Do not:

• Go to summer in-service sessions on any non-musical topic.
• Attend Professional Learning Community meetings on a weekly basis during my prep time instead of doing the 20 other things that must be done the same day.
• Go to morning duty at 7:30 on Monday mornings.
• Drive a school bus in the dead of night on Fridays (or any other day).
• Sell mass quantities of mattresses, beef sticks, chocolate bars, cheesecakes, magazines, or anything else.
• Miss a family event for a band event.
• Have a checklist of over 10 items. (Except this one.)
• Say “yes” to everything I’m asked to do.
• Run a broken sousaphone to a repair technician at the break of dawn on a Saturday morning.
• Complete another unnecessary form of any kind.
• Spend time in the summer heat unless I have a beach chair, umbrella, and huge glass of lemonade.
• Teach another fine arts class to an apathetic general school population.
• Take 100 kids into a fast food restaurant.
• Listen to hundreds of songs for possible performance.
• Measure and line the practice field.
• Correct mistakes made the first time I lined the practice field.
• Stretch my sense of fashion by helping design the color guard uniforms.
• Go to a parade unless I am holding a grandchild who is watching it.
• Worry about a student breaking my heart when he quits.
• Worry about changes in the school schedule.
• Listen to another rendition of Shout It Out, The Horse, Louie Louie, or Seven Nation Army.
• Be a class sponsor. 
• Attend the school prom.
• Construct another curriculum map.
• Attend another deafening pep rally.
• Write, rewrite, or adjust any more marching drill.
• Fill out another purchase order.
• Complete another inventory.
• Submit another lesson plan with the latest educational jargon.
• Let my wife evaluate me using a rubric.

    I am confident this will be the easiest checklist I have ever completed. Don’t be jealous – your time will come before you know it.

The post The Best Checklist appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

    Kids who don’t learn to swim well can end up as adults afraid of water deeper than a puddle. My siblings and I spent many of our childhood days in the water, honing our swimming through a well-run summer program at the local high school that continues today. When I signed up my stepson for the program I knew he could make substantial progress over five weeks.
    Eliott previously took swimming lessons as part of summer camp, but the activity seemed more like playing around than swimming. This summer’s classes were different, taught by veteran high school coaches and a team of endlessly patient teenage students. Eliott sometimes lets his confidence outrun his abilities. When we work on reading books at home, he reminds me, “I already know how to read.” I worried that he felt the same way about the pool.
    The lessons got off to an inauspicious start as we navigated through a series of locked doors at the high school, a surly security guard, and a deserted locker room. I steered him past the lockers and showers and onto the pool deck. At one point, he asked if we should just go home. I shook my head and left him with twenty kids and a dozen instructors. I climbed into the spectators’ balcony to see what would happen next.
    Glancing over at huge banners listing dozens of state titles dating back to the 1940s, I noticed that all of the high diving boards were gone. These had been a mighty obstacle to conquer during free time at the end of my lessons. Almost everything else felt the same as I remembered.
    I watched as Eliott jumped into the pool and started to swim. His technique was ragged after months away from the water. The instructors placed him in level 1 for beginners, a big relief for me. Just as a military recruit starts at the beginning in basic training, I wanted Eliott to build his swimming skills with the fundamentals. False confidence doesn’t float. When he passed the first level and moved up a few days later, he was exultant. I mentioned that moving up meant an automatic trip to Dairy Queen. 
    Over the next several weeks, I sat mesmerized in the humid gallery. I came to watch even on days when my wife was covering the lesson. The security guard started saying hello, and locked doors were now propped open for the parents. 
    At times, Eliott looked tentative on the pool deck. He often waited by the locker room door until encouraged by a teacher to join his group. Once the lesson began, however, he was all business. Whether or not a particular lap across the pool showed improvement, he hopped up the ladder, walked confidently back across the pool deck, and jumped in ready to go again.
    One day, I could tell he was going to pass to level 3. The head instructor, a tall coach with a booming voice, stopped to test some students for the next level. Eliott’s first attempt looked pretty good, far better than a week earlier. The coach urged him to try one more time. As he swam across the shallow end, I could feel my shoulders mimicking the slight rotation of each stroke. The coach roared his approval as Eliott climbed the ladder. The boy smiled and held up three fingers as he passed below my regular seat in the gallery.
    My teenage niece, who had taken the same swimming lessons when she was younger, reminded me that level 3, which incorporates breathing to the swimming motion, takes a long time to pass. At this point, however, I didn’t care if he moved up again this summer. 
    Watching Eliott’s lessons reminded me of my early efforts playing the trombone. I remembered the long hours in the living room repeating the same scales and easy exercises. Although music and swimming can be group activities with a social component, much of the hardest work happens alone. Progress in both can be incremental and imperceptible.
    As Eliott struggled to master the gentle sideways turn of the head, I fretted that he might get discouraged. I told him that passing to level 4 had two parts: mastering the technique and showing confidence.
    “You need to show that if they put you in the deep end, you won’t have a problem.” Thinking of his confident walk during lessons, I told him to swim with just a bit of swagger, a word he did not recognize.
    “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” he asked.
    I replied, “A little bit of swagger is a good thing. Too much swagger can make a person seem like a jerk.”
    The final week of lessons arrived and studying Eliott’s nearly identical trips across the pool remained a daily pleasure. I was disappointed to miss one of the final lessons due to an appointment. When I saw him later, I asked if I missed anything. Barely looking up from his computer, he mentioned in passing that the coach had moved him up to level 4. Then, with pride in his voice, he told me everything about it.  I suspect that the success of this confidence-building summer will ripple for a long time.

