First Full Band Rehearsal

Yesterday afternoon was my first rehearsal with all (well, most) of my students together in the same place. Up until now I've only been working with no more than five students at a time (other than the rare day where a conflict arises and I need to combine some groups), so having about 70 5th grade students at a time was an experience to say the least.

I must admit I don't see any way that Wind Ped. could have prepared me for it in college. The class has a lot of theoretical topics and discussion that are of course very helpful; they give us great resources, excellent ideas to use, and much more, but the mini mock rehearsals they have us do are nothing like real life, at least not in comparison to what I had yesterday.

First, our peers, although playing on secondaries, still understand musical concepts like tuning, balance, etc... so in the rehearsals at school it still sounded fairly decent. Here, however, I was overwhelmed when I had everyone play the first exercise in our method book as a warm-up, and what was supposed to be a unison note came out as something that I honestly couldn't tell was unison or not. Granted, I know that quite a few students were getting the wrong notes (particularly in the brass, playing on the wrong partials), and I anticipated that, but the sheer mass of noise that came at me just made it almost impossible to tell. So I did what they recommend we do when there's too much to address and we don't know where to start: I broke it down by section. I had each section say what note they were playing and then play it, and that gave me a better idea of which sections were having trouble (again, mostly brass as some of the students are still working on playing the correct partials in lessons). They don't know balance yet, or tuning, or any of these things that will help tame the sound (though I plan on addressing these in the near future).

Second, our peers respect us and know what it's like to be in front of a group, so when we're rehearsing them they keep quiet and follow directions. In my rehearsal, this was not the case, and I don't blame them for chatting; it's the first time they've all been together, and sitting with so many other students in such a cramped space lends itself to socialization. Granted I'm not saying this will be okay constantly in the future, but I anticipated it for the first rehearsal. The classroom management part of this rehearsal was perhaps the most difficult part of the whole experience. They're with friends, they have instruments that are still fairly new to them (we've only had four lessons, some groups only three), and trumpets sit so far back that they feel like they're off in their own little world.

Most students were actually really good about listening and paying attention, it was just a handful that I had to keep speaking to. I followed Dana's lead for what she did rule-wise and had my students give me what they thought would be good rules for rehearsal. I didn't really even make any myself directly, but I did prompt responses to do with respect for each other and each others' property, for people who are speaking, etc... I wrote down their ideas, and I will be writing them on a big poster that I will bring to the rehearsals for everyone to see.

I did my best to have them playing a lot in rehearsal, and I tried to stress that every time we talk or play between exercises and when I'm trying to deliver instructions, the less we get to play. This stuck for most students but again, there were a few that may be difficult to reach with this concept (especially in the back rows). I may shuffle around the seating arrangement, as well. I made it so that as many students as possible were sitting in mixed schools so that they're next to new people, and I do think this helped for the most part. I also tried to mix boys and girls as much as possible, too, as well as mixed abilities so that the stronger players were spread throughout their sections.

We didn't get through many new topics in rehearsal, but that was okay since my main goal for the rehearsal was to have them simply get a feel for what it's like to play together as a big group and establish some ground guidelines for future rehearsals. We played through about five or six exercises, and I introduced conducting to them. Matt had a great idea for this and I had them all put their instruments in a safe place and taught them to conduct with me. One difficult aspect is that I don't have a podium, and since I'm on the shorter side in the first place it makes it difficult to reach the students all the way in back. Especially when I had students stand I had to stand on a chair myself to make sure everyone could see the conducting I was demonstrating. I had them all beat down for 1 several times in a row, then I added beat two so they were just doing 1, 2, 1, 2, then asked them where they thought three would be, and finally four. This seemed to be pretty successful.

Every time there was a disciplinary issue in the group I tried to stress that it means we won't have enough time to play much, rather than just saying stop talking; I also tried not to single people out in general, but there were a few students who I simply had to keep talking to. I had to hold up my hand between exercises a lot with the "shh" finger to my lips, and I have taught them all the cut-off gesture, though if they're not looking at me it's obviously ineffective. Sometimes I resorted to "clap once if you can hear me, clap twice if you can hear me...". I'm hoping as we have more and more rehearsals they will start to understand how we behave in rehearsals, and I will keep enforcing the guidelines we created. I'm working on finding a line between being too strict and too lenient.

