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Introduction to Music
    As a boy, I remember a musician who must have played some sort of baritone or tuba at a funeral. My job was to hold his music because he didn’t have an instrument with a holder. I walked backwards in the funeral procession holding his part. (October 1987)

First Compositions
    When I was about 13 I wrote some little pieces for violin and piano and piano solo. One I called Spring Song, another one Lullaby; the others I don’t remember very well. They were really nothing, just tonic and dominant chords, but they gave me the feeling that I would like to write music, and that I didn’t forget. (July 1990)

Conducting
    First of all the conductor needs the technique to convey the music with the baton or with his hands. The technique should be so good that one doesn’t even notice it. Some may think technique is not so important, but I think it’s incredibly important, because you don’t have time in rehearsals to explain what you will do with your hands at every moment. It’s like playing the piano; you don’t spell out fingerings for every single measure.
    A second factor is attitude, how well and how efficiently you can work with an ensemble. Whether it’s a professional or student ensemble, the problems are the same: we never have enough rehearsal time.
    You also should know how to deal with people, and that is not as easy as it sounds. You come to a rehearsal with the best intentions and things may turn out in a way that you hadn’t planned. You have to be a juggler of feelings. Technique is very important, and how the conductor deals with the players is very important. You can get a lot from players, or you can appear in front of an ensemble that has so much to offer and get nothing from them. A conductor has to come in front of a group completely prepared. In 15 minutes the performers can say whether the conductor knows the score or not; you cannot fool anybody. (July 1990)

Teaching
    I have wonderful memories of helping aspiring composers and conducting the student orchestra for 20 years. I remember programming an orchestra concert with the Berg Violin Concerto, but from the beginning it was obvious that the students did not care for it. Once we put it together with Louis Krasner though, it became the most incredible experience for those students, something they have never forgotten and which they still talk about with me 20 or 30 years later. They learned that some things created recently are important and that we cannot write music the way Beethoven or Brahms did, even though they did it so beautifully.
    I don’t have any bad memories of teaching but there were some disappointments. I remember rehearsing my Apotheosis of This Earth at some school, but I noticed that it was the piece the students least liked. When conducting, you can see the interest or lack of interest, and in despair I told the performers that if they did not want to play it, we would replace it with something they liked. When they voted, only three students raised their hands, so I changed the piece. I think that later the students regretted their decision, but it was too late then. I made this decision because it was my own music; 1 have never changed other composers’ works. (September 1992)

Listening
    When I studied painting, some teachers just showed me Rembrandt, Rubens, and da Vinci, just these masters. One painter showed me everything – Brueghel, Cranach, and also very modern painting. The same idea should hold in music. Some teachers won’t give students anything new until they know Mozart and Beethoven perfectly; but giving young people the experience of hearing new music is important because it touches their thinking. Otherwise they will not be open to it later. (October 1987)

Introducing New Music
    The conductor’s attitude is very important; I always found it helped when I had a positive attitude and believed in a piece. I believe the Berg Violin Concerto is good music and have faith that in time students will realize its value. Conductors should be persistent and always present a piece in the most positive way, even if some rehearsals are disappointing. With new music, some rehearsals will not do justice to the music, but with classical music you know it’s not the fault of the music. Even so, I would rather play new pieces with students because life is short. I always thought students would continue to play in the future, but many of them leave and go into another profession; even when they are in music, they may not have the opportunity to perform many new compositions.
    If they understand what new music is to them, they can transfer it to others. I remember when I was in my last year at the conservatory in Prague, the Hungarian quartet Vegh performed Bartók’s Quartet, and I was bewildered because to me it wasn’t music. Now, when I listen to it many years later, I recognize that it is very close to Beethoven’s Quartet. We have to help young people by explaining what new music is, and letting them play it enough to decide for themselves.
    I think it helps for a director to share some insights into the composer and the work at the first rehearsal, and directors should also explain why a composer did certain things that the students do not understand immediately. Going into the unknown is important and exciting. We cannot always go into the forest and take the path that has been there for a hundred years; especially when you are young, you should go somewhere that everybody said not to. That is always what I like to do. To only play well known pieces makes students tired. In college I have noticed that students sometimes become bored when they play the same repertoire as in high school. If they had a good high school conductor, one who showed them new possibilities and taught them incredible things, they may be disappointed when they get into college and repeat the same things. (September 1992)

The Composing Process
    When I compose, I begin with a few notes, and then the music starts to develop like a game of checkers. Let’s say I have three notes. I take the notes and play with them, perhaps looking at them as though they were reflected by a mirror. What goes up in sound will go down in sound in the mirror. Then I transpose the notes into other notes. Now I have 10 notes, which I start to develop into a motif and some other ideas. Then I go ahead. (October 1987)

Staging
    In Music for Prague my idea was to spread the percussion wherever possible on the stage and have three different players play the same instrument but of high pitch, medium pitch, and low pitch. I spread them around the wind ensemble or orchestra so that the effect is like bells ringing around the city of Prague. It’s an incredible effect. In the Concerto for Wind Ensemble I thought it would be interesting for the players, who always sit in the same places, to be separated and hear the music from a different angle. If you are a horn player or trombone player and are always sandwiched between timpani behind you and trumpet in front of you, you always hear the music the same way. (July 1990)

