Clothes Don’t Make the Band
    Incoming Student: “Mr. Reed, I’ve decided I don’t want to be in band because I have to wear a uniform. Uniforms aren’t my thing.”
    Mr. Reed: “Well, If the uniform is really the reason you want to quit, you need to know that the volleyball team wears uniforms. You are on the volleyball team, right?”
    Student: “Yes, but those are cool uniforms.”
    Mr. Reed: “Uniforms must be in the eye of the beholder as I think ours are pretty cool, but what I am trying to tell you is that anything worth being a part of at this high school will have some type of uniform you will need to wear. I believe what is on the inside of a person is what counts, not the uniform on the outside.” 
    The student remained in band.

Worst Parade Idea Ever
    In a meeting with the Principal, Activities Director, and Assistant Activities Director, Mr. Reed learned of a plan for a Homecoming parade. This had been done in the community 30 years ago but had gone by the wayside from lack of student interest. The Principal, who had just joined the staff, really wanted this as he considered it community involvement. The Assistant Activities Director wanted this as well, saying that all the extra- and co-curricular groups and clubs would want to be involved. Mr. Reed told them that the time they wanted to have the parade would be crucial as the band went through their final rehearsal on the field 30 minutes before the team arrived for warmup. At the conclusion of the meeting, it was determined that the Assistant AD would contact all the clubs to see who was interested in participating before any decisions were made.
    In the subsequent meeting the Assistant AD said that no clubs wanted to participate, but she and the Principal had talked, and they were still planning on having a parade. Mr. Reed asked how this was going to happen, and she said that the Band was going to lead the football team to the field 12 blocks away.
    Mr. Reed: “I don’t get it. You’re going to have the football team walk or march behind the band while we lead them down to the field?”
    Principal: “Oh, no. The football team will be on buses and the band will lead the buses down to the field.”
   Mr. Reed: “The band will be marching, leading the football players in air conditioned buses down to the field. That’s your homecoming parade?”
   The Principal and Assistant AD nodded in the affirmative while the Activities Director put his head in his hands and said, “I don’t think this is a good idea.” However, the Principal had made his decision. Only a rash of phone calls from angry parents kept the parade from becoming a reality.

One of the Gang . . . Eventually
    After the first Band Camp rehearsal, Mr. Reed sat down to call the parents of a few students who were unaccounted for. One of these parents was the mother of an incoming freshman.
    Mr. Reed: “Hi, I am calling because your daughter was not at rehearsal today, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay and that she plans to be with us.”
    Parent: “Oh, I’m so sorry, I completely forgot about it, and she wasn’t about to tell me because she wants to quit band but I wont let her. She will be there tomorrow.”
    The next day, the student was not at rehearsal so Mr. Reed called the parent again.
    Mr. Reed: “Hi, she wasn’t at Band today. Is everything okay?”
    Parent: “I dropped her off at the high school. You didn’t see her? I wonder where she went She will definitely be there tomorrow.”
    The next morning, the parent escorted her daughter to the band room and introduced her to Mr. Reed. The parent had dropped her off at the high school the day before, but the student hid in a restroom until rehearsal started, then walked home. The student was upset, and Mr. Reed realized he was in for a challenge. The first day she did little, if anything. The second day she warmed up a little and by the end of band camp she was one of the gang. She was a valuable band member for her entire high school career and one the best leaders in the organization as a senior.  

The post On Marching Band appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Reliving Day 1
    In February of 2017 my former teacher Mary Stolper and I were chatting about teaching beginners and how  hard it can be to relate to their struggles because it has been so long since we started playing. Mary was telling me about a left-hand flute she has that is a mirror instrument of a normal flute. She said I had to try it as it would remind me about the experience of being a beginner again.
    When she brought it to me, I opened the case and was shocked at how foreign it looked because it was backwards in the case. I froze and I did not know what to do with it. Being the wonderful teacher she is, Mary guided me as I fumbled to put it together. I felt a little silly and indeed like a beginner again. At the same time, I was filled with curiosity about this new instrument. How do I put it together? How do I hold it? What is it like to play? After figuring out how to hold it, awkwardly I might add, I packed it up to take home. Before leaving, Mary had one other bit of advice. “Make sure you practice over a soft space because you might drop it.” 
    My first practice session that night was for 10 minutes. Holding the instrument was beyond awkward, and I almost dropped it twice. So much for being a professional. I finally was able to hold an F, while my left-hand fingers were flying high (just like a beginner’s right-hand fingers). I could not focus on my fingers being close to the keys; it was hard enough balancing the flute just above my right-hand index finger knuckle. With many laughs and furrowed eyebrows, I slowly moved my fingers and managed an F major scale with a mistake on almost every note. Talk about being thrown into a student’s experience; I had forgotten how difficult it is to hold the flute properly. 
    I do my best to be a compassionate and understanding teacher, but it can be a challenge sometimes. I used to wonder, why don’t students balance it better with their right thumb? Why are their fingers so high? After that first session, I put the left-hand flute away for two months.
    In March, I realized I needed to give it back to Mary in about a month. I am always looking for new and creative projects, so I pulled it out again and immediately started thinking about the possibilities.

