author and National Band Association Hall of Famer, 2009 Midwest Medal of Honor Recipient, etc. |
I've been surprised to discover that many people are unaware of Ed Lisk. The more I learn, the more impressed I am. But perhaps it's not such a surprise, because today I discovered when looking at his clinic schedule that he has only given clinics in Texas twice over the last 5-6 years, and then only at ABA conferences. Anyway, you should check out Ed Lisk's Bio. It's short, to the point, and I think you'll be very impressed. He is definitely someone worth knowing of, and so far I am impressed with the 5 volumes of his 8 volume series that I have read through which detail his techniques.
Want to check out samples of his work? The band he became famous with is the Oswego High School Wind Ensemble, from New York,, which was featured numerous times at various state and national conferences and other venues of high prestige. Ed Lisk created a two part video telling the story of that program during his time there, from 1970-1991, with excerpts from the Wind Ensemble's performances. You get some history, as well as programs they performed throughout the years(which I like).
The marching band was also pretty successful. Check out some of this video of them performing at the Contest of Champions in 1982 in Tennessee. The show is obviously from another era, but you have to admit the music is particularly impressive. By the way, it's nearly a 9 minute show, and it's all visually clean and musically impressive.
So anyway, while many of the people I've met may not be as familiar with him, he is a big deal on the national band scene, and has been for quite some time. He is someone worth listening to. So are you interested in this techniques? Get ready, because very few people in Texas have been exposed to this method of learning, at least as far as I know.
Alternative Rehearsal Techniques
ART is a completely different approach to teaching/learning ensemble skills. The first book, the one in which I'm reviewing, specifically deals with ensemble skills and how you can address them in ways that build their musical intelligence as detailed by Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. It starts out very simple, and gradually becomes complex, but only after adding one step at a time until all the components are in place. All of the techniques in the first book are to be used during the band's warm up time, or the first 10 minutes of rehearsal. Other books give great schemata for other things, like musical shaping and nuance, but this deals only with ensemble skills. I truly believe that if a band were to use this system, it could eventually tackle any literature it wanted to.
I won't go into great detail of the techniques themselves, but I want to give you enough so that you know what you're getting into. Everything in this book is based on the Circle of Fourths, and on the idea that you can remove musical notation to make this time strictly a thinking and listening experience (you know how easy it can be to go through the motions... this is all designed to eliminate that possibility). The required knowledge to start ART is the chromatic scale. The school where I student taught had students playing the chromatic scale before I arrived in mid January, so while it may be a time investment to teach this at many places, it would be well worth it.
Rather than music, students look at a sheet of paper that lists all twelve pitches in the Circle of Fourths, like this:
C-F-Bb-Eb-Ab-Db-Gb/F#-Cb/B-E-A-D-G
Students will start on one pitch, probably F or Bb, and play each pitch for a given number of counts. The first exercise is designed to develop ensemble pulse, initial attacks, and releases. You give the students the number of counts to hold each note, and show them the pulse (60 bmp, typically) for the first two notes, then make them do it themselves. If the re-entrances and releases are not up to the highest standard, you stop them and have them start over, but this time changing the number of counts. The higher the number of counts, the more demanding the exercise is. John Whitwell talks about students needing to grow antennae that are long enough to touch the antennae of every other player in the ensemble, and this gives them that first big push in that direction. It also doubles as a long tone exercise.
From this starting point, things get progressively more intense. One schemata presented in the book deals with ensemble balance by putting all instruments into one of four groups (which are tied to Francis McBeth's Pyramid of Sound and the Treasury of Scales), the lower the number, the lower the voices. So check this out. When you have each group start on a different note, then go through the circle of fourths, they can play every chord of a given quality (each for a designated number of counts) in one quick exercise. For example, Groups 4 and 1 start on Bb, 2 on D, and 3 on F, which has the first chord sound a Bb Major. They hold it, release, and when each group moves to the next note on the page, they will be playing an Eb Major chord, and so on until they have played all twelve major chords and return to Bb Major. Neat, right? You can use this as a means to tune all twelve major chords during the warm up time, and a couple of weeks later, once they're good at that, you can switch Group 2 from D to Db, and suddenly they're playing all twelve minor chords. As the ensemble progresses, you can move on to the various 7th chords. To me, I think this is brilliant!
The book goes on to give you examples of including rhythms, dynamics, and scales, all based on the Circle of Fourths. This eventually leads to a point where you can have different groups start on different pitches (to work on the chord quality of your choice), but have different groups play different rhythms, and perhaps one group playing scales (the scale that starts on the pitch they're on), while also adding in some kind of dynamic work. All at once. Again, you get there one small step at a time.
The ultimate goal of all of this is to get to a point where you can look at the music you'll be working on that day, and design a warm up based on the musical challenges you will face using the component parts in ART. And you can. Once you are familiar with the techniques, and your band is familiar with them, there are literally unlimited combinations you can use. Hence why the series is called, "The Creative Director". The only limitation in the extent to which you can design the custom warm up.
One of my favorite items in the series is the DVD. It helps to reinforce how the exercises are carried out. I could imagine them fairly well as I read the book, but the DVD clarified it for me. Not only that, but seeing it "live" was so much more impressive, more mind blowing than what I could've envisioned by just reading the text.