Composers and Audiences
    Some audiences do not want to accept new ideas, and some composers think they would belittle themselves if they came closer to the audience and tried to establish a link with them. When I write music I don’t think directly about the audience and whether they will accept it or not; I think in terms of what would touch me and how I understand music. When I compose I’m using musical language that is based on what we have from the past. I don’t want to break with tradition; at the same time I cannot write music in the language of Beethoven. Yet music is a language, and if we can still use some things from the past, why not? Sometimes I see scores that use new terms or symbols for pizzicato or crescendo and decrescendo. We still have these normal signs and symbols, so why not use them? As a conductor I usually have three rehearsals and then a concert. If we change the vocabulary, it would take so much time to explain what I want to do to the orchestra or band that I would never get to the music. This is also true of the musical content; there are things we still can use.
    In terms of language, we continue to use words that we inherit from tradition. We might add new words that explain something in contemporary terms, but we don’t completely discard what we have grown to understand and use. It seems to me the same is true in musical composition. An audience comes with a certain background of musical experiences, so it’s wise to build on that background, to add things, but not to leave the audience completely afloat, trying to cope with something unlinked to history and tradition.
    Yes, and also we have to be aware of differences between audiences. An audience accustomed to only light music would find the Fourth Symphony of Beethoven a little exhausting. On the other hand, audiences familiar with classical, romantic, and impressionistic music can even accept Schoenberg and Berg because they still use a language from the past. If the music has a specific content, it can be advanced technically and the public will still understand it. When I was a student in Prague around 1945, I heard Bartok’s String Quartet No. 4, and it really bewildered me. Here I was, a young composer, and I had heard new things, yet I thought this bordered on not being music. Today when I listen to that piece, it seems like Beethoven, absolutely classical music, and I wonder how I ever could have thought that this bordered on non-music. The music doesn’t change, but we change.
    We accept it after repeated listenings; time soothes the dissonances. Time even soothes the abstraction of Picasso or Braque that 40 years ago looked incredibly sophisticated; today it seems simple. (July 1990)

Evolution
    From generation to generation there will always be changes in music – from romantic to classical or from scientific to romantic – music from the heart or music from the brain. These changes occur constantly; they are part of our life. Music somehow always represents what happens in the world. (October 1987)  

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Something Borrowed
    When the wind band came about, the primary source of repertoire was transcriptions of orchestral works. This formed the building blocks of the ensemble; the wonderful original works that we have today would not be possible if not for the transcriptions that allowed composers to hear how a band could sound. Although the largest amount of transcribed material is from standard orchestral literature, there is still a tremendous amount of music that has been arranged for winds from other mediums, including piano and choir. These works form the basis for this category.

Something Blue
    When I am programming a concert and am looking for a blue piece, it is with the aim of balancing the concert. This can be a slow work, something written in a minor key or in a mode that is ominous, or even a jazz-based work. Mostly blue means something that easily fits with the other works but sounds different from everything else on the concert. Frank Ticheli’s Blue Shades is a good example of this. Many American composers will use some elements of jazz within their music. Good examples of other blue works outside the jazz idiom, are Hymn to a Blue Hour, Chant and Jubilo, An American Elegy, Give Us this Day, and Air for Band. These and many others will fill this spot on a concert program.

A March
    Along with orchestral transcriptions, marches are the foundation of the literature for wind bands as we know them today. Most of us know John Philip Sousa, Henry Fillmore, and Karl King, but marches come from all places and from as far back as Mozart and Beethoven. Composers from the baroque, classical, romantic and 20th century eras all composed marches, and many times these were incorporated into symphonies and other larger works. In more recent times, marches have become a nationalistic form of composition. European marches by Kenneth Alford, Carl Teike, Josef Wagner, and Karl Michael Ziehrer can easily be found edited for modern band instrumentation. The French military also had a unique emphasis on percussion and brass. Marches such as Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse and La Marche Lorraine are a couple of these. Many of these, as well as the marches of John Philip Sousa, can be found edited for more authentic performances. Wonderful ver­sions for young bands are also available. This makes filling this section easy.

Finalizing Balance
    Many pieces can fit one or more of these categories. Alfred Reed’s Greensleeves would easily fill both the old and blue categories. Sousa’s The Thunderer could be old and a march. A work such as March Slav by Tchaikovsky fits three categories: old, borrowed, and march. Knowing this is helpful when planning a concert with more than five pieces. For a visual reference of this, I list the works I have chosen and then in a second column, list the categories each work falls within.. Below is an example of a recent concert I performed with our University Band here at The Ohio State University. This ensemble is our non-major performing ensemble and is the level of a good high school band. Following this system will help you prevent from having a concert that is unbalanced toward any single category.

