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.