The Benefits of Clinicians

Watching a clinician at work
is like seeing a skilled surgeon
in action. It's awesome.

The term "clinic" is so appropriate to band for what it is. You bring in an expert to diagnose the
problems your band is having, prescribe solutions, and set your band on the path to healthy playing and ensemble skills. Kids love working with a guest conductor, but I think I gain as least as much out of it as the students do (if not more). It's hard to believe that anyone out there would not bring in guests to work with their band, but I assume that happens because almost every time I go to a convention there is at least one session on the benefits of clinicians. People compliment the job I'm doing pretty regularly, but even so I feel like I owe so much of that success to the expert teachers that we bring in to work with the students. For me, the more clinicians the better. And when you find a good clinician, your band will experience explosive growth in just one rehearsal! So why does it work that way? What are the benefits to you and your students? And if you've never used a clinician, how do you find one?

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.

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. 

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:

Musicality for Beginners: Basic Phrase Shaping

Hello again!

On the last post in this series I talked about teaching students about implied note emphasis. That is a good first step that is easy for them to grasp and gets them making musical decisions. Once they get the hang of that, the next step is to teach them about basic phrase shaping. Keep in mind with what you're about to read, that the key indicator is basic. This is meant to be understood by beginning band students who are in the last leg of their end of the year concert preparation.

To be successful in this new skill, students will need to understand how to identify phrases (or at least know where all of the phrases in the music happen), and they'll need to be proficient in crescendos and decrescendos.

Paper Percussion?

Hello again!

Can paper percussion instruments help us keep an army
of percussionists engaged when there are more players
than parts?

Several months ago I wrote a series on how procedures maximize learning, and on the blog specifically about classroom procedures for band, one of the comments left recommended I think about how to handle percussionists.

Schools that are large enough have negotiated this problem by scheduling a percussion class that is separate from the full band class, so that the percussionists can rehearse their parts and additional percussion ensemble music non-stop. This is obviously a great solution, as percussionists only have to risk boredom during after school rehearsals when they put their part together with the full band. But you see, while the separate class is a great solution, it doesn't avoid the problem entirely. When the percussion gets to rehearse with the full concert band, they will inevitably be bored. I did my best in rehearsals this past semester, but I, too, am guilty of allowing this to happen.

At the time I received the comment, all I knew was that you do your best to keep them busy, but thanks to Dr. Peter Boonshaft's book, "Teaching Music With Purpose", I think there may be a much better solution that actually keeps percussionists engaged.

Paper Percussion.

Articulation Markings Schema and Handout

Hello again!

This past semester, one of the things I realized is that I wished I had a visual representation for articulation markings. This led me to recently develop one myself. It is based on the system that I was "raised on", which has a couple of components to it. This components combined give you an easy way to explain how to interpret different articulations based on previously learned concepts, which I really like. Here we go!

The Three Parts of a Note

I wish I could thank whoever started explaining articulations this way. The concept is that a note has three parts. Label them as you like. I prefer to use 1. Attack/Start of the Note, 2. The Body/Sustain of the Note, 3. The Release/End of the Note. 

If you simply explain this idea to students, they can probably come up with an image in their head, especially if you tell them to imagine it this way. Once this idea is established, you can more easily move on to explaining any articulation they'll come across. 

The Three Levels of Listening

Greetings!

One of the most difficult things to teach students is active listening skills. I was very fortunate in my early high school experience to have someone present a schema for listening to me that was easy to understand and apply. I've continued to use it as a player and a teacher with success.

For any readers who haven't taken Education courses yet, a schema is basically a model for understanding something that you create in your brain. For example, if you know the rules for the NFL, you've developed a schema. However, when you watch Arena Football, you have to adjust your schema (understanding of how football works) slightly to accommodate the different rules. It's also possible to have to develop completely new schemata when the information you discover cannot be assimilated into an existing schema. Moving on...

The Three Levels of Listening

Developing active listening skills
takes guided practice. It's like
developing a seventh sense.
(The sixth is Kinesthesis)

I don't know who came up with this, otherwise I would give them credit. The idea is that there are Three Levels of Listening. You focus your listening on specific things in specific levels, and when you have achieved certain things on that level, you move up to the next one while still monitoring what you've already worked on at the same time.

Level One - Listen to Yourself

As teachers we understand that if a player does not sound good individually, it will be impossible for them to blend into the sound of the band. So, the first goal is to train students to listen critically to their sound and their playing, and to make adjustments. When you begin putting this schema into practice, you start with "Level One - Listen to Yourself". 

There are certain check offs at this level (as with all of them). They're all related to individual playing. For example, "Are you playing with a good tone quality?" "Are you playing in tune?" "Are you playing with good articulation/style/musical shaping?" And you could go on. If they can answer "Yes" to all of these questions, then they move on to Level Two.

Book Review: "The Creative Director: Alternative Rehearsal Techniques" by Ed Lisk

Hello again!

It may not look like much on
the cover, but I think you'll
be impressed.

One of the things I'd like to be able to do is review the books I've read and give some good information as to what you can expect if you're considering purchasing them. I am a reading fanatic, but I don't have the funds to buy all the books I want, so I always have a difficult time trying to pick the ones I think would work best.

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.