The post The Strokes of Summer appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Sightreading Priorities
    To develop a culture of sightreading, establish a hierarchy that promotes ensemble success. Although rhythm is one of the most common problems during sightreading, it is not the first component I discuss when offering a new work to my ensemble. I address these elements in the following order:

    1.  Road maps
    2.  Time signature
    3.  Rhythm
    4.  Key signature
    5.  Miscellaneous musical attributes, such as dynamics, articulations, and style

    Addressing the elements in this order has provided my ensembles a firm understanding of what we consider important when performing music for the first time. 

Getting Started
For developing ensembles, sightreading a homogeneous passage may be best initially. While there are a number of resources available, one affordable source is the Raymond C. Fussell Exercises for Ensemble Drill, which contains a section with 40 different eight-measure melodies that increase in difficulty. When I taught high school band, each day’s agenda usually included an exercise from this book. In the beginning, we kept things simple, reading one exercise in its original form. This exercise is not too demanding, making it a good choice to build students’ confidence quickly.

Getting Creative
    In a subsequent rehearsal, directors can get creative with the same exercise. One way to recycle the first excerpt is for the director to ask the students to read the line backwards, so it sounds like this:

I have developed a shorthand for indicating how I want students to read through a melody. In this case, I would list it on the board as:

    When reading this way, it is important to establish the rule that any dotted rhythm must keep the dot with the original note. When reading backwards, the rhythms in measures four, five, and seven will include an eighth note followed by a dotted quarter note. It is true that there will likely never be a reason for a musician to read their music from right to left, but the exercise helps students think critically about music reading and improves their ability in that area. Do not rewrite these exercises backwards, unless in is the first attempt and students struggle to understand how the music should be played.
    Once the students are comfortable with reading the original material and asked to alter it for an immediate performance, the creativity of the director can challenge the students further. One example is transposing the exercise up a half step so it sounds like this: 

This exercise is listed as:

    The ability to transpose at sight is something that many brass players (especially those who play horn or trumpet) might need in orchestral literature or older band works. This exercise also challenges students by having them play in keys that they may ordinarily not be asked to perform. 
    Another good variant is to have students play odd-numbered measures followed by even-numbered measures. 

    This exercise might improve eye movement, which in turn can make navigating complicated road maps easier. My shorthand for this would be:

Even more creative combinations can eventually be tried. In the excerpt below, students are being asked to perform measures one through four in that order, with each measure read backwards and down one-half step. Immediately afterward, the students are asked to perform measures four through one at the written pitch, with each measure read from left to right. The final two measures require students to perform measure eight two times, with the first time read from right to left and the second time from left to right, both at the written pitch. 


    Admittedly, when I used to request such difficult alterations from my high school students, the first performance was often met with less-than-desirable results. When that occurred, we would regroup and sing through the passage while students fingered the notes. We would then perform the excerpt a second time. In most cases, the performance improved with variable results.
    A final example includes several elements in the miscellaneous category from my sightreading hierarchy.

