Ben Zander on Music and Passion

Hello again! 

On weekends I occasionally like to pass the time by surfing for cool, music related videos. Some are simply of great performances, while others are more inspirational. I've gathered quite a collection of them, and while I've always eagerly shared them with my friends over facebook, I wasn't quite thoughtful enough to share them on the blog, which after all is also a journal for my musical thoughts and ideas. My friend, John Benton over at Music Dreams does something like this, except that he posts mostly education and music related videos that he finds on TED.com.As a reader of his, I appreciate him finding those for me. I don't know why it took me so long to wise up and do this at my blog as well.

Anyway, speaking of TED, this first video is from their website. It is of one of my personal heroes, Benjamin Zander. In less than 20 minutes he explains the basics of understanding Classical Music to an audience full of non-musicians, and spreads his passion for Classical Music. I love this video, and if you haven't watched it, I can assure you that you'll love it, too. Enjoy!

Musically yours,

Mr. Cooper

How Do You Teach Intonation to Beginners? - Individual Training in the Classroom

Greetings!

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything. I'll explain why in the "P.S." section. Business first!

I'd like to start by saying that I've had an incredible student teaching experience so far. I've been able to work with students and run classes on a daily basis, and my skill level has dramatically improved. I wish I could stick around for another semester to learn about the details of marching season from the two teachers I work with, but what are you going to do?

Anyway, how do you teach intonation? I was lucky to have a tremendous high school band education as part of one of the top 10 concert bands in the state, and a couple of years with one of the top collegiate bands in the state. The intonation in both of these ensembles was top notch. The expectation is that you would play perfectly in tune, at all times. And we did... more or less. But we were also taught how to do it independently.

As we all know, playing in tune is the
difference between this...

...and this.

Different Schools of Thought

Band teachers typically use one of two tactics. Some will listen to a student and tell them what to do to get in tune, while telling them to listen and match the section leader. It works, and I've seen it work. And there are some really successful teachers that do this.

Other teachers tell students what to listen for, and how to react to what they hear, so that the decision making is no longer on the teacher, but rather on the student. My personal belief is that this is a better music education. I want my students to go on with the skills and knowledge to be an independent musician, in whatever capacity that might be. This requires that I don't just tell them what to do. Instead, I have to train their thinking.

It is possible to tell them what to do ("You're sharp, pull out."), and for them to develop the ability on their own. If the student is motivated, and smart, then they will eventually figure it out on their own. It happens all the time. What I'm about to share was developed by a leading educator and I believe it's a much faster route to the end of independent musicianship.

A couple of authors (at least) talk about this idea of teaching students how to think. In a clinic with John Whitwell, he recalled Elizabeth Green telling a room of graduate students, "You band guys are so good at teaching the lips and the fingers. When are you going to start teaching the brain?" Ed Lisk has several books (which I love, by the way) in which all of his tactics are based on teaching students how to think and make musical decisions.

I wouldn't have known to teach beginners about intonation unless one of my mentors at the school I'm student teaching at had told me to do it. He's a past Honor Band Director, so I take his advice as being solid. One day I noticed he was teaching the bulk of the woodwind class about intonation, at which point I said, "Well, I guess it's time," and set myself to teaching the other two beginning classes (low brass and high brass) how to do it. That night I reviewed some books and the next day I put it into practice.

The results have been very good! When you teach beginners what to listen for, almost all of them will hear it right away. For a few, it has taken some time to recognize the difference between in and out of tune sounds. But I'd say it's a very small percentage. For everyone else, when they heard waves in the sound for the first time, their eyes lit up, and they could identify it, and in varying degrees (fast waves, slow waves), every time afterwards.

Fast forward some weeks, now that the beginning band has met as a full group a few times and played through all of their festival tunes. They are playing with pretty good intonation and blend for 6th graders, and I can't wait to see how much better it gets in the 4 weeks until they perform for the public.

The Procedure

So what was the procedure I used? It's basically the procedure outlined in Ed Lisk's "Alternative Rehearsal Techniques" series, but with a couple of small changes. It's also the same method, I realized, that I was taught to use in high school.

I used a white board to draw a few images as I gave an explanation. I started by explaining that it is possible for two people to play the same note, but that it won't be quite the same. One person might sound slightly higher or lower than the other person, and that we call that sharp or flat. When that happens, you hear waves in the sound. "Waaa-waaa-waaa-waaa." It would look something like this (and I did the wave sound again as I drew the waves):

I continued, if the players are really far off from each other, you'll hear fast waves, kind of like this:

"Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa"

If the two players are really close to being in tune, the waves will sound slower:

"Waaaaaaa-waaaaaa-waaaaaa"

But waves just don't sound good to us or to the audience. What we want is what we call, "Straight line tuning", which is a sound without waves:

"Dooooooooooooooooooe"

I also related it to a heart rate monitor and what it sound like when it flat lines. They thought that sounded like a bad thing, but I assured them that when you play in a band, that straight line sound is exactly what you want. Perhaps I should've stayed away from that analogy. =^)

So we dug into it. I explained the activity. The section leader would play and hold a concert F (which is what this program uses to tune to), and I would point to the next person to play and hold. I instructed all students to listen carefully for the waves, and see if they were fast or slow. I pointed to the section leader, and said, "Do you hear how her sound is a steady, straight line?" Then I pointed to the next student.