A Month of Thinking Backwards
    Thus began my Left-Hand Flute Project. For 30 days, I practiced 20 minutes a day, the average amount that a beginner would. My goal was to explore what it was like to be a beginner again and make a YouTube video about each day of practice. The videos are available on YouTube under my channel, Innovative Flutist.
    It was an eye-opening experience. On day one, I could barely hold the flute. When I managed to honk out Hot Cross Buns, I got that same excited look students make when they play their first sound or play a song well for the first time. Over the first couple of weeks, I experienced the struggles that students go through holding the instrument and trying to remember the correct fingerings. 
    Middle C-D-E were the most frustrating notes on the left-hand flute for me. I already knew they were challenging on a normal flute, but I was deeply frustrated as I struggled to balance the flute properly and put the correct fingers down. Many days, I wanted to avoid them at all costs.
    Balancing between the two hands and chin was also quite uncomfortable. I did not begin to feel comfortable with it until week three. Happily, I can say I didn’t drop the flute again.
    Trying to remember to keep my first finger up for middle D and Eb was a joke. I wish I had a dime for every time I made that mistake in those 30 days. My empathy for beginning students was rapidly expanding each day I worked with this instrument.
    By week three, I was playing scales and pieces from Louis Moyse’s 40 Little Pieces in Progressive Order. Nearing week four, I managed to learn how to play Telemann’s Sonata in F Major. While reflecting on the first three weeks, I realized that even with all of the struggles that I had with posture and fingerings, I still had a huge advantage over beginner students. I could already read music, produce a sound, breathe well, and count. I also understood the concepts of posture and fingerings and had 15 years of experience with the discipline and knowledge needed to effectively practice music. In reality, I was only learning two things: fingerings and how to hold the left-hand flute. Those proved challenging enough.

A New Perspective
    I began to comprehend the flute experience from a beginner’s perspective. I realized what aspects they might be able to focus on and how easy it is to overwhelm them with too many things to think about. Being a beginner at flute or anything else for that matter is hard and takes courage. There are so many elements to think about simultaneously and improve on at the beginning. To avoid overwhelming new students, teachers should be thoughtful and selective about what they ask beginners to focus on. I have definitely overloaded my students with things to think about while playing. Over the 30 days, I became a more compassionate and thoughtful teacher. This has helped me to develop patience and an even more positive relationship with my students.

A Mirrored Performance
    At the end of the 30 days, I presented this project at the Chicago Flute Club Membership Showcase. I shared the knowledge and experience I gained from learning the left-hand flute and performed two duets by Ernesto Kohler with Chicago flutist, Steve Yepez. It was an amusing experience having two flutes face the opposite direction. During the performance, I was mainly focused on playing the correct notes, which made me realize how much more nerve wracking it can be for a beginner to perform. Just thinking about notes is challenging enough, and I felt fortunate that I could trust my other skills regarding sound, rhythm, and general musicianship to be there during a performance. 

Lessons for Teachers
    From this journey, I learned that while teachers should plant the foundational seeds of good flute playing, they should also be compassionate and patient as those foundations settle. It might take a while, and students might not grow as you expect or hope. Be aware that when students are making lots of mistakes or not practicing, it may not be because they are lazy. I  now consider that they may be overwhelmed or feel that it is too hard.  Perhaps they have tried my practice method and it did not work for them at home. It is a teacher’s job to be a mentor and guide them through their journey exploring the flute – at the pace that they can handle.