    Each area is covered in the primary categories. If the works fit in a secondary or tertiary category, this is notated so I can see the balance of the concert.
    Here is another example from a program that was performed by the Forbush High School Band (Matthew Brusseau, director), located in East Bend, North Carolina.

   
    Even a holiday concert can be put together using this method. Looking at the literature, each category is covered. A Christmas Festival covers numerous categories, but here it primarily satisfies the desire to have a march – or have march-like material within a work.
    The theme of the following concert was “Borrowed and Blurred,” and it is a great example to show diversity in programming by using literature that comes from old material, but is used in various ways to make it either new, old, borrowed, blue or a march.

    All the works except one fit within the old description, as they are all created from previously existing material. Even the new work, Of Fire and Ice, was originally composed for orchestra and transcribed for winds by the composer, thus making it both new and borrowed.
    As we strive to give our students a well-rounded musical education, it is important to create concerts that will teach them the various styles, history, and musical literature that are available to musicians throughout the world. Using this method of choosing music will create an interesting and educational environment that will draw support for your program and enrich the culture in your community at the same time.

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Tone Quality
    Tone quality is the first caption on every adjudication ballot I have ever seen, and rightly so. A warm, beautiful tone quality is the cornerstone of any outstanding performance, but it sometimes does not receive the rehearsal attention it deserves. As an adjudicator, most of my comments in this caption relate to a sound that is not supported by enough air. I frequently recommend that rehearsals include fundamentals to teach or reinforce proper breathing.
    The main problem is that students usually have greater difficulty with the exhalation concept than with inhalation. This results in uncontrolled air streams, which make it nearly impossible to achieve a beautiful tone. There are an abundance of materials and exercises to assist in providing students proper breath control training. Choose at least one method that works and use it faithfully.
    The second area of tone quality that needs attention is embouchure development. Weak or incorrect embouchures have little chance of maintaining beautiful tone quality. Many resources are available to assist in this area, but I have found that the best way to fix a problem is by contacting applied instructors, either in the district or at the nearest college, for suggestions on fixing sound.
    The final area of concern in this caption is a characteristic sound for each instrument. Adjudicators are listening for good tone qualities with energy and an appropriate level of maturity for the age of the ensemble. The sound of players, sections, and the entire ensemble will be evaluated, therefore each student must acquire an aural image of the desired tone quality. Excellent players of each instrument can be found on YouTube, and plenty of recordings of professional solo performers and ensembles are available to help students develop a concept of a good sound.

Intonation
    Intonation is second on most adjudication ballots because of its close relationship to tone quality; it is impossible to have consistently accurate intonation without good tone quality. In addition, ensembles with outstanding intonation also possess proper balance and an awareness of the pitch center as it relates to scales, intervals, chords, and unisons. Intonation is also one of the performance areas in which adjudicators and audiences can easily detect errors, so it is imperative that rehearsal time be spent strengthening intonation.
    The majority of adjudicator comments in this caption are about upper woodwind intonation, as these discrepancies are the easiest to hear, but every section should strive for perfection. Rehearsal strategies include work on scales, intervals, chords, and unisons combined with constant attention to balance, listening, and adjustment. Teach students to adjust pitch not only by adjusting horn length, but by embouchure as well, as there may not be time to push in or pull out in the middle of a piece. One strategy is to pair students and have them use a tuner to make individual pitch tendency sheets of the full chromatic scale. This exercise is great for identifying which notes need to be tempered or adjusted.

Percision, Technique, Facility
    In the precision caption, the ensemble’s performance accuracy to the printed page is evaluated. The most frequent comments deal with incorrect pitches and rhythms, articulations, bowings, steady pulse, and ensemble cohesiveness. Rehearsal strategies to improve these areas include using rhythm patterns, practicing at a slower tempo, and the use of a metronome played over a speaker.
    Technique and facility measure the individual and collective command of the repertoire and the ensemble’s ease in performing it. Skills in these captions include posture and hand positions, fingerings, shifts, articulations, dexterity, phrasing, and attacks and releases. Comments based on articulations, attacks and releases, and phrasing are most prevalent, but the majority of the time, I comment on releases. If careful attention is not paid to the releases, they will sound ragged, which negatively affects the other musical aspects in this caption. Clearly defined performance practices for each type of articulation are necessary. If precision and facility are suffering, look to the release of the note to solve the problem.
    Special attention should be given to percussion technique, as adjudicators can both see and hear any problems. I normally spend a great deal of time explaining the proper playing technique for cymbals, triangle, small trap percussion, and bass drum (pull the sound out of the drum). For mallet and timpani players the comments are geared toward using the correct mallet for the style of music and placement of the mallet for best sound. Snare drums that have a superfluous ring are a distraction and should be dampened. Know the proper percussion techniques and demand your students use them.