Musically, the exercises weren't too bad for the first time as a group. One major thing that I see that we'll have to work on are cut-offs: we played an exercise that has "half note half note half note half rest", but many students would hold into beat 3 or even beat 4. To show them how it should sound and when the noise would stop, I had them conduct and count the beats out loud while I played the exercise on trumpet. It helped a little, but they were still having some trouble stopping when they should, so I made really dramatic cut off gestures at the end of each offending half note, and that helped even more; by the last time we did it, most of the students were cutting off when they were supposed to. I can see that it will be hard for me to decide when we're at an acceptable level to move on, or whether I can continue to be picky and fix things; I didn't want to beat the exercise into the ground but I felt it was an important concept and if we don't fix it now they'll have a poor understanding of it in the future which will affect us down the road. I'm reviewing it in lessons today as well and that's been a good way to clear things up so far.

I had wanted to do some call and response at the beginning of the rehearsal, but in all the craziness of students and parents coming up and asking questions and trying to find their seats, we started about fifteen minutes late, so I jumped right into our long tone warm up instead. I'd like to incorporate more call and response in my lessons and rehearsals in the future, though. I've been doing some with the brasses on their mouthpieces, but I'd like to do it on instruments as well.

My goals for the next couple of weeks of lessons/rehearsals is to introduce tuning and transposition. Tuning I'm not worried about teaching, but I'm actually a little worried about transposition, as I was never taught how to teach it, and I barely understand it myself. I understand how it works, of course, and all the technical aspects, but no one has ever been able to give me a satisfactory answer as to why we have transposing instruments; all I know is that I believe it has something to do with how the instruments have evolved over time? Pretty much I'm nervous to try to explain it to the kids; I can totally tell them "this is what it is, this is how it works for your instrument, etc..." but if they ask why...eek! I'm also a little worried about how to introduce transposition. Is it better in our lesson groups with like instruments, or better in full rehearsals? I thought it might be better in full rehearsals as then I can show them how even though they're playing "different" notes, they all sound the same, but smaller groups will allow for more time for questions and such.

Thoughts on how to teach it? Suggestions? Tips that'll make it not confusing for students being introduced to it for the first time?

Reading Music and Other Hurdles

So another good week lesson-wise. We're starting to vary lesson to lesson/group to group where we're ending up though for homework, so I'm hoping to try to maintain some sort of semblance of similarity so that instrument groups don't end up totally far apart from one another in the coming weeks (for example, I'm trying to keep everyone around the same page so that we're all learning the same concepts at the same times, rather than having one saxophone group fly ahead and then another stuck on the same page for two or three weeks in a row). Obviously I am doing my best to take the time to make sure everyone understands the concepts, but what I'm discovering is that I will need to figure out when to stay or move on because someone doesn't understand or if they just haven't been practicing. I want to ensure that everyone knows what's going on, but if they're not practicing at home there's only so much I can do.

One struggle that has surprised me is teaching students how to read music. I had thought this would be something pretty straightforward to teach, but I feel like sometimes I over complicate it and I don't want the students getting confused. For the most part they seem to get it, but then sometimes there are some who are just totally confused and I try to work out another way to explain it. What I've been doing that seems to work is to write out the staff on the board by hand, and explain things one symbol at a time, starting with the staff itself, then the clef (pointing out that the clefs are also G and F clefs and showing why seems to help), etc... We then go over how every line and space gets its own letter/note, and then I go over the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (which most of them have heard and recognize) and FACE concepts. I also teach them Ernie Gives Bert Dead Fish (these are all Treble Clef, of course). With one of my trombone players, we came up with Great Big Dolphins Fly Away and Arkansas Can Eat Grapes for the bass clef lines and spaces. Though they don't totally make sense, they're silly and people seem to remember them so far. Further, kids have fun trying to make up their own based on these. The more I teach reading music the more I am able to simplify it and make it clearer. Writing out the alphabet (only up to G, of course) under or over the staff and showing how lines and spaces skip letters among each other helps some students, too, and then I can show them how alternating lines and spaces make the alphabet go in order.

