Five Ways to Teach or Clean Articulation

It's never safe to assume that students are articulating correctly. Students get by through their beginner year with ways of faking it, and of course we as teachers can only spend so much time on one given thing. It's understandable. Articulation has to be retaught and reinforced every year, throughout the year. Sometimes I forget this, and yet I'm always surprised by how much things clean up after addressing articulation. It's as if the band was slurring it's speech, and suddenly they remember how to enunciate. I'm sure there are a lot of ways to teach it, or word it, but here are a few of the things I've used with some success.

The Beginner Band Starter Kit

Does your beginner band class feel
like this? Hopefully these articles can
give you some ideas that help!

I made a lot of mistakes with my approach to Beginning Band in my first year. There were some things I did right, but man was there a lot I could've done better. I wish I knew then what I know now - which I admit, still isn't much! There is still so much I'd like to know and learn when it comes to beginning band. But both my co-worker and I feel like we're both doing a much better job now than we did at our previous gigs. If you're a veteran, you might not find much here. But for the new or pre-service band director, I hope you'll find some useful ideas here. Presenting the Cooper's Divertimento Beginning Band Starter Kit!

4 Ways to Supplement the Beginner Band Book

Beginning Band students need
supplemental exercises to develop their
playing just like we did to develop ours.

I made a lot of mistakes with my first beginner class. One of the biggest by far was not supplementing their beginner band book. It's not that I didn't want to, or didn't know how to. It was more that I was so busy in my one man gig that it ended up as one of those things that just slipped by. Determined to make the beginners at my next job vastly different, I started working over the summer to create supplements. I've always been told that if you present everything through the book, you're probably in trouble, or that it's all about how you use the book. In some recent conversations on the Yellow Board I've found that some teachers use the book itself as a supplement, and have a large list of other things that are the base. Currently I'm in the school that spends half the class out of the book, and half in the book. The first twenty minutes or so are spent on supplements. I wish I were one of those teachers who had spent years collecting various materials to incorporate into their beginner curriculum. I need more time. Until then, if you're still spending the bulk of your time in the book, hopefully this will give you a few ideas to get started:

The Easy Way to Teach Scales

Forget playing the scales, I used
to get this way just teaching them.

It was my first year of teaching. I had a heterogeneous beginning band class, and I was ambitious enough to include horns, giving me four different pitches of instruments to contend with when note naming. I wanted so badly for them to have as many scales as we could get, or at least get them up to the scales they needed for the All-District Band Auditions they would face the next year. So I pushed. But every time we started a new scale, it was a nightmare. Going one group at a time, grinding out the notes, checking the fingers, it took forever. And even with my best efforts, nearly half the group would play wrong notes. I wish I knew now what I knew then. There is a much, much easier way to teach scales to beginners!

A Motivating Pass Off System

On second thought, yes!

In my first year of teaching I rarely used playing tests for beginners. I mostly did it for grades, and sometimes only once per grading cycle. I didn't understand how important it could be for motivation. Instead I wanted to use every moment of class time to learn new lines, and move as quickly through the book as we could, battling classroom management problems along the way. All of the good beginner teachers I know regularly have their students play for a grade. Over the summer I discovered a music pass off system that, it turns out, has worked wonders for student motivation, leading to students being more on task in class and an explosion of practicing outside of class. If you are like I was then, I hope this will encourage you to adopt a regular individual performance grade. If you already do regular playing test grades, then this system might interest you as well!

Teach Beginners to Count Rhythms

It's easy for a young musician to get lost
without some kind of counting system.

By now counting systems have been adopted by almost everyone, but some people still avoid teaching a counting system. My thought is that most people who don't teach a counting system probably are not familiar enough with one, or perhaps they already use one and have thought about switching to another but haven't because they're not used to it. Either way, students need a schema that helps them understand how to break down rhythms, and counting systems become extremely useful the more complicated the rhythms get. Personally, I'm an Eastman Counting System guy. I wanted to provide links to pages explaining the counting systems, but after the first 3 pages of google search I gave up on finding them. So here I'll briefly explain the two most widely used systems for band, traditional and Eastman, and then tell you why I recommend A) Using a counting system and B) Using Eastman.

