Posts filed under 'Wind Pedagogy'
I love this school. Did I mention that yet?
We have the best problem, ever: our class sizes are too small. Thanks to superior funding and real emphasis on student learning from our school board, our school has achieved something in the neighborhood of 9-1 student-teacher ratio. The average class size in the elementary school is (by my very unofficial count) something like 15 students per teacher in grades 1-5; in the high school, advanced courses like IB and AP can have as few as two students and still garner a dedicated teacher, classroom and period. As is predictable from the plethora of class-size research - which is not within the scope of this blog, so I hope you’ll excuse me for avoiding the task of separating the wheat from the chaff - our school excels at boosting student achievement through student-teacher interaction. Our ESL students get dedicated subject help, our small special-needs population gets a specialist-staffed resource center as well as timely and professional status review meetings consistent with the best districts anywhere in the U.S., and behavior issues typically involve academic dishonesty or cursing. Tobacco, alcohol and drugs are simply not an issue on campus (despite the easy availability of just about anything in our host country). I have yet to hear the word ‘fight’ without ‘global warming’.
Who in their sane mind could have a problem with small class sizes?
Well, the music ensemble directors could. Especially when it means that the advanced, performing ensembles (Concert Band, or the newly formed Middle School Choir) are split between four separate periods. Each.
Having a class size of seven students appears to make middle school language arts teachers very happy. However, the middle school music faculty are finding it quite difficult to build rehearsal energy, group sonority, ensemble phrasing and matching interpretation in this setting. The Middle School Concert Band, for example, meets in sections of 19, 11, 7 and 7 students, the first two being eighth grade and the second two being in seventh grade. The seven-student sections of Concert Band each have three flutes, one clarinet, one trumpet, one alto saxophone and one trombone. This is a red-alert according to our ‘peers on like instrument’ measure; but in a performing ensemble the situation adds additional alarm, being that it strips the ‘ensemble’ out of the ensemble class. The music doesn’t make sense to the students as they rehearse it, and they cannot learn how to blend or tune with a group who isn’t there. The band director expends unnecessary energy and concentration singing the missing parts (which, in my case, may qualify as child abuse!) Ergo, in this case, we are asking to be given larger class sizes, especially for the advanced performing groups.
We have been round and round the schedule issue with our Middle School Principal - who, I must say, is the most honestly supportive most willing to listen administrator for whom I have ever worked (and I have worked with some excellent administrators) - but cannot find a fix within the current middle school timetable. Which brings us to the impetus for this post (and its predecessor, ‘Part One’): the Middle School Principal has asked the music department to come up with some suggestions for next year’s music class scheduling.
Join me again next week for Part Three, in which I will (really, this time) include the full text of our submitted document.
February 27th, 2010
In college, my clarinet (or was it sax?) prof told my undergraduate clarinet (sax?) methods class that the bottom lip of the embouchure should be like a pillow for the reed. Lower the jaw, get the bottom teeth out of the way, and then let the reed rest in its nice, soft pillow.
I realized last week that the analogy is ever so slightly askew. Flexing the bottom lip, controlling the reed with the muscles on which it sits, is NOT like a soft pillow for the reed. The proper muscle-ly embouchure is like a firm mattress. A very firm mattress. A soft pillow squishes when you sit on it. A firm mattress has give, but doesn’t squish flat under its occupant. Likewise, a “soft” lip is one that rolls limply over the teeth (squishes flat under the contact of the reed). The soft, squishy lip produces the thick, flat tone which, in my early years of teaching, I knew was wrong but which I couldn’t explain to my students.
Henceforth, the lower lip of the clarinet embouchure is like a firm mattress, not like a soft pillow. One more tool in my toolbox.
QOTD: What’s your best analogy, exercise or trick for teaching beginners to play soft dynamics without sacrificing tone quality?
February 22nd, 2010
Today’s post is a response to Dan Leeman’s post “Reshaping our Ears and Eyes” over at Music Education for All.
You strive for high standards. But your younger students just do so many things. . . well, wrong. My professional ear demands perfection and I have to stop and fix all of those imperfections. . . right?