    In this example, the students are to perform measures one, three, five, and seven, read from left to right, transposed down a half step, and played forte. This is followed by measures two, then six, then four, all played in cut time, read from right to left, transposed up a half step, and played pianissimo. The final two measures, seven and eight, should each be read from left to right and played at the written pitch with an added crescendo and legato.

    This is a highly complex request that might require several attempts before it is performed near reasonable expectations. However, once students can follow and play through such a road map, sightreading music normally will seem simple by comparison.

Challenge the Band Director
    On Fridays during the fall semester, my high school band was expected to perform at every football game, including the away games. To help save students’ chops during that day’s rehearsal, we had a Challenge the Band Director session. Up to three students each Friday could create an altered Fussell exercise to perform. After their performance, I received 30 seconds to prepare the excerpt exactly as offered by the student, with the same rules that we would need to follow at state assessment. The most important rule was that I could not play my instrument during the preparation time. After 30 seconds, one of my students would call time, and then I had to perform the excerpt on my trombone.
    One Friday, a sophomore trumpet player named Jonathan said, “I am going to make your life easy today. I am going to perform an exercise completely backwards and down a half step.” With such a simple alteration, I assumed my perfect record of winning the challenges would continue.
    I began to worry when I saw that the exercise’s original key was Db. My first thought was to think about transposing each note as I would advise my students, however, panic quickly ensued, and I resorted to extending my slide position by one for each note. By the time I settled on which procedure I would use, Jonathan completed his performance (exceptionally well, I might add) and my preparation time had elapsed before I had gotten through three measures. 
    I began my performance by making a mistake in the first measure. I then immediately put my instrument down while the students ecstatically celebrated the end of my undefeated streak. As the cheers died down, Jonathan smiled and asked me if I wanted to know his secret to success. With an angry band director stare, I went to the back of the ensemble to check his book, as one of the rules was that you could not write out any alterations. Jonathan’s book was clean, as were the books of all the students around him. I begrudgingly asked Jonathan to share his secret, and he held up his trumpet to show me that he had extended every slide to its maximum, which offered the transposition assistance needed. I was thoroughly impressed with his awareness and creativity and offered Jonathan my public congratulations but then proclaimed that altering an instrument to assist with transposition was no longer allowed.

Conclusion
    When my students sightread traditional music that was appropriate to their ability level, I noticed that they did so with greater ease. An occasional repeat or simplified road map with a dal segno or a coda was no longer a challenge. Rhythms and pitches were also more likely to be correct. With so much improvement in these fundamentals, we were able to expand our preparations into the more musical aspects of performance. The time invested in this activity appeared to improve my ensemble’s sightreading ability, which offered everyone a better performance experience.

The post Sightreading On a Budget appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Tuning for Young Players
    Because beginning players lack the embouchure and breath control to produce a consistent tone or pitch on the instrument, attempting to tune to a standard pitch from an electronic tuner or other source is unproductive. Brass instrument manufacturers produce instruments that will play in tune at room temperature when the main tuning slide is not fully inserted, allowing for adjustments in both directions. Beginning hornists should have the main slide adjusted to this position, which will provide the best tuning possible for a young player and assist with the correct development of the embouchure and breathing muscles.

Adjusting the Instrument
    First, make sure all the slides are where they should be. Young hornists might unknowingly switch the first and third valve slides, and, in the case of double horns, insert the F slides on the Bb side of the horn and vice versa. When everything is in the correct place, find the main tuning slide for the instrument. In the case of double horns, the possible variations in the instrument’s layout can make this a challenging task. Most often, the main tuning slide is the first one you find as you trace along the pipe from the mouthpiece. To be sure, pull the slide out the instrument and try to play, if the main tuning slide is removed, the instrument will not produce a tone on either side of the instrument. The same can be done to determine the role of the other slides on the instrument. Some double horns have a small slide meant solely for water removal. Although removing this slide and then playing the horn will likely have the same result as removing the main tuning slide, but it should be obvious which is the main tuning slide, as it will have the potential for a longer adjustment than the short water slide.
    The adjustment of the horn to normal playing position is quite simple. On a Bb or F single horn, pull the main tuning slide one to one and one-eighth inch. Pull each of the valve slides one-half inch. The horn will still be slightly sharp on the open tones, even with the right hand properly inserted into the bell. This arrangement of slides provides for the smallest differences in the sharpness or flatness of certain notes on the horn and requires less lipping or right hand adjustment.
    The most common arrangement found in student-level double horns, regardless of the wrap, is to have a main tuning slide, an F horn tuning slide, and six valve slides, one for each of the three Bb valves and three F valves. With this arrangement of slides, pull the main tuning slide one to one and one-eighth inch, the F tuning slide one to one and one-eighth inch, and each of the valve slides one-half inch. As the player progresses and is able to produce a consistent tone and pitch, tune the Bb side of the horn using the main tuning slide (depress the thumb key), and then tune the F side using the F tuning slide. Horns with separate slides for main tuning, the Bb side, and the F side should be tuned in the same order, but pull the Bb slide out a bit before tuning the Bb side by using the main tuning slide.

