“ThirdStream2009″ image courtesy of www.wordle.net by Jonathan Feinberg.
What’s at the center of your professional world? Hopefully students are, with either “band”, “choir” or “orchestra” playing a large but not central role. We don’t teach music, after all….we teach students. Better yet, we teach future professionals and happy, self actualizing adults. An easy but important resolution for the new year: Make that state sweepstakes trophy the method, not the objective. Makes smiles, interpersonal growth and student ownership the goals.
Coach John Wooden talks about more than basketball at
TED.org January 9th, 2010
<Snicker>
Following the advice of this New Year’s Resolution Song, I have set these achievable and attainable resolutions for my teaching in the new year:
Play music in class.
Perform a couple of concerts every year.
Plan my lessons in advance…..at least once a month.
Insert a Band grade and comment into the report card of each and every Band student.
Miss the housing deadline for the state music teachers’ conference, then complete it online a week later in a tizzy at 1:00 a.m. only to see that my favorite hotels are full. A day or two after the charge hits my credit card, have a buddy volunteer to share his room in my favorite hotel.
Delete, without reading, any e-mail from the school secretary, of which the title begins with “IMPORTANT!!!!” or “Today’s Attendance” or “Weather”.
Delete, without reading, any e-mail from the Community Service Coordinator, AP Coordinator, Grade 6 Homeroom Coordinator, or Faculty Sunshine Committee Coordinator.
Listen to Miles while planning and grading.
Write a daily post on Third Stream….at least once a month.
January 5th, 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
Excellent post by Doug Butchy over at Confessions of a Band Director. Cruise on over and have a look…this is how third-stream music educators build personal, lifelong connections between students and their music. Congratulations, Doug, on a major victory!
December 17th, 2009
After the first day of the new student e-portfolio system, we have limited success.
The students reported no problem using Audacity. The laptops and their built-in mics worked. Most students set an appropriate gain level and made high-fidelity recordings (the performances recorded, however, seem to represent a wider range of quality!) Exporting to .mp3 format had the minor flaw of consistently causing Audacity to crash…but only after successfully completing the export (it is a known flaw in the Audacity 1.3 beta).
The major hiccup of the day was students’ ability to log in to our Sharepoint server. After several calls to our tech department, I think that is fixed. The major effect of this is that students were unable to upload their recordings and type in their self-critiques before the end of class.
The other half of my Advanced Band will run the gauntlet tomorrow. I’ll report back later this week.
December 9th, 2009
You might remember my struggles last school year to implement student online portfolios for all of my students, in the form of individual blogs. The short version: using Mac laptops, Garage Band audio software, iMovie video software and the school’s brand new Mac directory server, the system worked but was a royal pain in the neck. The recording and editing process was just as easy as you would expect on a Mac. However, the software included on the Mac directory server only does things one way; we had to use wikis instead of blogs, and we had to use Quicktime file types for the student videos. The result was that (1) the instructions for exporting the videos was three pages long and completely convoluted, and (2) file sizes were huge, causing upload and storage space issues. The school’s wireless access and internet reliability were also issues. When students could get their blogs finished the results were spectacular….but hit-and-miss learning tools are just no fun to use when your grade depends on the results. By the time I ceased requiring students to use the system in mid-April, cheers went up in every class. I was also relieved, and disappointed. The process was so draining that I elected to cease blogging about the experience until now.
Begin book two: new school, new technology in place. New pros and cons to navigate. The new school uses PC’s (boo) rather than Macs. We’ll use Audacity to record audio (hoping to add video later, but PC laptops are several years behind Macs in things like integrated webcams/mics), which I have used personally used on projects in the past (and which I have faith in, even though we’re using the 1.3 Beta). We’ll save the final cuts as “.mp3″ files rather than “.mov” using the LAME plugin (which is a lame acronym). We’ll use Microsoft’s Sharepoint server to run the online e-portfolios; the teachers here have been on Sharepoint for at least a year before I arrived in August, but the student Sharepoint server is brand-spanking new and my project will be the first on it. The school has slower and less reliable internet than my last, but seems to have a more reliable wireless access point network and a more reliable server.
The Technology Integration Specialist and I gave it a test run on a ProD day a couple of weeks ago. Worked like a charm. File sizes for one-minute mp3 files saved at full quality stereo are approximately 1.5 MB as would be expected (compared with 40-50 MB for similar .mov files last year). The only downside is that Sharepoint is not designed to hold imbedded media items (darn business-focused software), so audio and video files cannot play directly in the browser window (but I found a possible solution which I have forwarded to the tech department for consideration). Initial conclusions: I wish we were working with Mac laptops and with iMovie, but I am so glad to have a simpler and more reliable system for creating the online e-portfolios. The upside: reliability (hopefully). The downside: the e-portfolios look visually boring on the web page.
Monday and Tuesday this week I introduced my Advanced Band to the new system. Wednesday and Thursday will be our first recordings. I’ll report back next week with the results.
December 8th, 2009
We, the teachers, cannot curse in school. We may not swear at students. We cannot curse at the students despite our own frustrations. We may not curse, not even if a student’s poor performance deserves it. There are good reasons for this, including professional propriety, teacherly love and support, setting an example of positive coping strategies, and simple fear of repercussions. No matter what: we may not swear at either poor behavior or poor academic performance.
But what about the student at the other end of the spectrum? Have you ever been tempted to drop a naughty word into a congratulations speech for the purpose of making your students understand just how unnaturally pleased you are with their performance? Have you ever had a student be so extremely modest that a little shakeup might actually boost their self-esteem? Have your students ever earned the “hell yeah” or “damn fine job” or “so fucking proud of you” that didn’t slip past the filter of your professional code of conduct?
December 3rd, 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
The Third-Stream blogroll has been updated, and the overhaul is long overdue. The new lineup focuses more tightly on ensemble development, wind and percussion technique, conducting, perfect practice, advocacy, music assessment and music curriculum; in short, all the things and only the things which form the core interests of a practicing high-school band or orchestra director. I have not included an emphasis on music technology blogs, but I have left in some of the music tech blogs which I find to be more pertinent to band/orchestra/choir on a regular basis. There are many excellent technology blogs of a more general nature, not to mention piano, guitar and elementary music blogs, which I have not included simply to keep the focus here on secondary-level performing ensembles. You can find all the best blogs in these categories on the 100 Music Education Blogs list. I have left out instrument and conducting blogs which are focused more on industry gossip and less on classroom pedagogy. I have also not included some of my favorite band blogs which have been inactive; I will keep an eye on them and let you know when they resume publication.
The most notable new inclusions are of a half-dozen instrument-specific blogs covering clarinet, trumpet, and percussion. I hope to add another half-dozen instrument-specific blogs to the blogroll in the next two weeks to bring more high-quality technical information to you and me.
Visit the sites on the Third-Stream blogroll. Leave a comment here to let me know what you found useful. Better yet, start your own blog and share your wisdom with the music ed community!
November 14th, 2009
Next Posts
Previous Posts