Simple Procedures to Develop Literacy & Technique

Wait... is he the only one reading music???

Two of the biggest goals we work towards with beginners, after tone quality, is music literacy and playing technique. When I was in college I had the chance to observe a great beginning band teacher, and made notes of the procedures he used to teach new music to his students. Later on, attending workshops and reading posts on the YellowBoard reaffirmed that this was indeed a widely used practice by great beginning band teachers. The procedures are simple, easy to teach, and quickly become a routine to learn new lines of music. In the process it teaches music literacy, technique, and teach students how to break down and learn new music independently. If you're an experienced teacher, you probably already do this or something like it. But if you're struggling with your beginners, or if you're a pre-service teacher, then I hope this article will help shed some light on how to help your beginners with what can be a daunting task when presented all at once - learning and playing new music.

10 Motivational Strategies for Beginners

What does it take to be the Beginner
Band Champion? Many hours
of practice!

Motivation can be an elusive goal, and beginners will need plenty as they start on the long road to becoming literate, musical artists. We're just over a quarter of the way through the school year, and although the honeymoon has worn off, our students this year are more motivated than they were in the first few weeks! My friend and I are both new to this school system, and we hope to build a dynastic program here. We know that starts with our first class of beginners, so we've pulled out all the stops we can think of, and it seems to really be paying off for our students. I don't know how they're doing compared to other similar sized schools, but neither of us have seen anything like this kind of excitement for band and commitment to practicing in our previous efforts. Did I mention that all 6th graders here are required to be in band? Here are some of the extra, fun things we're doing to create a band class that the kids hopefully look forward to, and also to motivate them to practice outside of class!

Building Beginners Through Sound Before Sight

The first several weeks of Beginner Band are crucial to the over all success of the students. These kids are often required to learn two skills at once, both of which involve multitasking - playing and instrument, and reading music. I had heard for years about the idea of Sound Before Sight, mostly as an elementary pedagogy but also by some as a beginning band method. My earliest attempt at this was missing some key components that ultimately resulted in a slower start to reading and playing, and less progress over the year. This year my friend and I worked together to develop a comprehensive curriculum that would both train the students on the basics of playing while simultaneously building them up for reading and playing. The two classes who got the full treatment are currently having better success than anything we've experienced, while the class that didn't get all of it is still struggling on the literacy end. Hopefully there's something in here that will give you ideas for your own Sound Before Sight curriculum, as having one that is effective can definitely make a big difference for your students!

5 1/2 Teaching Toys to Improve Tone

Just kidding... not these kinds of toys!

One of the big changes we've made this year is that we wanted to find a variety of ways to tackle embouchure and tone, including using various toys and tools to keep things fresh and hopefully give them something to relate to when switching over to the instrument. I've wanted to do some of this stuff before, but just never got off my butt to go get the stuff. This year was going to be different, and while some of these things are just small stuff, I think it's made those classes memorable for the kids while "tricking them" into learning. Enjoy!

Motivate Students With Long Term Goals

Welcome back to my series on student motivation. The first post shared thoughts on motivating students by creating structure, and the second discussed motivating students by achieving short term & daily goals. This time we're looking at a few of the long term motivation factors. The two I'd like to touch on are programming and high profile performances. Programming strategically helps the students grow musically on a daily and long term basis (helping to create intrinsic motivation) while preparing for high profile performances can motivate them to achieve new heights of musical excellence.