Balance and Blend
    Balance is prioritizing the musical lines to create transparency. In this caption, the most encountered problem is accompanying lines that overpower melodic lines. To solve this problem, ensembles must have clearly defined roles for foreground, mid- ground, and background lines. This hierarchy of line provides clarity and direction rather than merely a mass of sound. Both pyramid balance and the hierarchy of line must be maintained through any dynamic changes for maximum musical results.
    Blend refers to the adjustment of volume and combining of timbres to provide the most sonorous sound possible. If this performance aspect is not addressed in rehearsal, individual players and/or sections may stand out or overpower the balance resulting in an ensemble sound that does not mesh. Many directors advocate a trio-of-players approach, in which a student plays no louder or softer than the students on each side and with the same style. Chorales are also an effective rehearsal tool to improve balance and blend.

Expression, Interpretation
    Here the adjudicator is listening for a high level of musicianship from the performers. Contrasts in style, tempo, dynamics, and articulation all contribute to the level of musicianship, but what sets an ensemble or performer apart is the shaping of the phrase. The feel for and inflection of the line demonstrates an understanding of the musical intent and reinforces the old adage that the music happens between the notes. If students feel uneasy when introduced to this concept, have them follow the contour of the melodic line for a rise and fall of the phrase. This will at least add a sense of momentum and expression to the music and is an easy concept for younger students to grasp.
    The most common dynamics downfalls are crescendos and decrescendos, which tend to be either poorly paced or unsatisfyingly narrow. This leads to the sense that the ensemble is not capable of performing a wide range of dynamic levels. One way to resolve this is by assigning numbers to different dynamic levels (1=pp, 6=ff). Students play long tones while gradually increasing or decreasing the volume by responding to hand signals from the director. Always strive for crescendos and decrescendos that have a sense of direction and a point of arrival that is not premature.

Other Factors
    Listed under a variety of headings on the adjudication ballot are performance factors that may not be musical in nature but can have a profound effect on the performance. The most common factors include literature choice, discipline, stage presence, appearance, pacing, instrumentation ,and performance energy.
    In my experience, the factors in this caption that have needed the most attention are discipline, stage presence, and appearance. Any adjudication is a public performance and should be treated with the appropriate respect and decorum. Even if the musical performance has not begun, an ensemble’s attention to detail in these areas will make an impression long before an ensemble plays its first note. Ensembles that take pride in their appearance and act professionally will always gain a judge’s favor, as this commitment to excellence generally carries over into their musical performance. It is worth the time to practice stage presence and set high standards for discipline and appearance. A director who neglects to emphasize these factors will generally be disappointed.

    As both a director and an adjudicator, I have given and received these comments often over the course of my career. Awareness of the most common adjudication comments can assist directors in rehearsal planning and allows for the development of skills required for student growth, leading to the best possible educational experience.

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Learning to Lead
    As the leader of a program, I have had to improve my communication skills with staff and students. This does not come naturally to me. When I worked with Greg Bimm at Marian Catholic, he had done everything 12 times and could navigate any difficult waters. Instead of reacting to events as they occur, I have learned to anticipate problems. We follow a strict calendar and know what each month will bring.
    My skills were tested when band fees rose by $45. Parents and board members supported the increase, but, as the new guy, I was reluctant to make a radical change. I told all families that we were considering a change in our payment structure. We took a year to dissect exactly what we spent and how. At the end of the year, we sent parents a report explaining the fee increase. Our study showed that our fees fell short of expenses by $42 per student. Three parents actually thanked me for being that transparent and trying to get the best things for the students.
    One challenge when you move to a new school is developing a new culture. You want to build on the program’s strengths while making changes consistent with your approach. Sometimes this culture developed in small ways. We were having trouble putting away chairs and stands after rehearsals. Students were leaving the job for the next ensemble. I feel strongly about taking responsibility for what you do. If you mess something up, you fix it. One morning a student in the top concert band stood up and said, “everybody, remember to get your chairs and stands.” I knew we turned a corner that day. It sounds like an insignificant thing, but the devil is in the details in music, education, and life.
    Once, at Marian Catholic, I took a different approach with a group that struggled to put away chairs and stands consistently. I said, “because this is a skill we cannot master, we are going to practice it.” We had everybody put away their chairs and stands the way they thought was right and then we evaluated it. They thought I was just trying to prove a point. Then we took the chairs and stands out again and practiced putting them away one more time. You can yell at people but that does not do much. If you can get students to see that it is a pain to put away chairs, they realize that they were making other people do that every day.

The Rewards of Chamber Music
    We have made significant gains through expanded use of chamber ensembles during the year. It was always part of our spring activities with rehearsals leading up to a chamber recital. The personal and musical benefits were so powerful that we decided to have chamber groups rehearse simultaneously with concert band and marching band. We took the nebulous period from mid-November through December and devoted time to chamber music. A holiday concert dominated by the large ensembles was changed to include 20 chamber groups.
    The chamber ensembles have time set aside for rehearsals, and valuable lessons are learned when these sessions do not go as well as hoped. I asked how many groups had students who arrived late. Everybody raised their hand. I asked how many had somebody cancel a rehearsal at the last minute. You could feel the anger in the room. They saw how important these things are for a full band rehearsal.
    The chamber ensembles meet throughout the spring with the assistance of four chamber coaches. Many directors find it hard to keep students motivated towards the end of the year. Seniors suddenly forget that they attend your high school. The expanded chamber program helps us stay focused with regular public performances at nursing homes and a big concert at the end of the year.