The pages feature detailed explanations of each component exercise. It tells you why it's designed the way it is, what some of the initial challenges are of implementing it, pitfalls to avoid and why, and step by step instructions of how to lead your band through the exercises. There are visual aids of each exercise to help you understand how it works, and all of these visual aids are featured at the back of the book in full page displays. Best of all, the book gives you permission to photocopy these visual aids for students. They are not musical notation, but instead aids to help the visual learners achieve success in their listening/thinking/playing experience.
And again, the entire system is set in a spiral curriculum in which you gently take the ensemble one step at a time through all of the individual skills they need to be musically successful before you start to combine them in complex and ingenious ways at the end of the process. For example, there are numerous exercises dealing with crescendos and decrescendos. The goal in the beginning is to achieve even crescendos/decrescendos while maintaining the same balanced ensemble sound throughout. This moves to combining them into an ensemble decrescendo/crescendo. Next is an exercise where the brass does a crescendo/decrescendo while the woodwinds do a decrescendo/crescendo, so that you start with a woodwind choir sound, reach a mid-point that is a perfectly balanced full ensemble sound, then transition to a brass choir heavy sound, then transition back to the full ensemble sound, and end back on a woodwind choir sound. Then you can switch roles. What comes next? Exercises designed to emulate the complex dynamic shaping found in Grainger's literature, but once they reach that point they will have no problem going through the exercise and then achieving it in the literature itself. This is an example how the exercises take the band, one step at a time, from the basics to the expert levels of ensemble playing.
My Experiments With ART
During this past semester I experimented with a few of the schema in this book with beginner classes. Just a couple of them. For example, I used Ed Lisk's schema to teach crescendos/decrescendos to one of the beginning classes. And to be fair, they might have already covered it in Essential Elements, but they weren't doing it in their concert music (or lines in EE, for that matter), and I wasn't satisfied with the results when I simply asked them to gradually get louder or softer. I didn't even use the visual aids from ART, but I used the system. The result? Even and noticable crescendos and pretty good decrescendos with very little time spent. I reminded them of the schema when we got to it in the music, and it was rarely ever a challenge again. I didn't use this with the other classes, and this class remained one of the best at achieving the proper crescendo/decrescendo effects.
In reviewing scales I eventually had all 3 beginner classes at some point play their scales in order of the Circle of Fourths, with no break in between. They were already playing them in this order, except that they would always start on Bb even after they learned F and eventually C. It was a little confusing at first when I asked them to start with F, or with C, but they eventually caught on. The other difference is that their primary teachers had them play each scale in half notes, quarter notes, then the regular quarter note/eighth note pattern. I instead chose to have them start with the final pattern, and just play that on each scale, holding the last note for three counts before taking a full breath and moving immediately to the next scale. This was a great way to push their concentration level, and on good days we could review all of the scales they knew in a very short amount of time. That said, I was glad that their primary teachers did it the other way as well, because I also agree that it's important to review and reinforce at easier levels on a regular basis. I also changed up the pattern once to half note/quarter notes instead of the traditional quarter note/eighth note pattern to help give them more time to focus on correct notes. Ed Lisk recommends having them play all major scales or all minor scales every day, but to change the pattern up once they've mastered the current pattern their on, or eventually, to create the pattern based on what they're playing in the music (ex: If it's a march in 6/8, have them play scales in 6/8, or in 7/8 if the music is in odd meters, or play just ascending or descending scales when you want to cut back on time). It was a lot of fun to push them to this level, and I could tell them we were doing it that way because in their music they had key changes (at least in one of the pieces) and they needed to get used to keeping their concentration level up when going to the next scale, because there wouldn't be a break between sections when they played the music.
Realizing that most places don't require students to learn all twelve major scales (or any minor scales), Ed Lisk details his method of teaching scales to students. It involves a handful of steps, but is easy to use with beginners. I used this method to teach a beginning percussionist their scales (including using the visual aide), and it worked really well. The student learned to play the scales error free, as advertised, and thus maintained a high level of accuracy on subsequent days. In fact, the visual aide that is presented outlines the learning process, and once students are familiar with the process they will be capable of teaching themselves the scales if they wanted to. Like the suzuki method, this method of learning scales involves learning it by doing, not by reading. Once the student has memorized how to perform the scale error free, then you give them the music notation and have them do it while reading the music. This eliminates the struggle of processing music notation while simultaneously translating that into sound. Instead they move through the process one step at a time, saying the note names, saying them while fingering, then playing the notes at a slow tempo, applying a rhythm pattern, memorizing how it feels to do it correctly, then playing it while reading music. And it really worked!
So while I didn't get to experiment with all of the techniques outlined in ART, the few that I did experiment with worked very well. I can't wait to try them out with a full band!
If you're looking for ideas, and you're open to something radically different, I recommend this book. Even if you're not, it might surprise you. Whether you choose to commit to the full system or not, you might glean some ideas about how students effectively learn, and you might steal a few things from it.
So there you have it. A much lengthier article than I'd planned to write, but you should hopefully have a good idea as to what ART is, how it's set up, and what you'll get when you order the book. Thank you, as always, for reading, and until next time, take care!
Musically yours,
Mr. Cooper
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