Journal Entry - "The First Year" 05/25/12

I've officially survived my first year! I feel like I saw an "Achievement Unlocked" pop up earlier, or at least felt one. I know I was in the middle of a series about student motivation, and I do want to finish that, but I also want to take a post to reflect on this past semester. Combined with some of my other entries this year and we'll have a pretty decent record of my experience this year: I Found a Job!, Thing Are Getting Better, Three Tips to Make Your Next Concert a Hit and Journal Entry 3-24-12.

In the last journal entry I talked about how I believed the band was hitting a major turning point. At UIL we made a 2 in Sight Reading and a 1 in Concert. The concert rating was significant because it was the first 1st Division in Concert Contest since 2009 for this group, also because we got a 3 at Marching Contest, and also because that meant they would get to perform at the UIL State Wind Ensemble Festival. It generated a lot of excitement, not just for the kids, but for the community as well.

Motivate Students by Achieving Short Term & Daily Goals

Program preparation feels
a lot like this, but every day
counts. What do students feel
they've accomplished when
they leave each day?

Welcome back to my series about Student Motivation! My last gave some tips to Motivate Students by Creating Structure. This, I think, is a prerequisite. Without structure, nothing else you do will matter. But simply providing enough structure may not get you all the way there. I doesn't necessarily garuantee that students will start believing they can achieve, or care to achieve. In fact, putting all of that structure in place without enough results may make students feel bitter that they followed your rules, did what you asked, and didn't get much for their effort. I ran into this during marching season, which was riddled with rookie mistakes. I started working out a system to increase our daily achievement that showed some results by the Christmas concert, and was more refined and led to much greater success for UIL and other contests. With that in mind, here are some tips to setting and achieving short term and daily goals.

Motivate Students by Creating Structure

I'll be honest, motivation is something I'm still working on. I feel for the teachers who teach required classes because I myself teach elementary music, and 5th and 6th grade band is required (all of which I do on my own in addition to the HS band). Luckily I've done well with motivating all of the groups except for those required band classes. The Band is on a roll right now, having made incredible progress this year and having had some success at contests. The students are proud of themselves, and they're also getting great positive feedback from their fellow students, the faculty, and members of the community. It took a lot of hard work from everyone involved since August 1st, and often it felt like a struggle, both for me and them. Reflecting on these experiences, especially with the HS Band, I've thought of a few of the things that have led to successfully motivating the students throughout the year.

Inspiring Video About Classical Music in the Congo

CBS' 60 Minutes recently aired a segment about the only symphony orchestra in Sub-Sahara Africa, located in one of the poorest countries in the world, the Congo. In a city of 10 million people, there are currently 200 members whose lives now revolve around learning and performing classical music.

I won't go into the details, but instead just wanted to set up this video. It's really very inspiring, and reminds me of El Sistema, which has for a few years now both inspired me and influenced the curriculum and system I'm trying to build in the town where I teach. It is another reminder of how classical music is life changing, and how what we do as music teachers has the powerful potential to change lives for the better. 

Enjoy the video!

Here is the link to the internet article: Producer finds musical "sweet spot" in the Congo.

Musically yours,

Mr. Cooper

Six Tactics to Improve Intonation

Your ear is the final judge, but it
doesn't hurt to have one of these
on the stand.

Greetings!

One of the most illusive pursuits is that of ensemble intonation. There were at least a handful of things that helped us and continue to help us improve in that regard. When the year started, all my band knew about tuning your instrument was that the previous director marked all of the slides etc. where they were supposed to be set, and if you left it there it meant you were in tune. Can you believe that? So we practically started from scratch. I doubt I'll get through everything in one post (entire books are available on the subject), but here are a few key tactics that I think got us on the right track.

Four Fun Tricks to Align the Band's Pulse

Greetings!

One of the biggest things I've had to do with my band is work to align the ensemble's pulse. Even once the quarter notes lined up, often eighth notes across the band wouldn't line up properly. Sometimes it's just that players aren't agreeing on how to shape the ends of notes, but just as often is can be a lack of subdivision. You can explain subdivision and tell them to subdivide, which is better than nothing, but I've found that getting them to externalize it and then referencing that is more helpful, and more fun. So here are a few ways you can try this out with your group.