Approaching Rehearsals
    Alfred Watkins, who taught at Lassiter High School in Georgia for 37 years, has helped my rehearsal skill improve. If he works with my students on improved articulations, he will find simple music that students know so they can focus only on one thing. When we rehearsed Grainger’s Walking Tune, we tuned quite a bit in G, which is painful. Trying to get that B in tune is not a pleasant experience.
    We try to avoid generic warmups with all of our groups. Our fourth group struggles with releases. Instead of going through a rote warmup, we used an articulation exercise and focused two different types of releases: a sticky, stopped release and a resonant release. Most of our groups have 90-minute rehearsals, which allows us to spend considerable time on warmups and specific technique. The symphonic band meets for only 47 minutes, which forces me to be strategic. We may only spend a few minutes a day over a two-week period to hone a concept like releases. When we devote time to certain techniques, students learn how important they are to our overall performance.

Balanced Ensemble Sound
    Students in our top ensemble have relied on all of their fundamental skills to prepare for the University of South Carolina’s Band Fest. This is an honor clinic where two invited ensembles perform and several hundred band students participate in the weekend. We are playing two works at the opposite ends of ensemble sound: the first movement of the Hindemith Symphony followed by Grainger’s Walking Tune. Hindemith wanted to create a string orchestra feel and did not want the audience to hear the various instrument sections. With the opening trumpet line, he has the horn play at the bottom register of the trumpet line. My principal horn plays only for two measures; her goal is to act like a bass trumpet and bolster the low trumpet sound. Then, the trombone enters in the mid-register to bolster the sound there. I do not think Hindemith wanted you to notice the horn and trombone entrances. He is featuring this incredible, thick, and rich trumpet sound in multiple registers.
    We have worked really hard to get our sounds inside one another. We will play a chorale with just the trumpets and tubas. Then, trombones and horns will enter, and there should only be a difference in volume, not in color. That took considerable practice. I might ask the woodwinds to close their eyes and tell us which sections are playing. If they can tell a trombone is playing, they weren’t inside of the sound enough. On the flip side, I see Walking Tune as a big chamber ensemble. Grainger features various duets and solo lines. When the oboes play, he wants you to hear that.

***

Handling Chair Placement
    Our community is very performance based. Parents think about their child and forget that there are others. They feel that their kids should move up to a higher chair every year, but sometimes people improve and move down. We send a letter with these points right before auditions.

    I wanted to send this email with a couple of thoughts. Concerning placement auditions:

    Stop! Before you discover your placement, remember:

1. We care about you.
2. Sometimes, the lessons we don’t want to hear are the ones we must learn. They prepare us for life.
3. Life is hard. I’m sorry, but it is at times.
4. Reactions should be professional. Celebrate or mourn away from this area.
5.  Do not tell anyone their placement. Do not take pictures and send them. Everyone deserves the chance to discover these just as you did.
6. The quality of each band is going up. Scores that would have reached CB2 in previous years are in Chamber Winds this year.
7. If you did your best, that is all you can do. You can only control your level of effort.
8.  If you have questions, you come to talk with us in a composed manner. No emails will be addressed unless you have spoken with us personally. We will be honest with you because…
9. We care about you.

    It is vitally important that we keep perspective. We have experienced some of the highest achievement in our band’s history. We have four times the number of people applying for leadership than we have positions. Many great things are happening, but there are also those times when events don’t work out the way we hoped. I would ask the following considerations:

1. We are all here for the betterment of your students. We care about them deeply.
2.  We are hired to give them the best musical advice and experience we can possibly give. We must assess them as best we can. We have the best staff in the country, in my humble opinion.
3. Many are working hard and taking private lessons.
4. Emotions can cloud judgment.
5.  Students’ careers in music are always in a state of flux. We must take a snapshot through auditions to capture their progress in that moment.
6. Students are always in a state of flux. Position or title does not always determine leadership potential.

    I auditioned for drum major three times in high school but never got it. I now teach around 1,000 drum major students each summer. I grew stronger by having to reevaluate myself each time. I would not trade those minor defeats for the major victory I now enjoy.
    Parents, I would ask that you allow students to advocate for themselves with face-to-face contact with us should there be any questions. If after that direct communication, parents would like further information, please feel free to contact us.

