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?
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