5 Ways to Keep Scales Interesting

Simple modifications to scales can
help your band grow by leaps and
bounds!

Good to see you today!

One of the things I like to do in rehearsal is experiment with the warm up time. A while back I blogged about  how to make your warm up time relevant for students, and today's post is closely related to that. There are plenty of ways to structure a good warm up, but I'm a believer that technique building should be included in there somewhere. I also believe scales are a fundamental building block for musicianship, not only for the music literacy and fluency, but for the technical aspects of playing. So we play scales every day. The problem with scales is that they can be very mundane. Fortunately, it can be remedied by adding in some variety. So, submitted for your consideration, here are a few ways to mix up your scales (both basic and advanced) to make them more interesting, fun (hopefully), and more relevant for students. 

Journal Entry 03-24-12

Greetings! It's been a long time since I've posted to the blog, but it's also been a very busy semester (as I'm sure it has been for you as well!). UIL Concert & Sight Reading Contest is thankfully behind us, and I'm proud to report the band made a 1st Division in Concert and a 2nd Division in Sight Reading. They were talented enough to make a 1 in Sight Reading, but a few missed notes in the beginning I think led to a lack of confidence afterwards. Even so, I walked away feeling great about the day. It was the first "Superior" rating they've had on stage since 2009 (the final year of their last good director). I found a new sight reading book at TMEA that I'm very interested in, which I think will be a major improvement over what I did this year. I know that the best days are ahead of this band, and that this was a major turning point.

The Passing of W. Francis McBeth

The band world lost a giant yesterday - W. Francis McBeth.

I don't have much to say, really. Unfortunately, I didn't know him. I am a young band director, and never had the chance to.

I am also, however, a very nerdy band director. I do a lot of research....

As a product of the 5A band system, I can't recall ever getting to play his music. I occasionally, but rarely, heard about him in my college studies. But in my student teaching, as I dug around the music library of my assignment and dug around online looking for band history, and influential band figures, it didn't take long to learn about him and his incredible music, and of course, his groundbreaking pedagogy (I knew of the pyramid of sound, of course, but didn't know until then that he was responsible for it).

I didn't want to write about him, per say. You can find plenty of biographical information on these pages:

Southern Music Company's McBeth Bio

Sigma Alpha Iota's McBeth Page

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture

The closest thing I can say about him, regretfully, is that I have read his book, "Effective Performance of Band Music-Solutions to Specific Problems in the Performance of 20th Century Band Music". I've read as many books as I could get my hands on in the last few years. His was the most concise, while also being vastly more helpful and practical. I just found out he wrote another book, and I plan to read that, too. If I can find it.

I'm a band guy. And this is a band blog. It's not much, but I wanted to do something in memory of this hugely important figure. Normally that would be a post with some of his music, but I already did one of those pages after I read the aforementioned book: The Music of W. Francis McBeth.

So in lieu of that, I decided to use my modest photoshop abilities to make a memorial button. After I post this page I'm going to make it my facebook profile picture for a couple of days, and I'll leave it on the blog for a while I think. Anyway, please feel free to use it. You can save the image above, or right click it and "copy url".

Please keep his family in your thoughts in the coming days and weeks. Mr. McBeth - the band world thanks you.

Musically yours,
Chris Cooper

Three More Tips to Make Your Next Concert a Hit

When I grow up, I want to play on a
stage with that cool of a backdrop!

Greetings! Last time I shared three things we did (outside of rehearsal) to make our recent concert a hit. But there was still a few other things I wanted to share, so here we go with part two!

Keep Dead Time to a Minimum

If there's one thing that kills momentum, it's the time it takes for one band to leave the stage while another one sets up and gets ready to go. Find ways to keep this dead time to a minimum.