***

Learning from Others
    One of the best parts of any festival is the chance to learn from other directors. Directors sometimes get closed off and nervous when someone else comes in to watch, but that is the best classroom that I have ever seen. When I see people work, even if the ensemble is less advanced than mine, I always walk away with one trick for a certain instrument that I didn’t know.
    At honor band weekends, it is important to be in there from the first moment. The first ten minutes of the rehearsal set the tone. If a director fumbles with a score or is not ready to go, the ensemble will also struggle. It is also important to record rehearsals often. We record quite a bit, and the best use is to play it right back. The ensemble gets better instantly. We don’t even need to talk about it, because students can hear the places they need to improve. The improvements are still there days later.
    Be extremely specific with score study. If you ask my symphonic band about the Hindemith Symphony, they will say there is the opening exposition with two overlapping themes. Then, you have two other themes overlapping each other. Then, there is a third theme followed by a development section in measure 78. I will say “let’s go to the development section,” and they learn exactly where to go without hearing a measure number. That comes from knowing the score backwards and forwards.
    I communicate such detailed information about the music even with younger groups. It is false to think that they can’t handle it. With younger players, you may not be able to talk about Neapolitan 6th chords, but we find analogies to explain what is happening in the music. With the right example, you only have to explain a concept once. Making it personal for students, instead of telling them to play out at letter G, is so important.
    I have learned to simplify rehearsals over the years. Instead of focusing on six things that will not be retained, I touch on two things that students will remember to make right in many pieces in the future. Most directors try to fix too much in a limited time. If I want to work on releases, I might highlight six places in the music where we will work on them, but we are just thinking about releases. That has so much more success. I have rarely found it effective just to start at the beginning and play.

Working with Parents
    We have a powerful and supportive group of parents. My goals are to bring as many parents along and be as open as possible about the program. Over my first three years at Wando, trust has developed with the parents. I have three rules that I live by: I’m going to keep your children safe, I’m going to be as fair as possible, and I’m going to set your child up for as much success as they can get. Once they knew I was sticking by these, the trust level really increased.

The Social Aspect of Making Music
    Once at Marian Catholic, we surveyed students about their reasons for participating in band. The top two results were friends and travel. I was devastated that music was not at the top, but Greg Bimm told me something every high school teacher learns. He said that everybody starts in music because it is fun and cool. Rather than fight the social lure of music, we use it. We tell them, “is it more fun to hang out, or is it more fun to be great?” We talk about how rewarding it is to play great music and feel something you have never felt before. They realized that the best way to honor each other is to do your best.
    Sometimes peer pressure can be used to improve the program. If students decide not to attend a rehearsal, they feel pressure from the other members of the group. We encourage students to give encouragement to their peers. When an upperclassman and an underclassman spend time together, it doesn’t matter what they do. It could be playing duets or sharing a pizza. The younger student is simply amazed that the upperclassman wants to spend time with them.

Using Every Gift
    We choose student leaders by many factors. We have leaders who are not part of our top group; certain people are the best fit for a position regardless of playing ability. I have a student in the second band who is on the leadership team but rehearses with the third band due to a scheduling conflict. He is a major player in our program. He sits with those younger players and fixes problems before I even have to address them. He always tries to do the right thing, and students look up to him.
    I have a student in the third band who helps line the field every time. His willingness to pitch in is important to me. Some of the lowest ranking players can have great influence.

Never Give Up on Anyone
    My first mentor, Bob Buckner, who was director of athletic bands at Western Carolina used to say “the world would be a better place if everybody did band.” It is one of the few places where everybody can belong. Everybody can have a role. The best part is that everybody’s role affects everybody else’s role. I want anybody and everybody to be a part of that process.
    This philosophy takes creativity and flexibility. We require marching band of every player. We thought long and hard about this requirement, and think there is great value in having the last chair player in the same group with the first chair player. I often will try to put our weakest and strongest players side by side in the warmup. The weaker players skyrocket and develop quickly. Marching band helps develop a sense of character and community, and we wanted every student to share in that experience.
    We have a broad spectrum of students, including some who want to be professional players. I have two fantastic oboe players and having them play flute in marching band did not seem as beneficial. Our double reed players all play a secondary instrument, but every Tuesday, all of our bassoons and oboes spend the first hour of marching band playing chamber music. We call this our Double Reed Society, and it occurred even on the Tuesday of Grand Nationals. They work on anything from chamber pieces to audition music. We will sometimes have a teacher come in and work with them.
    We strongly encourage teachers to pull students out of marching band for private lessons. Our private lesson teachers love marching season because they have three nights a week that they can pull out kids and that almost triples their enrollments. We try to find ways to make marching band fit into a future professional player’s life.
    Some students have physical issues that prevent them from marching successfully. We have all kinds of options to include them. I might use a player who does not participate in the drill as a soloist. They might help with props or sound equipment, but what is important is that they have a role in the community. We had a student who wanted to play football this year, so we made it work out that he could do both. I never want the program to be so demanding or restrictive that it eliminates somebody. I am very proud of that we have never kicked someone out of the program. That has been a team effort. We think hard about how to make the program work for every child, regardless of their challenges.

Making It Work
    Transfer students sometimes have difficulty because they have not had the same training as students from our incredible feeder schools. I had one transfer who arrived to audition in October and struggled. I said to his mom, “I don’t know if this is going to be right. I don’t know if we would be doing him a service.” The mother broke down crying. She said, “Our family is breaking up, we are moving across the country. He went to a school of 200; this is a school of 4,300. The only reason I could get him out of the car was because I said we would go down and make sure that he met the band director.” I decided then to make it work.
    We have had to make all kinds of accommodations, but he is doing really well. Whenever I see a kid who might not be a good fit for the program, I am reminded that music is the most soul-reaching subject that anybody will ever take. If I deny someone that opportunity, I had better be sure. The decision can affect their entire life.