The post The Left-Hand Flute Project appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Musical Decision-Making
    Many directors try to instill a culture of accountability with their ensembles. One part of that goal is establishing a shared responsibility for making musical decisions in rehearsals and performances. If it is truly a shared responsibility for the program, then students need to be given opportunities to make musical decisions and analyze the artistic results of those choices. With this in mind, directors need to provide opportunities for students to express their ideas for interpretation in a constructive and supportive fashion. Rehearsals offer a wonderful opportunity for a director to ask questions of the musicians that stimulate deep and purposeful thinking about the music. The pressure of the next performance can force a director to focus on fixing errors, and one-way directions replace meaningful dialogue between musicians and their teacher.

Choosing Our Conversations  
    Directors may worry that initiating conversations could disrupt the structure of rehearsals. It is possible that some students could be inattentive or uninterested in contributing to the musical success of the ensemble. If a director can find the right questions to pose to the ensemble within the rehearsal, the musical minds of these students can be guided towards a deeper understanding and appreciation for the repertoire and musical concepts being learned.
    As directors draw upon their skills and experience, they can make choices about the conversations that best serve the perspective of the students. Rather than a one-way diagnosis, students can respond to the most basic of questions, some of which could be answered in just a few words before rehearsal resumes. For example, if the ensemble is struggling with tempo within a piece, consider the following rehearsal discussion:

    Director: What is happening with tempo that is forcing us to stop?
    Clarinet Student: We are dragging.
    Director: Is it the whole band, or just a section of the band? 
    Low Brass Student: It sounds like the woodwinds are getting behind.
    Director: Woodwinds, do you agree with that assessment?
    Flute Student: I think the low brass are playing too heavy, and we are supposed to be playing lightly because of the articulation markings.
    Director: Full Band, measure 43 again. Let’s listen and focus on maintaining tempo in this section and then let’s discuss it what happens if we get to measure 59.
    (Full group resumes playing)  

It’s Not You, But It Might Be Me
    The above scenario certainly can bring about some peer assessments that might put certain sections at odds over responsibility. The best ensembles acknowledge that individual members and sections depend on each other. If the concepts of trust and collective responsibility have been established, a conversation like the example above allows for honest self-assessment. These conversations also heighten the respect that students hold for each other and the work that each section must do to master their parts.  
    Peer assessments can provide an effective way to maintain student engagement when working with a small section of the ensemble during a rehearsal. A simple question to another group within the band can let students know where you will resume rehearsing and what you are trying to accomplish. Consider the following example:

    Director: Brass, I am going to start with the flutes, oboe, and clarinets at measure 43. Looking at your part for measure numbers, and keep track of measures that sound ragged or where the rhythmic precision needs attention. Upper woodwinds that I called, let’s begin at measure 43.
(Woodwinds perform the section)
    Director: Those of you who just played, as the brass call out measure numbers they think need attention, raise your hand if you agree with them.  

    When students know their peers are evaluating them in the moment of a rehearsal, their pride as musicians motivates them to perform better. As it happens collaboratively and with guidance from their director, these kinds of constructive critiques are non-threatening and have the best interest of the ensemble in mind.

Directors Cannot Go It Alone
    Ensembles deserve to be engaged in learning and refining music selected for study. Directors can give their ensemble a reason to listen to every passage and make respectful suggestions to improve the band. Whether comparing articulations in unison rhythm passages between the brass and woodwinds or identifying where breaths should occur in a melodic passage, there are plenty of opportunities to guide their ensembles to make musical choices. Students will appreciate that their ideas and perspectives may be expressed and will contribute to the musical result. They will feel a greater sense of ownership for their ensemble and the music making. 
    Remember that students of all age levels have something to offer musically. Students are intelligent and emotional people who attend rehearsals to show what they do know instead of what they do not know. With this consideration in mind, directors should afford students to perform their interpretation of the repertoire that is the most representative of their musical maturity and skill level. 
    As directors, it is important to listen and assess our students non-verbally. During the rehearsal, a director should listen to the ensemble and ask themselves such question as “What stands out?”; “When is the aural representation of the music produced by the students most similar to our own?”; and “Which players are expressing different but acceptable interpretations of the music during rehearsal aside from our own?”
    Identify sections that are closest to what we perceive and then use those students to model the sound for the group. This allows students to share their musical thoughts openly and invites others to come to the same moment in their own music making. Engaging students in listening and modeling can produce greater understanding of music from the composer’s perspective and show students how they can create art beyond the written page.

The post Teaching Through Questions appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

How High is High?
    I can think of quite a number of pieces that ask us to play an octave or more above the treble clef, such as the following passage from Saint-Saëns’s second cello concerto:

    However, in my experience, if you can get comfortable with this register

    you will be in excellent shape for most cello works that venture into the higher registers. Attaining comfort and fluency in this area of the cello is easier than one would think.

