Band directors are in a different time dimension.
Defying all laws of physics, time moves faster for the band director in rehearsal than it does for students. For students, marching band rehearsals in 100° heat slowly while away, but time speeds by the director like a racecar in the Indy 500. What seems to students like ample time to prepare for a performance is totally inadequate for the rehearsal-deprived band director. A poor performance is, to directors, the end of the world as they know it.

Band directors are extremely sensitive.
   As a contest nears, a band director has a growing tension that builds right under his skin. It is somewhat like lava boiling right before it explodes through the earth’s crust during a volcanic eruption. Questions from students during this period cause him much pain, both emotional and physical. Treasure the few smiles that you see during this time.
   Band directors are heartbroken when students quit. Their love of music makes it difficult for them to fathom why anyone would dislike it. They see talent in students as something to be treasured and nurtured. When a student quits, it is like a diamond, however rough, spinning hopelessly down a drain. A student who quits is also a lost investment of time. Don’t worry though, band directors are also resilient. Students will come who restore their faith in what they do and why they do it.

Band directors believe that no one understands them.
   It is quite possible that no one does. The band director is the only person in the school district who knows what a European professional extended polypropylene double contra fipple flute is and shows great frustration when the school district does not see the need for it and will not buy it.
   A band director believes his jokes are funny despite all evidence to the contrary. If you could force a small chuckle at his lame attempts at humor this would improve his morale, although you risk having to hear more.
   This basic inability for people to relate to them is why band directors have such a tremendous time at band conventions; they’re like puppies that have escaped from the backyard and are running free around the neighborhood. Here, at last, are others who understand them – their ups, their downs, their stories, their jokes. They can sit in a lounge chair, convention freebies stacked at their feet, and talk for hours with band directors they have just met because they understand.

Band directors see almost everything from a musical perspective.
   This trait can be annoying but it’s best for you to just mumble in agreement in situations when you are regaled with their opinions. For example, if you have just finished watching a movie, expect a conversation like the following:
   You say: “I really loved that movie. I wouldn’t mind watching The Man from Snowy River again.”
   He says: “It wasn’t bad, but there’s no way that girl would have been playing that song on the piano. It’s not like they had a modern pop style in the 1800s.”
Or something like:
   You say: “Wasn’t August Rush inspiring?”
   He says: “The music was good, but a child isn’t going to be able to play a guitar that well in three weeks. It takes at least 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert.”
   Sporting events and entertainment provide even more opportunities for his expertise. While watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament, he may be the only one who actually listens to discover which university has the best pep band. During a sports movie he will evaluate how good the band is the few times it is shown or heard. (From my experience, most of them are bad.)

The band director does not believe his job is more important than his family, only less forgiving.
   There is a unique stress involved in being a band director. It is sobering to know that his ultimate success or failure depends on his ability to convince hormone-crazed adolescents that it is imperative that they perform Rocky Bridge Overture flawlessly. But convince them he must, even if it means spending more time with other people’s kids than his own. Even if parents can’t tell whether the music is flawless or riddled with errors, he knows. His pride won’t let him accept less than the best from his bands. Would you really want it any other way?
   Hopefully, these basic guidelines to understanding band directors will not scare you away from a relationship with one. Almost all professions have their particular idiosyncrasies and quirks; but few have the beauty of music to make them more than worth it.   

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   Given the relative values of the art of music, it may well be that absolutely perfect intonation is an impossibility. But that a goal is unattainable is no excuse for not giving one’s utmost in the attempt to reach it, or at least to approach it as nearly as possible. That is art.