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What do you play first?
    I am against teaching quarter notes too early. I like to take my time on long tones until students produce a consistent sound. Every time we learn a new note, we turn on a drone and go around the room in many different ways.
    One exercise we do when learning a new note is to start with the bass voices and focus on a good bass sound. I start with the student who has the strongest sound, whether this is a tubist, bass clarinetist, or bari sax player. That students starts, and all other bass voices play to fit into that sound.
    When the bass sounds good, we add the tenors. I describe it as painting on another layer. We’re adding to it, not covering it up. We do talk about the pyramid of sound, but I don’t harp on it. The visualization is good, but I have heard a lot of directors say, “The pyramid! The pyramid!” and little more. Instead, I stop the group, and we start layering the sound from bass on up again to experience the pyramid. Because we do this in unison right from the beginning, as we start repertoire, I can stop on a chord and say, “Measure 42, beat three, bass,” and then tenor, alto, and soprano instruments are prepared to come in when cued.
    I was out on paternity leave earlier this school year, although I occasionally came back to the classroom for a few days here and there. One class sounded rough, so we spent 45 minutes on long tones. I mixed things up, using different pitches or instrument groupings and giving them breaks, but students’ cheeks were feeling it by the end. The next day, they sounded great on the exercises they learned without me.
    When I do introduce quarters, it is framed as moving the tongue, so that students learn that the air never stops between quarter notes. All tonguing should be legato at first. In the beginning, progress seems slow, but because the tone develops so quickly the way we do things with long tones, we move faster in the end. By the end of the school year, students can handle grade 2 music, because when they are confident about their sound, they hit pitches. I think a lot of students will play a note, and if it sounds bad, they think they are doing something wrong and eventually lose the desire to keep playing. Because we worked hard on the tone in the beginning of the year, we accelerate quickly through the book.

How does a typical band class run?
    After the room is set up, I always give students a few minutes to play on their own, which gives me time to take attendance and give out any supplies students might need. I used to have them come in and sit silently in position before we could start playing together, but I think it is important that they find their sound for two to three minutes before we start. I give frequent quizzes on scales and repertoire, so students know to get to work rather than play with cell phones or talk with friends.
    After this, I clap my hands to get everyone’s attention, and then either a student or I will start warmups. I don’t like major scales and marching band type drills for warmups. I think those are just physical warmups, which are better suited for student practice time. Warmup time is about developing the ensemble sound. We work on balance, unison playing, or harmony, and this takes up at least half the class. At the beginning of the year we might not touch repertoire for a few weeks. Even before a concert, if the class doesn’t sound good, we work on the sound rather than the repertoire.

How do you develop a good ensemble sound?
    Ear training is key, and singing is the fastest, most efficient, and most effective way to develop the ear. In Japan, students learn to sing in primary school, but this is not the case in the United States. To get students comfortable singing, we start with humming long tones. The next step is to start with a hum and open the mouth to an aah sound. This creates resonance and gets students comfortable with projecting the sound. From there we start with unison singing and gradually expand to harmony.
    The bass clarinet is a useful instrument for developing the ear. Ask a bass clarinetist to play written C4, and have students listen for the overtone a 12th above and then sing it. When the perfect fifth this creates is in tune, the bass clarinetist should change to F3. The overtone you want students to hear is the high concert G, which is a whole step above the overtone the C4 produced. The bass clarinetist then moves to G3, giving students the leading tone, and then back to C4 on the bass clarinet, which should get students to naturally progress up to the octave, even though it isn’t an overtone on the bass clarinet. The first time I tried it, half the students went up to do, the other half dropped back to sol.

    People should pay more attention to overtones; this is where this pure intonation comes from. If the bass instruments weren’t playing with overtones, it wouldn’t matter, because we wouldn’t get the dissonance between their overtone and the pitch of the higher instruments. If we play a concert Eb chord, and the bass clarinet is on that low F, students have a ringing major third overtone to tune to. If students are not trained to adjust their thirds, then it will sound rough, but if you have a drone that can be set to 13.7 cents flat, you can use it to play the third against the bass clarinet’s low F. Have the bass clarinetist start, add the drone, and then fade the drone back out. Everyone should still hear that overtone ringing.