Locate the Higher Harmonics
    Harmonics are found fairly frequently in the cello literature, and they can be useful pedagogically as well. Natural harmonics (as opposed to artificial harmonics, which is a separate and more advanced topic) are produced by very lightly touching the string with one finger of the left hand. For best results, the bow should be placed a bit closer to the bridge and should move fairly quickly.
    Think about the ease with which most cellists can find the “halfway harmonics” shown below:

    Note that Roman numerals are used to designate the various strings (i.e., I = A, II = D, etc).

    Now, think about how useful these landmarks are in finding several higher pitches. The example below shows how you could use the halfway harmonic on the A string to find the notes from Bb4 through D5. By placing the finger in parentheses on the halfway harmonic, each of the various pitches above can easily be located by dropping the listed finger. Note that L = low, H = high, and T = thumb.

    It is possible to find several additional such landmarks on the cello with similar ease. Shown below are the high harmonics produced by dividing the A string into equal thirds, fourths, or fifths. (Note that these numbers below represent fractions of the string length, and not the musical intervals.) 

    Then you could use those landmarks to find all of the other pitches in that region that are not harmonics. For example:

    Finding these pitches from the nearest harmonic takes time and practice, but the first order of business is to be able to find all these new harmonics with certainty and consistency. To improve this skill, alternate between the following exercises.
    Find each harmonic in turn, and repeatedly drop on it. Gradually vary the starting location of your left hand from on the knee, to the side of the cello, to the shoulder.

    Practice shifting from other pitches to the target harmonic. Use other harmonics as your starting point before shifting to and from stopped pitches.

Master Four Common Tetrachords
    Much of the music we perform is at least partially comprised of diatonic tetrachords (groups of four notes). To perform fluently in high registers, students should be able to understand and create these shapes quickly and accurately at will. There are four patterns that we encounter most frequently: Major, Minor, Phrygian, and Lydian. Have students find each of these shapes in turn by carefully tuning these pitches on their instruments.  The Minor and Lydian shapes tend to be the easiest to start with.

    When students have a given shape accurately tuned, have them take the hand away from the cello and study how it looks. After this, students should shake out the hand and then quickly replicate the shape. Cellists should practice creating these shapes when away from the cello as well; they can easily be made on a desk or the knee.
    Returning to the cello, students can practice drumming their fingers (slowly at first, then ever faster) within each particular shape, as in the following example, which shows the Phrygian tetrachord):

    These shapes can be tuned finely by playing double stops on adjacent strings, as in the example below, which uses the Major tetrachord:

    Another good exercise, and the next step in tetrachord mastery, is to add two tetrachords together to get a complete scale. Below are the notes of the A major scale, but beginning and ending on different scale degrees, which in turn requires the use of different tetrachords.

3) Play by Ear, Then Sightread
    A great way to achieve fluency in a new register is to practice playing there by ear. This is a valuable skill because it requires that students be able to imagine the next pitch and know where to find it.
    Start by playing familiar folk songs, including nursery rhymes, holiday tunes, and patriotic songs. Although students should begin in positions that feel well grounded, such as when the thumb resides on a harmonic, they should not neglect more difficult keys. For example, here is how Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star would look in A and Bb:

    Students should also practice making up melodies, even if they do not think of themselves as improvisers or composers. What is important is moving between notes.
    Give students beginning violin, oboe, or flute music to sightread. Make sure students start slowly. The best pieces will leave the thumb stationary (such as on harmonic E5). At the top of the next column is an example from Telemann’s Flute Fantasia in D Minor:

    As students start to build confidence  in high registers, have them test themselves from time to time by going back and forth between higher and lower registers. For example, at the bottom of the page is an excerpt from the second movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C Major, shown first at pitch and then transposed down an octave. By playing such passages down an octave, students can check that they are holding themselves to the same standards in both registers. 

Final Thoughts
    Be sure students do not neglect the bow. It is easy for the left hand to become an attention hog in the upper registers, but real success will only come when the bow is controlled, too. It should move closer to the bridge, the only place in which it is possible to get a good tone when playing this high. Many cellists have to work hard to learn how to consistently draw a beautiful and even bow in what feels like the ponticello area. 
    Enjoy the worlds of new repertoire that are now within your students’ grasp.

The post High Notes on Cello appeared first on The Instrumentalist.