   So what are the implications for us as flute players? First, itʼs important to understand that there are certain acoustical and physical laws that make it impossible to build a flute (or any other instrument, for that matter) that is in tune. Accordingly, a good player must have sufficient control to adjust the pitch up or down as needed.
   This adjustment can come from accommodating the tuning tendencies of other instruments with which we are playing. It may have to do with dynamic levels; pitch rises with an increase in volume and drops as it get softer. This can be a particular problem when playing with the clarinet, which has the exact opposite tendency.
   Frequently adjustments are necessary due to intonation deficiencies of the flute itself. Of particular concern is the third octave. Everything from Eb through Ab tends to be sharp, often very sharp. The high A and Bb are not generally a problem in that regard, but the high B and C are both extremely sharp.
   One option, of course, is just to play out of tune and wish it were better – not what any good flutists would want to do. Another is to lip down. This can be accomplished by directing the air more downward. If the degree of correction is too much however, it can impair the tone quality, which can make that option far from optimal.
   A third choice in some instances is a fingering alteration. There was a time when the mere thought of doing such a thing was abhorrent to me. I must have thought flute fingerings were brought down from a mountain, inscribed on a stone tablet, and to depart from them in any way was to put oneʼs eternal salvation in severe jeopardy.
   Finally the day came when I took a more rational look at the situation and realized that, much as I love my instrument, it is just a hunk of metal with holes in it. What I really want is the best pitch and the best sound possible. If that means closing or opening a vent somewhere, so be it. Iʼm better off, and the listener most certainly is as well.

A Few Basics
   First, manufacturers build flutes with some tuning latitude so that players can tune higher than the standard A=440 when necessary. The headjoint, therefore, should not be pushed in all the way except in extreme circumstances. I might add that I donʼt ever remember an occasion when I or any of my students found it necessary to do so.
   At the same time, pulling out too far distorts the flute’s overall scale, sometimes grossly so. A good indicator is to check the three Ds. If you donʼt have good octaves, especially between the top two, you can be sure the headjoint is pulled out too far. This invariably results from placing the embou­chure plate too high on the lip, causing the air to go too far across the hole.
   Band directors often tune young flutists by eyeing a tuner and instructing them to pull out until the tuner looks right. That works, but only if they play nothing but the tuning note, and the student and director can live with a breathy, airy sound, completely lacking in focus. This is treating a symptom (the player is sharp) and ignoring the disease (the embouchure plate is too high). I’ve found this to be true of the great majority of young players I see.
   Another factor affecting intonation is a misalignment of the headjoint. When sighting the embouchure hole from the footjoint, the hole should be in line with, or perhaps slightly to the left of, the key closest to the headjoint. It is surprising how many students are off, sometimes severely so.
   I should also add a word about the end plug or cork that is in the closed end of the headjoint. Julius Baker, my teacher at The Juilliard School, taught me that if the cork is moved just a smidgen towards the crown, the lower register comes up and the upper register comes down. It also opens up the sound and makes any flute more responsive. Do not move it up more than a 32nd of an inch, however, or you will destroy the intonation and turn a prized expensive flute into a intonation nightmare.
   Incorrect fingerings can cause poor intonation. It is appalling how often fingering charts, especially in beginning band method books, show high Bb with the left-hand first finger down. This creates a flat pitch, a poor sound, and a less responsive note.
   I would add that too many young players know that the pinky should not be down on the top Bb, B, or C. There are occasional exceptions, however, for the Bb and B. If you are going rapidly from A to Bb or B and back to A, itʼs perfectly acceptable to leave the pinky down.