Waa-waa-waa-waa-waa!

Eyes lit up and several students said excitedly, "I hear the waves!"

I cut the two off and continued an explanation. We always assume that the section leader is in tune. The section leader's job is to tune to the lower instruments, and everyone else's job is to tune to the section leader. If you hear waves, you're out of tune and you need to make an adjustment...

First, make sure you are playing with a good quality of sound. Ideally you want to match the sound of the section leader. This might mean pushing more air, checking your posture, or adjusting your embouchure. 

(This student was playing with a good sound, so I explained that I didn't think it was that, and went ahead and continued to the next part. If his sound were weaker at the moment, I would've encouraged him to make an adjustment and try again before going to the next step.)

If you're playing with a good sound and you still hear waves, you must check to make sure you're playing the same volume as the section leader and the people on either side of you. If you can't hear your neighbors, you're playing too loud. If you can't hear yourself, you may be too soft. Match the volume of the people next to you. Make sure you still have a good sound quality.

"Now try again and this time match her volume."

Waa-waa-waa-waa-waa.

(To the students) Are there still waves?

Students, "Yes!" and they started showing me the waves with their hands and so forth. I cut them off.

If you made those two adjustments and you still hear waves, then the instrument is out of tune and you need to make an adjustment. (Make the instrument longer or shorter), then play again. 

Did the waves get faster or slower? If they got faster, you went in the wrong direction and need to go in the opposite direction. Did the waves get slower? Then you're going in the right direction, and you need to keep going. Does it sound like a straight line? Then you're perfectly in tune and it can't get any better. Memorize what that feels like and try to do it all the time.

"So make an adjustment and let's try again." 

Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa.

Cut off, then to the student playing, "Were the waves faster or slower?" He wasn't sure. Other students answered, and I agreed with their answer, so I reminded him to adjust in the opposite direction and try again. We kept going until he was perfectly in tune with the section leader. When he got there, the students recognized it. I cut them off and said, "That was perfect! Good job!" 

So then I had both of them playing and holding while the next person tried. We went through the same basic procedure, except that with me repeating the same things (again, telling them what to listen for and what to think/how to react to it), the process got faster with each student. When the class started getting waves in the sound before the student had a chance to tune to the group, I explained that air speed affects the tuning. Slower air makes pitch go down, faster air makes it go up, and that they have to keep a steady air speed and keep the embouchure in exactly the same place to keep the pitch steady. This advice was strictly based on my own experience. Eventually chops started to tire, so I had the section leader play and hold while everyone else listened. There were a couple of students we just couldn't get in tune. Cases like these were due to underdeveloped sound, or stuck tuning slides. In the case of the former I was gentle but honest in explaining that the sound quality was the likely culprit, but that it would improve with time (in other words, I was encouraging), and in the other case I explained to the student and the class the importance of maintaining equipment, and that it would be impossible to play in tune with a stuck tuning slide. After class we got it taken care of.

Reflections

One class had 14 students, and the other had 12-13 students, and it was an interactive but time consuming process. I initially didn't plan for it to take as long as it did, but considering they were beginner classes I should have. Ultimately it was worth losing most of the periods to cover this skill. After all, as one of my mentors said when I asked him how you teach this to beginners, he simply said, "Ear training." After a while it got a little boring for some of them. That's understandable. They're 11 year olds. But for the most part it was engaging until we got to the last 3rd or 4th of the class and we'd been at it for some time. But again, it was worth it. They could all now recognize when they were playing in tune, and they had some training on what to do to get in tune. 

So how do you get through this in a larger class? I understand that many beginning classes, depending on the school size and situation, can be much larger. This is obviously best done in smaller groups to begin with. It probably wouldn't be smart to attempt this in a beginning class, for example, where you have all beginning band students in one class, and there are 50-60 of them. But we have to figure something out. After all, students need the chance to experiment and succeed, and they can't do that by themselves. Have you tried tuning to an electronic sound? It's not as easy to hear, unless you have something that is loud and in your range (which I never did). Students need to be trained how to think and react to make independent musical decisions, and the only way to give them that training is to give them the time and opportunity to experiment, fail, and go through the whole process until they achieve success (so they can memorize and hear the right way). You can show them the strobe, but this doesn't teach them to listen. And you can tell them what to do, which will get them more in tune with the other players, but it will make them dependent on you to tell them when they're out of tune and what to do when they're out of tune. Only certain students will achieve independence this way.

So we have to teach them what to listen for and how to react to make musical decisions, and then we have to give them the time to develop the listening and performance skills. It takes time. 

When I implemented this strategy, and in the following days as we continued to review the concept, I was worried that it was taking too much time. We hardly covered any music the day I introduced this, which I was worried was a very bad thing. But now, several weeks later, I can see that it wasn't such a bad thing after all. They're still at the end of their book in addition to having learned four grade 1 band tunes, a short chorale, 7 scales, and a few other things. With a month to go (we're about to break out solo and ensemble materials for them), and with them playing with pretty good intonation skills for 6th graders, I'd say that time investment was well worth it. 

Lately I've been working with percussionists in a different room from the main groups, but the other day I had a minute to listen to the low brass, and what I heard was very surprising. As they oompah'd their way through their quarter and half note accompaniment part, most of what they were playing was with straight line tuning. I only heard waves on occasional notes. It made me smile!

Anyway, the initial presentation is what I wanted to cover here. Of course there is more to it than this, but as far as introducing it to the group, that seemed to work out pretty well. I think in the next post I'll reflect on what happened afterwards to help them practice the new skills and build them up. 

Ed Lisk has two other parts to his procedure. Once they're in tune he asks students to analyze whether they're pinching the tones, or loosening the embouchure, to get the note in tune. If so, he notes that the instrument is too long or short, respectively, and they need to make the proper length adjustment and return to their regular, relaxed embouchure. When they are in tune with their regular embouchure, then they're in tune. I didn't cover that with these guys. I've mentioned it once, I think, so I don't know if it's made any difference, or how it would've worked out had I mentioned it consistently. I would have, but honestly, I just forgot to include it. Drawing the straight line and varying speeds of waves as I modeled the waves with my voice as something I added on the fly, and it seemed to work pretty well. I like catering to visual learners.

Well, it was fun to look back on this. I spent a lot of time looking for ways to present it, and eventually settled on what you read above, and I'm happy with the results. As always, thank you very much for reading! Until next time, take care!

Musically yours,

Mr. Cooper

P.S. So why the long delay in blogs? A lot of that is that I'm carefully considering the parameters of this blog, and boundaries for how I should write. I'm pretty sure I've followed the Texas Educator's Code of Ethics, but it seems that even if one does that, you can still cause discomfort when someone knows who you are and that you're talking about their student, or students. That's certainly not what I want. I want this to be a means to help myself improve, but I also want it to be a positive thing for others. I want it to be helpful, never hurtful, or even to cause anyone an ounce of stress. What I decided is that I want to continue to blog in a reflective manner that is open for everyone to read, so I'm working on figuring out how to do that with the above considerations. Don't be surprised if there are some changes to the blog once I decide how to procede in that regard. Thanks again for reading and take care!

Follow Up: Things That Worked, or Didn't.

Hello!

It's been a while since I last blogged, but so much has happened! This semester I've been student teaching. It's been a wonderful experience. My cooperating teacher and the assistant put me to work immediately with lessons and sectionals, then quickly gave me part of each beginning class (there are times where, in woodwind class for example, that there is one teacher to a section). As the semester progressed they entrust me with more and more. Now it is common for the assistant director to let me take the entire trumpet class, or the full woodwind class, or for the head director (my cooperating teacher) to have me take the full low brass class since he has been dealing with preparations for contest with the high school band.

I don't feel comfortable anymore discussing my experiences on the blog. Although I've tried to talk in general terms, the fact is that with a public identity on the blog, it is easy to figure out where I'm at, and then possibly who I'm taking about. This was yet another lesson I learned a while back. In the future I plan to continue a music ed blog, but with a less public identity. Maybe I could set up something similar to one of the first blogs I got into, www.soyouwanttoteach.com. I recommend this one, especially for my college friends.

But I can tell you a lot of what I've talked about worked. Some of it didn't. When something didn't work, I still think it was because of my implementation of the technique, and not the technique itself.

What Worked?

Wind patterns. Anytime I wanted to improve tone quality, having students wind pattern once or twice did the trick. And it required very little explanation to establish the procedure for how to do it. All of my beginners know what I mean when I say, "Turn that into a wind pattern". What surprised me, though, is that it also worked very well for helping students develop finger coordination. I originally discovered this when helping a high school saxophone student with a relatively quick lick that required a bit of jumping around (think 7th chord arpeggios without the third, up and down in 8th notes about roughly 130 bpm). When slowing it down wasn't enough, for some reason, wind patterning helped. All she had to do was think about which buttons to press without tone production, and when she went back to the instrument it worked. From there it was a matter of practicing slow and gradually increasing the speed. But she couldn't do that until she could develop the finger coordination to play the right notes. Afterwards I incorporated it into my beginner classes to deal with passages involving finger coordination (which can be as simple as a jump of a third for them) and it seemed to be much more effective than just playing it slower. On a quick side note, a friend of mine incorporated wind patterns into a long tone warm up for his band, and credits that

Classroom procedures. My classroom is the music library room, which fortunately is large enough to hold 12-15 students without feeling cramped. Students know not to bring their cases into the room, and they know to look at the small dry erase board for the day's objectives and goals, and to get their music out in that order. They know the procedure for asking questions, or being excused to the rest room. When I work with the 7th grade band, they know I'm picky about instruments coming up when the baton comes up, and they follow it. I rarely get to work with them, so I usually have to rehearse it again with them, but once I do the rest of the rehearsal is much more focused and productive. The one time I worked with them and didn't enforce it, they were disruptive and hard to focus. Which brings me to an interesting point - was it the band's fault for being unruly teens and pre-teens, or was it my fault for not enforcing the procedures? I'm the teacher, I took the blame, and the next time I had that chance we were far more productive because I enforced the procedure. That said, there was another class I failed to establish the procedure with (the first time I had them I was caught off guard, and once their expectations were set it was difficult to overcome). This group needed it more than anyone else, and I failed to implement it. We did make some progress, but it was very disruptive. I wonder how good it could have been had I enforced a couple of the procedures. Classroom procedures work. What doesn't work? Not using them.

Sharing the goal. They never ask, "What are we going to do today?" Most of them have the hang of getting their exercises and music out in the order indicated on the board. I have goals next to the objectives, so they never ask why we are doing something. They know we're trying to improve their sound and technique, or when the goal is notes and rhythms, or when the goal is dynamics and style, etc. etc.  

Expressive conducting. I think "expressive" is misleading to some people. They think that means you try to mimic what the music sounds like. Actually, you're trying to communicate what the music sounds like. Regardless, I haven't actually been overly expressive so far. My regular beat pattern is a little different from the teachers I work with, but the students caught onto it quickly. Simply conducting a whole note scale acclimated them to my beat pattern. Sometimes I don't conduct a beat pattern, and instead just focus on dynamics or note emphasis, or phrasing, etc, but always with the goal of assisting them in achieving the desired effect. When it doesn't work for me, it's usually because of one of two things: 1) They aren't watching, or 2) They don't understand my gesture. Teaching gestures like they're vocabulary words works. If they aren't watching, try making eye contact. It's also possible that they're not used to having to watch, and it needs to be ingrained as the new habit (and we all know how hard it is to form new habits). On a side note, I debated with a friend the value of expressive conducting while at TMEA, and he was of the school that students at certain levels aren't ready for it. I explained that they have played the music so many times that they could probably keep the beat without his conducting. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later he called me, ecstatic over the day's rehearsal because he tried it, and it resulted into one of the best rehearsals of the season. He noted that they were thrown off at first, but he reassured them and gave them multiple chances, and pretty soon they were making music at a much higher level! It can be scary to try stuff like that. I'm still glad he did, and that it worked for him so well. What will be really cool is once they learn his conducting vocabulary, and learn to watch as the normal habit, they will start performing more musically and stylistically better on future works without him having to explain as much as he probably does now. It will save time. At least, that's my prediction. Also, I watched another friend at Concert Contest, and thought his conducting was awesome. Very expressive, and it made sense. The band performed incredibly well. Every phrase was musical. One director thought he was helping the band too much. Another thought they sounded like the third best band of the day. Not bad for a first year teacher. Way to go, guys! So yes, I still think expressive conducting works, but you have to work it. If it doesn't work, something is preventing effective communication. Once that's solved, it can work very well.

What Didn't Work?

Again, I don't think it's the technique, but rather my implementation of it. I discussed using some "Inner Game of Music" tactics in my Iron Man post. A friend commented that while working up a piece for contest, he found similar moments in at least two of the pieces that facilitated musical breakthroughs. When I tried to use similar techniques this semester, it didn't work. I tried it in three different settings, and each failed. This has created in me an aversion to trying those techniques again, but I think it can still work if I can just get the hang of it. Perhaps when I'm done reading this current series of books I'm on I'll go back to Barry Green's "The Inner Game of Music" for a refresher.

The rest of what didn't work was simply getting the hang of keeping a fast pace, and recognizing what to do in different situations. Perhaps some other things will come to me and I can write a follow up blog. We'll see. 

Oh, another thing that DID work was my use of body language to communicate in place of language. This is an old trick, but it warrants a separate blog. I think I might only do one or two more blogs on the current site before I convert to a more anonymous format. Until then, thanks for reading, and take care!

Musically yours,

Mr. Cooper