I would encourage my peers and colleagues to see a little bit of “glossing over the rough spots” as “lesson pacing” rather than “lowering your standards”. You see, I used to stop and fix every wrong note, every embouchure weakness, every misplaced articulation. If I found more than one student lacking fingerings or failing to use the alternate fingering that I knew they had previously learned, I would throw my whole lesson plan out the window to hammer out the relevant scales…and lecture the kids on practicing. The result was a slow period that day, followed by a disappointing lack of improvement (and more remedial work and lectures) the following day, followed by totally losing momentum on the repertoire.
Now, when something is not right, I make a quick triage decision: If I can fix it in ten seconds or less, I fix it and move on with the lesson. If it would take more than ten seconds and is not absolutely critical to the present lesson, I leave it and move on; I then reflect on what pieces are missing for those students and work it into subsequent lessons or units. If the present lesson will just not fly without fixing a flaw, then it was my fault in the first place for not doing a thorough analysis of my students’ prior knowledge; I alter my lesson plan on the fly, move to a remedial exercise smoothly (as if we were finished with the day’s objectives on the first piece), and spend the rest of the period re-laying the foundation for the original musical objective.
It is true that we need to cleanse our ears daily, and to strive for high standards with even our beginners. However, don’t confuse the long-term objectives with the short-term objectives. There’s “a time to sow, a time to reap. . . A time to rend, a time to sew.” There’s a time to stop and hammer an articulation, and a time to move on with the scheduled lesson about ternary form.
All high standards in their own time. Turn, turn, turn.
February 10th, 2010
I love this school.
My colleagues and I have been asked by the middle school principal to write out schedule suggestions for next year’s middle school band and choir classes. There is no promise that we’ll get what we want, but WOW what a refreshing way to do business! This week my colleagues and I have been hammering out multiple plans based on mixed grades, separate grades, mixed instrumentation, separate instrumentation. . . you name it. . . and crunching the related numbers.
I am most proud of our data-driven metrics. We tried to represent our concerns in a systematic way, using data to show the dramatic effect that class makeup has on the classroom environment. Currently having small band classes split into two periods (i.e., fourteen 7th-grade Intermediate Band students scheduled into two sections of seven and seven, with a mixed bag of instruments in each) for the sake of PE and ESL scheduling, we are very concerned with class groupings.
The most important data metric we will rely on in our campaign for music-centric scheduling is “peers on like instrument”, or the number of students in any given class period on a given instrument. For example, in the aforementioned 7th-grade Intermediate Band, which is taught by one of my colleagues, one period has five flutes and the other period has four flutes. The “peers on like instrument” for this situation is essentially an average: n = (5+4) /2 = 4.5 peers on like instrument. The ensemble has two euphonium players, neither of which had ever heard the other until days before the December concert, as they are in opposing periods. Therefore, the 7th-grade Intermediate Band has a “peers on like instrument” score of ‘one’: n = (1+1) /2 = 1 peers on like instrument. It is not surprising that the flute players in this situation feel less exposed and a little more willing to take little risks (go for the high note, go for the 16th notes, etc.) Since the “1″ is not a buddy sitting next to him, the term “peers” is probably poorly chosen, but it nevertheless gets to the point. In all, the “peers on like instrument” score for our 7th-grade Intermediate Band is currently 1.75. If the two periods were joined (they are the same course, after all) the “peers on like instrument” score would be exactly double, or 3.5.
The “peers on like instrument” is not rocket science, nor will it change the world. My colleagues and I are certainly not statisticians. The “peers” concept is only valid as a comparison, and probably only within one school. It would not help us to compare our 153-student school’s “peers” numbers to those of a AAAAA Texas school (at least not without additional calculation to take the overall enrollment into account). It also doesn’t make me want to add four additional bari saxes to the ensemble out of concern for the existing bari sax player’s feelings. But it does help us get an idea of how an adolescent might feel in one situation versus the other. Remember, after all, that the brain grows wildly in the hypothalamus, or social-emotional area, and largely static (some middle school teachers might even say completely dormant?) in the neocortex, the center of intellectual thought, during the adolescent years. It would be foolish not to take the students’ social experience into account, and the (albeit poor) metric for that would seem to be “peers on like instrument”.
Tune in later this week for Part Two, including the full text of the proposal we sent to admin.
February 9th, 2010
Here’s a quote from Tom Blodgett, via David Thomas over at The Buzzing Reed. The Buzzing Reed is one of the newest blogs on the Third-Stream blogroll, and we are quite happy that David is bringing us useful, actionable clarinet-specific information.
