Three Tips to Make Your Next Concert a Hit

I recently survived my first winter concert, and I'm happy to report it was a smashing success. I'm in the of

These gentlemen understood how to put
on a classy performance!

rebuilding a program, and winter concerts in previous years were not taken very seriously. Students were allowed to dress casually and wear Santa hats on stage. The audience, from what I'm told, talked during the music. Kids and parents of younger bands left after their kids performed, leaving hardly an audience by the time the high school band took the stage.

My vision of a winter concert was completely different. In this small town, the high school band is as close to a professional symphony orchestra as they'll probably ever have. I wanted a concert with quality musical programming and an elegant presentation, or at least presented to the best of our ability. I poured a ton of energy into the presentation as well as the music, and it definitely contributed to the concert's success. Here are some of the things we did that you might be able to use, if you're not already doing them:

Six Wind Pattern Applications in Rehearsal

Greetings!

Sam Pilafian leads a band in
breathing exercises.

Back in January I wrote a post titled, "The Transformational Power of The Breathing Gym". If somehow you're unfamiliar with this awesome product, please click on the link to learn about what it is and its effectiveness. I shared some of my stories about individual student breakthroughs or small groups successes. There was a reflective post later on where I briefly mentioned a few other things I had found success dealing with using wind patterns, but until now I haven't written a post that puts it all together in a way you can easily use in rehearsal.

A Wind Pattern is where you isolate the breathing and fix that before going back to the instrument. I also have students finger the instrument while breathing. Playing a wind instrument is almost entirely about the wind. We know that air support causes probably 90% of the problems we have, and Wind Patterns are a good way to isolate that aspect of playing. So here are six situations where you can tell students to Wind Pattern:

3 Ways to Make the Warm Up Relevant for Students

Much has been written about what should be included in a band warm up. There are some tried and true methods out there. For example, some teachers swear by Bach chorales as a necessity (or at least a chorale of some sort). There is much written as to the purpose of a warm up, and so on and so forth. I'm not actually here to add to that debate today. Today I'm here to offer some tips to make your band warm up more relevant to the students so that more is learned during that time.

The Problem With Most Warm Up Routines...

is that they're routine. On the one hand, routines and procedures are important. They help the students stay grounded, it helps them know what to expect, and so on. But here is the kind of routine I'm talking about: