Music by Frank Erickson

Greetings!

For some odd reason I recently had the craving to listen to the music of Frank Erickson.

Frank Erickson was an important composer and arranger for wind band after World War II. He also did some pedagogical work, including arranging music for the "First Division Band Method" and writing his own band course. I won't go into great detail about his bio, but if you're interested you can find some information on windrep.org. All that I'll really say is that he wrote some gorgeous music. Several of his prominent works are slow and lyrical. He has an exceptional ability to write beautiful, moving lines, and this has caused band directors for decades to use that music to help teach musicianship to their players.

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.