The Right Hand 
    The right hand plays a crucial role in the tuning of the instrument. Without the correct insertion of the hand in the bell, the instrument will play sharp. Young players with good aural skills who place the hand incorrectly or do not use it in the bell at all will develop a faulty embouchure and breath support as they attempt to play in tune by altering their lip tension and their blowing. 
    The correct placement of the right hand in the bell is not only for tuning; it also stabilizes the pitch and plays a role in creating the characteristic tone of the instrument. Although beginning-level players have not yet developed their embouchure and air support sufficiently to produce consistent tone and tuning, they can still determine the correct right hand position.
    Have students form the hand into the shape typically used when swimming. The fingers are tightly together, there is no gap between the thumb and the index finger, and the hand is slightly cupped. To find the correct hand position, players should stand so the right hand helps support the weight of the instrument rather than sitting and allowing the weight to be carried by the leg. With the elbow at 90 degrees and the palm of the hand facing to the player’s left, the hand is slowly inserted into the bell until the weight of the horn is balanced on the shelf formed by the top of the thumb and the side of the index finger. As the embouchure and breath control are developed, advancing players will learn to make slight alterations to this basic position to aid tuning and tone.

Conclusion
    Giving attention to the correct position of tuning slides and the right hand will provide beginning hornists the best chance at developing a correct embouchure and proper breath support. This simplified approach to tuning will decrease the frustration and discouragement that can lead to band drop out and instead ensure that young hornists experience success.   

The post Tuning Horns appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Using the Metronome 
    Using a metronome might be the most common approach to developing consistent tempo during practice. Many students might think of metronomes only in quick, numerical terms, such as “I need MM = 76” or “Set that quarter note to 112.” Using the metronome to build internal tempo skills fully, however, requires the use of its functions more thoroughly and creatively. 
    Any metronome that provides divisions and subdivisions of the beat can help. Perhaps the simplest example would be setting the machine to provide all relevant subdivisions of the beat with an accent on the main pulse. For example, if a student is playing a xylophone passage in 3/4 that includes quarter-, eighth-, and sixteenth-note combinations, set the metronome to play constant sixteenth notes with an accent on every quarter note. 

    The advantage to this aural input is that every note the student plays should line up with a tick from the metronome. This approach boosts rhythmic precision by providing alignment feedback four times as frequently as a quarter note would have done.
    Metronomes also become musical partners when they play notes that students do not. We can set them to provide placeholders for students’ rests, creating an overarching interlocking texture, as seen in the example below.

    When students play with this type of metronome accompaniment they learn to feel the offbeat eighth note as a phantom part of their pattern. Again, precision increases because reliable additional information is made audible.
    A common criticism of metronomes is that they sound rather mechanical. Students can be gradually lured into playing mechanically themselves if they begin to rely too much on the machine during practice. To address this challenge, students can be creative with how they set the metronome to help them play more stylistically. For instance, the first of the three examples below shows a simple subdivided pattern in 34 useful for general playing. The next two examples show variations that might correspond to the style of a passage students are rehearsing. If the music is rather light and buoyant, requiring your percussionists to stay on top of the beat, placement of the accent on the offbeat, as in the second example, might help. If the piece has a strongly syncopated feel, with a bass line that moves in anticipation of the pulse rather than right on the downbeats, the third example might be best. 