How do you teach balance and blend?
    Balance is the chord, blend is the instrument’s voice. Students should know their voice and which part of the chord they have. In a Bb major chord, a trombonist playing D4 should know with which instruments the sound should blend – possibly a tenor saxophone, horn, or alto clarinet – and that the D should be a little flat.
    Numerous modern band pieces have ninths and thirteenths, but one, three, and five are more than enough to keep students’ ears busy and working all the time. I don’t think any director has a band full of students who know that they’re playing the 13th, but everyone should promote awareness of the root, third, and fifth.
    I help students hear harmony by having them play the first note – no matter how short or long it might be – of each measure of a passage as a whole note. The chord might change a few times per measure, but that is not what this is about; the point is to help students hear the direction of the harmony from measure to measure, so they play more in tune going forward. We often do this as part of our harmony training in the first half of class, especially if a passage is particularly tricky.
    This technique also works well with marches, especially the fast ones. It is difficult to think about tuning when the fingers are flying to cover all the notes. This can show students that we might be on a I chord for four measures before moving to a V chord. Now they know they have four measures to build toward a target: the chord change.
    The flutes might have F, F, G, G, F# as the first notes of five measures. This is easy enough to memorize after just a few seconds of study, meaning now they can focus on keeping those notes in tune and listening to the rest of the group. They should be able to figure out what part of a chord each note is and adjust accordingly.
    Do not move on if an exercise doesn’t sound good. Make sure that a chord is in tune before moving on, for better or worse. It might make the repertoire less tight rhythmically in the concert, but I would rather students have a lasting sense of good intonation and take that to college. Their college director will get them to play as an ensemble with their new ensemble. I’d want them to be prepared for that.

How did you develop your five-note tuning ritual?
    Our jazz band saxophones got really good at tuning to concert A. It didn’t matter where their mouthpiece was; they could always find A because their ears and embouchure flexibility were both good. They would always find A, but then they were out of tune once they went to play. It proves that you should never tune to one note. The trouble with tuning only to one of Bb, A, or F, is that students only get good at playing Bb, A, or F. That isn’t the same as being in tune. It is better to find the average of a few notes, so my students learn a sequence of tuning notes. Once a musician’s ears are good enough, they can bend notes to fix pitch quickly.

    I have graded tuning before, meaning I made it a grade in the grade book that you have to match these pitches quickly by ear – no visual tuners were permitted. It sounds crazy, but everyone was able to do it after two weeks. I teach students to play their tuning sequence on the piano, so one would sit at a keyboard and play the notes, and the others would tune themselves and each other. Now they tune each other in rehearsal, in sectionals, and everywhere else. I don’t have a tuning ritual; it is considered individual work, and a student might raise a hand in rehearsal to ask to go to a keyboard and tune.
    Before students played at the Midwest Clinic as part of my presentation, the flutes were having a rough time tuning, so I sent them to the corner to go figure it out together. They all huddled up in the corner and went through the notes together, checking against the lead. I think it is good to make students obsessed about tuning. You get them to believe in it, and then they practice it.

What are other ways you motivate students to practice?
    I run a voluntary summer program for four to five weeks with help from alumni and older students. At the end of freshman year, I introduce all 12 major scales. Their summer assignment between freshman and sophomore year is playing all 12 major scales in one octave. They are allowed to read music when they play the scales, but the assignment still scares them. My offer is that anyone who comes in for at least 25 hours over the summer is exempt from those quizzes when school starts – and they get 0.25 enrichment credit. There is a double incentive for students. Some students don’t need to get out; they would ace their playing quizzes anyway. Others do not need the enrichment credit. These students still come in. This past year, it was 70-75% of the students in band put in at least 25 hours over the summer.
    The summer program is also open to incoming freshmen. We send home a letter saying that students who attend the summer program receive the enrichment credit and are guaranteed their first choice of instrument. These students get a head start and often turn into my leaders for the freshman band because they played with older students over summer. They feel more confident going into their freshman class and leading, because they made friends with students in the junior and senior classes.
    During the school year, students are required to pass off on their concert music or they are not permitted to play the concert. I assign passages in the music, and students have to score 90 or higher to play with the band on the concert. Auditions are two weeks before the concert. Most students make the concert. This is my way of getting everyone to work harder. Some people believe everyone should have the experience of performing, but there are some students that take away from the ensemble. If one student practices an hour a day, and another only touches an instrument in band class and is disruptive to boot, I find it unfair to those who worked hard to let the slacker perform.

Students at Pritzker often practice in groups before or after school. How did this culture develop?
    This started partly because I realized students couldn’t practice at home and partly because I didn’t want to lose class time listening to playing quizzes. I made students come in during office hours, and if a student just quizzed with me and got a 95%, I’d say, “Hey, I’ll give you 100% if you go help your section mate in the practice room right now.” Students saw this as easy extra credit, and that evolved into a culture of helping each other. Working in groups also happened naturally because students were in the same room practicing, so the altos would group up and practice the same exercise together, and the trumpets would group up and help each other.
    Older students are responsible for teaching the younger students, and they like to do that. They feel pride that they have something to share with younger students. I haven’t taught how to put a clarinet together in eight years because there are students who could teach it better than I can.
    When I observe a senior teaching a freshman, rather than talk to the freshman about problems I see and hear, I talk to the senior about them. I’m teaching them how to teach the beginners. I can teach beginners one on one, but the older students are better at their primary instruments than I am and can more easily demonstrate good technique and sound production. Build up the strongest players, and they will spread their expertise to the rest of the group.

Pritzker students tuning at the 2016 Midwest Clinic.

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