Third Octave Fingering Alterations¹
    • For a sharp high E, remove the right-hand pinky to lower the pitch and provide increased stability.
    • Add the right-hand ring finger to high F to lower the pitch.
    • Substitute the right-hand middle finger for the ring finger on high F# to bring the pitch down.²
    • Add the right-hand middle and ring fingers to the traditional high Ab fingering to bring the pitch down. This incidentally is a very common practice among top players all over the world. If the high Ab needs to be lowered still further, remove the pinky.
    • Add the right-hand middle finger to high B to lower the pitch. A better fingering, though awkward in some contexts, is Th, 1    3/    6 and both trill keys.
    • High C is the most problematic of the bunch. The easiest correction, though not usually sufficient, is to finger it traditionally and add the middle finger of the right hand by closing the ring but not covering the hole (referred to as half-holing). Adding the thumb makes the response more difficult, but lowers the pitch quite a bit. A third possibility is to use the regular high-B fingering, but without the thumb. Neither the response nor the quality is ideal, but it can be a lifesaver in some situations, i.e. at the end of a fast chromatic scale that ends on C, such as in the Duttilleux Sonatine and Martin Ballade).
   For those with a low-B footjoint, add the gizmo to the regular fingering and all the other altered fingerings above except the last one. It improves pitch (slightly), quality, and response.
    • High Eb and high G are both ordinarily quite sharp. Unfortunately, there are no fingering alterations for those notes that yield truly satisfactory tone. I can only make a couple of if-all-else-fails suggestions. For high Eb, remove the pinky. It results in a rather harmonic-sounding quality, but the pitch is lower. The G is even less satisfactory, but if you find yourself in octaves with the clarinet or oboe, for example, and their pitch is on the flat side, finger high F# without the thumb.
   One last word about fingering. Most flute players know that C# in the staff is sharp, and they often add one or more right-hand fingers to compensate (my personal favorite is left-hand 3, right-hand 5, 6). I should hasten to add, however, that it is not always sharp, but usually so.
   Many flutists, however, incorrectly assume that the C# above the staff is also sharp. This is not true; in fact, it is most often flat. Adding fingers will only make a bad situation worse.
   Finally, there are three things that determine the pitch on the flute: 1. speed of the air (faster = higher, slower = lower), 2. angle of the air (lower air stream, lower pitch and vice-versa), and 3. the distance from the orifice to the strike edge. The shorter the distance, the lower the pitch. You can test this by simply playing a note – 3rd-space C would be a good choice – and pushing in the headjoint with the right hand.
   Iʼll conclude by stating the obvious. In the final analysis, the only criterion for success is: does it sound good?   

¹ Numbers 1, 2, 3 represent left-hand fingers;   4, 5, 6 represent right-hand fingers.
² The tone quality is quite acceptable; the same is not true for the first two octaves, although finger 5 may sometimes be used as a technical expedient.

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Elementary School
   A tuba for an elementary student should be in the key of BBb with three upright valves and a bell no bigger than 15" across. Upright valves work best for younger students because they make the instrument easier to balance and protect the valves if the instrument is dropped. The bore size should be no larger than .670, and the instrument length should be no longer than 32", which produces an instrument width of 14-16" across. These types of tubas will be listed as three-quarter-sized tubas, and some makers at one time even made half-size tubas with smaller dimensions. Get a hard case to help protect the instrument; most come with wheels to help students transport the tuba. The stock mouthpiece that comes with the instrument should work fine. The majority of tubas appropriate for elementary students will be from American makers, who usually make instruments with three or four piston valves. European and Asian makers will use piston or rotary valves or a combination of the two, and their instruments have three to five valves.

Middle School
   Middle school directors should have tubas of different sizes to accommodate students as they grow in size and progress musically. Sixth-grade players should still use the same BBb tuba as in the elementary program. This familiar instrument feels comfortable and allows them to continue their musical growth without the distraction of a new instrument.
   Most seventh and eighth grade students hit a growth spurt. For them it is ideal to have small tubas similar to what a sixth grader would use, as well as a larger instrument with front-action valves. I recommend a BBb tuba with three piston valves, a bore no bigger than .690, and a bell no bigger than 18". The body length should be no longer than 36". Piston valves are more durable than rotary valves. Rotary valves are easier to use but have more moving parts for students to hit, damage, and lose. Many American and Asian tuba makers manufacture three-valve, front-action tubas; European makers are more likely to offer rotary-valve or upright-piston tubas. Nice four-valve instruments may be tempting, but students this age usually lack the pinky strength to use a fourth valve well. A three-valve instrument lets students focus on holding the tuba and moving valve tuning slides to adjust pitch.