    No matter how artfully your students use the metronome in practice, they need to detach from it well before a performance. As simple as it might sound, the most direct way to do this is by alternating repetitions with the metronome and without. Frequent and rapid alternation helps students learn to supply the metronome’s part internally when it is physically absent. This not only helps them prepare for the performance at hand, but is actually the whole point of using the metronome in the first place – gradual development of internal tools by way of external tools.
    Not every scenario can or should be solved with a metronome. Most teachers would probably agree that some use of this tool is warranted and even necessary at times, but resist the urge to turn it on every time the tempo starts to slide or shift, and especially when it is already steady. If we use the tool only when truly needed, in wise and creative ways, students will pay closer attention to it and gain more from the experience.

photo by Matheus Bertelli

Building the Internal Clock
    Using the metronome and internalizing it is one way for students to build their musical clocks. Interacting with various tempos in daily life is another. Encourage students to become acutely aware of pulses they encounter throughout the day, such as the periodic cycle of fans or air conditioners, the oscillation of windshield wipers, the beep of a street crossing signal, or the rhythmic calls of birds in conversation. With just a few examples they will quickly discover various meters, strict and consistent tempos, and slight shifts in time, all of which are helpful for building tempo maintenance skills. 
    Students can interact with these naturally occurring tempos in several helpful ways. First, they should notice regular groupings of beats, synchronize to them, and discover the basic parameters of what they hear, such as number of pulses in a cycle or contrasts in emphasis level of beats. Students can also sing or play tunes they know that fit each tempo. This is a great way to practice matching what they hear and what they know. Finally, they can improvise on what they hear. For example, they can create a beatbox funk groove to fit an air conditioner pulse, a fast oom-pah pattern of knee tapping to engage the windshield wipers, creative physical subdivisions in their gait as they cross the beeping street, and an internal third voice to chime in on the bird conversation. The point of all of this is for students to generate musical time in diverse ways according to various external stimuli – the same thing they do in their ensembles.

Internal Subdividing in the Moment
    Internal subdivision follows naturally from both metronome practice and daily stimuli. Students can apply it gradually and methodically as they build their musicianship through long-term audible practice. At any moment, however, players should be mentally prepared to supply subdivisions independently and internally, especially when sightreading something new or performing something for which they have had very little time for systematic practice. Getting in the habit of dividing and subdividing the beat is crucial for precise entrances and confident rhythmic placement. 
    The goal is for students to be able to subdivide while they are playing. As rhythms become simpler, internal subdivision remains a crucial factor and perhaps becomes even more so. For example, if students playing bass drum and cymbals are to play a forceful downbeat together (a typically unforgiving musical task), they would do well to subdivide the beats leading toward that entrance, especially if the music is shifting tempo in its approach. Sometimes the subdivisions will be played by other instruments; otherwise, the percussionists will need to generate those subdivisions mentally as they track the larger beats. Students may judge this to be tedious or unnecessary at first, but describing and modeling it as doubling or quadrupling, for example, their chances of playing precisely together will help them see how beneficial it is.

Singing the Other Parts
    This final strategy is difficult, but highly rewarding. Percussionists generally use their hands and feet to play, leaving their voices free. Have students sing the other parts while playing. For example, in the final strain of The Stars and Stripes Forever, the battery percussionists mostly maintain a steady pulse on the bass drum and cymbals and repetitive five-stroke rolls on the snare drum. They may play these parts as if in isolation, focusing on their sound and alignment within the section, while thinking of themselves as the time machine and watching the conductor carefully. All of these are noble aims, but the real music-making happens when they are paying attention to the rest of the ensemble sound. Are they hearing the soaring melody, the trombone countermelody, and the piccolo filigree loud and clear as they shape those consistent beat patterns?
    Singing, humming, or even grunting out other parts can be tremendously helpful for a student anticipating a large downbeat on the tam-tam, maintaining a tricky groove on the drumset, or phrasing a syncopated triangle passage. They may find it doubly challenging at first, because it is at least twice the effort. However, that extra musical effort will make their playing more effective in the moment and will eventually develop into an added long-term benefit. They will no longer struggle to pay attention to the other parts, but will be using those parts to improve performance of their original playing assignment. 
    This can be practiced away from an instrument. Students might sing the sustained clarinet melody to themselves as they tap out the complex snare drum ostinato on the bus ride to school, or hum the descending tuba line as they air drum the ritardando timpani part while waiting in the lunch line. The next time they pick up the sticks a lot of their internal ensemble work will have been polished already, so they can start rehearsal ready to contribute immediately and effectively.

Conclusion 
    External tools and guidance should gradually be directed toward internal control so that students are producing musical time rather than simply trying to stay with it. The suggestions provided here are aimed specifically at percussionists, but many of them could be applied to any instrumentalists.   

The post Tempo Maintenance For Percussionists appeared first on The Instrumentalist.