I personally think the big 3 makers – Buffet, Selmer, and Yamaha cater to different needs – Buffets have the best (sweetest) tone with the best key work (if you don’t get a lemon) and are more for solo work. Selmers are the darkest and heaviest, their key work is different than the Buffet, but in no way negative. They are good for large orchestras. Yamaha has the best consistency instrument – if you’ve played one, you’ve played them all. In my mind, these make the best military and band applications, where there is much more uniformity in tone and intonation.
While this is a generalization, it has valid points. I have used all three of these major brands in my bands, and I would tend to agree with Tom (in as much as it is a generalization). Just a couple of weeks ago I was extolling the consistency of Yamaha instruments to a colleague. And in clarinets, I really push my best students to invest in a personally-owned Buffet by the time they are going for honor band auditions. As an aside: Selmer, under the trademark Bach, also produces what I feel are some of the darkest-sounding beginning and intermediate-level brass instruments, while Yamaha again produces the most consistent instruments - coincidence, or corporate identity?
What clarinets do you purchase for your band? Do you agree with Tom’s conclusions as to the best applications for each maker’s sound?
December 22nd, 2009
I just received answers from top sources to questions about synthetic reeds which were posed at Third-Stream in this post.
Thanks to John Moses, via David Thomas at The Buzzing Reed, for thorough and trustworthy analysis of the state of synthetic reeds. I’ll have to try Legere Signature reeds with my students.
Unfortunately, as I noted in my previous entry, I get to make purchase orders once a year, and mine have already been approved and moved through the system for delivery in August 2010. I’ll have to put the Legeres in my order during October 2010 for delivery of August 2011…but by that time, I’ll be writing posts asking for firsthand advice on “new synthetic clarinets”!
November 17th, 2009
I am a fan of yoga, the system of exercise developed several millennia ago in the land now known as India. I have practiced it (quite poorly) for several years now. My biggest yoga-related epiphany is this: yoga = band. Or, if that is too broad a stroke, let me specify: yoga = quality of sound on brass and woodwind instruments.
You see, the three components of yoga are mental focus, physical pose, and breath control (dharana, asana and prana in Sanskrit). And what are the three most important factors in a wind band being able to play even a single note with perfect sonority, balance and blend? Why, it’s concentration, embouchure and airstream. In other words, every note your ensemble plays hinges on your students’ unspoken yoga discipline. It is posture that allows a musician to take a full breath, it is the breath support and embouchure that create timbre, it is the timbre and finer embouchure control that determine intonation, and it is the mental focus of each and every member of the ensemble that allow the unison attack. Indeed, it could be said that the mental focus (dharana) of the individuals makes everything else possible. (Is it any wonder, then, that many adolescent musicians find their peak musical intensity through the physically rigorous activity of marching band/drum corps? Perhaps it has more to do with football or with the bravado style of corps-style musical arrangements….but maybe it’s also the physicality and the militaristic discipline of the visual caption. The attention position, after all, does resemble a two-footed version of the tree-pose, or vriksha-asana.)
The connection between music and systematic relaxation of the body is well documented. Alexander Technique (and this link and this link and many more) is perhaps the most widely known, but other systems of improved posture and breathing include Feldenkrais (and this link and others) as well as medical literature regarding preventive and prescriptive treatment of musicians and music-related injury caused by improper posture (asana) and movement.
So remember dharana, asana, prana: focus, posture/embouchure, breath. Your ensemble sound depends on it.
(Check back soon for the upcoming Third-Stream episodes “Tai Chi Movement for the Conductor”, “The Tao of Tea-Ching”, “Zen and the Art of Contrabassoon Maintenance”, and “I Have a Black Belt in Kung(ducting)-Fu”!)
November 17th, 2009
All call - I am looking for high-quality blogs focused on (instrumental?) conducting. Do you read or write a can’t miss conducting blog? Tell me about it! I crave hundred-proof VSOP conducting juice!