Teaching breath marks/snatch breaths has been a little tricky too; students are inclined to either take a full beat of breath (no matter how much I describe/model good snatch breaths) or take the snatch breath then jump to the next note way too early. I had one group count 1 2 3 4 while I played some snatch breath exercises on whole notes so that they understand I'm playing through beat four and not to beat four. This helped this group. I do my best to always have the students tapping their heels and stress that they should count in their heads as they play.

Another major issue of mine is that I speak super fast. Though most kids follow me, I am trying really hard to make sure I slow down, especially when giving instructions/homework. This has been one of the biggest comments I've gotten for many of my junior and senior student teaching remarks.
On the more successful side of things, my students in general seem to be warming up to me, especially the ones where there are more students per group. We're all opening up a little more which is making things run more smoothly, and I think they're getting to understand the quirkier parts of my personality. I've also been working on incorporating more call and response and pitch matching in my brass groups; I want to keep doing this, as well as some call and response by ear on all the instruments.

On a final note, I kept a group of clarinets a couple minutes late for their lesson on Tuesday on accident and apologized that I made them late for lunch/recess. One of the students told me "It's ok, this is better than recess". Awesome.

Weekend Away

Had a fun weekend at the Alma Mater :) It was weird to be back, but really nice, and so much fun to run into old friends and catch up with some professors, too. The main point of the weekend was to spend time with my other half, and I got some other bonus things from the weekend, too. For example, I bought a saxophone from Doc so now I actually have something to model on for the kiddos! I was also amazed at how many people were there that had graduated, I hadn't expected to see that many! Granted it was only five or six but still, it was more than I anticipated. It's so neat to see what everyone's up to and how they're doing. Lots of fun to catch up with Dana, too, I loved talking through how things are going and what's been working, what hasn't, and what things about our jobs are similar and different.
On top of this, I got to see two great recitals. One was a joint trombone and trumpet recital, the other a trombone/mandolin recital. It was refreshing to have a reminder of what excellent playing sounds like. Plus, the trombone/mandolin recital was so funny I was nearly on the floor in tears I was laughing so hard. It was a mixture of "tunes and tales from Old New England", and has to be one of the best recitals I've been to.
All said, fun weekend, and now to a new week of lessons. Thankfully there's not a lot going on this week, and no marching this weekend, so I can decompress a little (this weekend helped a lot with that but it was just too short, not enough time out there :( ) and hope that the fixing up in my apartment gets finished.

The Little Things

It has amazed me so far to find out how happy I get when things get fixed that used to seem like small matters. For example, I had a group of flute players last week who, for the life of me, I could not get a decent, consistent sound out of (if any). This week, they came in and they're all nailing the low octaves of the notes we've learned. I almost jumped for joy.

Then in marching rehearsal, there's one student who seems unable march in time. Several people have told me that he just can't. However, I've been standing next to this section drilling "left, right, left, right" as they march during many of our rehearsals when I see people out of step, and last rehearsal he was actually marching in time 90% or so of the time (even times when I wasn't saying it). Granted, it's not always the correct foot, but I'll take what I can get so far. This time I literally did jump for joy.

Another time that I wanted to yell "yippee!" was my first time pulling a mouthpiece out with a mouthpiece puller all on my own. So far, I've had three trumpet players get their mouthpieces stuck. The first one I pulled out myself no problem (he said he loosened it for me; that made me smile, considering he had previously been pulling with all his might. Hey, you never know). The second one I couldn't figure out the puller so I had to have the string teacher help me. But the third one I did all on my own! Wahoo!

That's also something else I've found that I didn't expect: I knew I'd occasionally get things like stuck mouthpieces and similar occurrences; I just didn't realize how frequently. Within two weeks three mouthpieces have gotten stuck, one trombone bell got stuck on the slide (the bell moved side to side but I couldn't unscrew it), I saw a trumpet player at the middle school drop his horn and dent the bell then try to fix it himself, and two saxophone players at the high school were playing catch with their saxophone bells and a coin. Fun learning experiences abound :) I'm lucky my kids are so great, they're awesome sports and even when things don't go as planned and I have difficulties fixing their instruments the bear with me and we make it through until I can solve the problem (or have someone help me solve it).