I am trying to focus on coverage of the art and science of musical score interpretation vis-a-vis ensemble leadership through gesture, so I am leaving out sites that generally cover job announcements and appointments. Here is my current minuscule list, based on nothing more than a quick Google search:
Richard Sparks - http://richardsparks1.blogspot.com/
Kenneth Woods - http://kennethwoods.net/blog1/
Rob Archibald - http://conductingblog.org/
Sarah Hicks & Sam Bergman (”Conductors and Conducting” thread) - http://www.minnesotaorchestra.org/insidetheclassics/blog/labels/conductors%20and%20conducting.html
October 26th, 2009
For those of use teaching abroad in American/British/International schools and Department of Defense schools, it’s already time to turn in our budget requests for the 2010-2011 school year. Depending on our location, most international teachers get one chance per year to order consumables like reeds and valve oil, as well as sheet music and instruments. International teachers in London or Berlin have good music stores available in their locality for mid-year restocking (and quality instrument repair), but teachers farther afield in Nigeria, Venezuela, Bangladesh, and Qatar (yes, each of these countries has at least one American or International school with a successful and growing music program) are completely dependent on their annual shipment for instruments, sheet music and supplies.
As a percussion specialist, I have to ask a question of all my woodwind-specialist colleagues out there. In the interest of having plenty of stock on hand while not running too much surplus, how many reeds should I estimate per student per year? The beginners break more reeds in their first month, but hopefully the students in the top band are wearing out their reeds with long hours in the woodshed. Assuming that each student has rotation of three working reeds at all times, how often will they need a top-up? Is it even possible to make an estimation formula?
YOUR HELP would be appreciated!
October 4th, 2009
When trying mouthpieces on prospective Band students, it may be helpful to move from mouthpieces of least resistance/musculature to mouthpieces of most resistance/musculature. Flute, for example, requires almost negligible flexing of muscles in the lip and corner of the mouth, and gives no resistance to air blown across the tone hole. Brass instruments, on the other hand, require significant muscular activity in the corners of the mouth (to avoid puffy “chipmunk” cheeks) as well as significant motion in the center of the upper lip to produce higher and lower buzz. (You may choose not to ask students for more than a simple, straight buzz, but I find teaching a class to move their buzz higher and lower takes little additional time but is valuable in placing students on the least difficult instrument for their mouth.) Perhaps the most athletic embouchure your students will try out is the oboe, the reed of which gives strong back pressure–or, in your students’ terms, is “hard to blow through”. The resulting effort of lungs, cheeks and lips is enormous for the first-timer. A beginning or pre-band student who attempts to blow the flute headjoint just after the force of brass or oboe is likely to get a nasty, airy sound, or no sound at all. On the other hand, it has been my experience (unscientifically tested though it may be) that students who work through the back pressure of clarinet (don’t bite down on the reed!) can be more easily coaxed to produce the amount of air needed for a first low brass buzz (though, admittedly, some students do better from brass towards clarinet), and from there can be coaxed into he more focused buzz of the smaller high brass mouthpieces and then to double-reeds.
Thus, my suggested list of order of mouthpiece fitting:
Flute
(Saxophone)
Clarinet
Low brass - Trombone
High brass - Trumpet
(French horn)
(Bassoon)
(Oboe)
Mouthpieces that some band directors choose to either not use in fittings or not start in first-year band have been listed in parentheses. For example, I prefer to only try tuba mouthpieces for students who excel at, yet feel cramped in, the trombone mouthpiece; for students who may have tuba lips, I will try the tuba mouthpiece only after seeing the student buzz trombone and trumpet. The same goes for French horn, which mouthpiece has roughly similar rim size as trumpet but for which the inverted-shape mouthpiece cup gives a feeling of being an entirely smaller size. Double reeds are listed in parentheses due to the number of wind pedagogues who (a) don’t teach double reeds in very small school bands, (b) don’t teach double reeds because, for better or for worse, their marching program takes paramount importance, or (c) prefer to switch their most successful flute and saxophone students over to double reeds after the fall concert.
Additional reading:
Clardy, Mary Karen. Flute Fundamentals.
Dietz, William et al. Teaching Woodwinds: A Method and Resource Handbook for Music Educators.
Farkas, Philip. The Art of Horn Playing.
Kohut, Daniel. Musical Performance: Learning Theory and Pedagogy.
Westphal, Frederick. Guide to Teaching Woodwinds.
Whitener, Scott. A Complete Guide to Brass.
September 14th, 2009
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