High School
   High school directors should own at least two three-quarter tubas and two four- or five-quarter tubas. The biggest mistake I often see is a five-foot-tall student with a 40" tall, five-quarter tuba that has a 20" bell. Such a student will not just struggle to play an instrument this big, he will struggle to get it through the door. When a tuba is too big and unwieldy for a student, it is difficult to play the instrument comfortably, let alone play with a good sound.
   A good small high school BBb tuba should be 34-36" long with a 15- or 16-inch bell and a bore size of .709. High school students, even the smaller ones, should be able to handle a four-valve instrument. At this level rotary valves are a good choice; they have a quick response and smooth valve movement, and the finger paddles are close together, making it easy for students with small hands to play. Directors who opt for piston-valve tubas should choose a model with the valves arranged in a curved setup to help with the ergonomics of playing. Front action valves make a tuba easier to hold and free the left hand to adjust pitch by pulling tuning slides.
   Four- and five-quarter BBb tubas will be 36-40" long with bells ranging from 16-20". The bore size will be between .740 to .850, and it is worth noting that the larger bore on these instruments will produce a bigger sound that will surprise students coming off a three-quarter tuba at first. Such instruments with piston valves will have larger valves placed farther apart because of the increased bore size. Rotary valves on these tubas are also available and are easier to damage than even those on a three-quarter tuba. Given how much tubas cost, it may be better to get one with piston valves.

Marching Band
   High school directors looking for an option for marching band can choose convertible tubas or sousaphones. Convertible tubas offer two tubas for the price of one; the leadpipe is detachable and can be set for concert band or marching. The instruments are usually well-made and extremely durable, and students can use the same instrument all year. However, these instruments usually come with only three valves, are made in one size, and are sometimes difficult to hold in either the concert set up or in the marching set up.
   The sousaphone adds an expense of providing two instruments for every student. Sousaphones can be used in concert band, but this is usually frowned upon. Sousaphones are easy for students of any size to hold, and the option to buy brass, silver, or fiberglass instruments offers a couple of weight choices. Another added benefit of sousaphones is that when marching season is over these instruments can be taken home and used as practice instruments.

Advising Parents
   When the parents of a tuba player ask what that should buy for their child, and there is no private teacher to consult, I recommend a four-valve BBb  tuba, unless the student is planning to major in music. In this case it might be good to consider a CC tuba. A student who plays on a piston tuba should stay with pistons, and if he plays a rotary tuba, he should stay with rotary valves.
   Make sure that the student works with a music store while shopping for a tuba. This will allow a student to try instruments before buying one and makes it easy to handle problems that arise before, during, or after the purchase. Once you have an idea about the student’s budget and whether he would like a new or used instrument, and the local music store is on board, students should try at least three instruments of various sizes from one maker. Once a size has been chosen the student should try that maker’s instrument against two others of the same size. This is a good way to narrow down the choice.
   Tubas are one of the few instruments with numerous variations between valve set-ups, piston or rotary, bore size, bell size, key, new or used, or to choose a maker, stencil, or clone. No other instrument offers more variation on the way an instrument is made or set-up. This makes the tuba a misunderstood instrument by many. Knowing the basics of why the sizes, different valves, and number of valves exist helps you to pick the right type of tuba for your music program.              

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Tuba Sizes:Tubas come in BBb, Eb, CC, and F. The most common key for tubas in American schools is BBb, but tubas from the early 1900s are likely to be in Eb. In Europe Eb tubas are just as common as those in BBb. Tubas in CC and F professional tubas are used in orchestras across the country. The CC tuba is the primary choice of professional musicians, music students, and teachers.

Terms:
Maker: the company that makes the instrument.
Stencil: a tuba made by a maker who was paid to put a different name on it. This can be for a music store wanting its own line of instruments. Marketing agreements in different countries may forbid one brand from being sold in multiple stores, so a stencil gives makers an opportunity to sell instruments in different places. These instruments are usually the same quality as the makers and sometimes even come from the same factory with different names stamped on them.
Clone: a copy of another maker’s tuba. This company generally does not stamp their name on the instruments, but puts the names of other stores or importers there instead. Companies that clone instruments do not develop new instruments, whereas makers research new styles, sizes, metal combinations, bore sizes, and bell sizes.

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Early Steps
    Even very young children can recognize whether simple musical choices make sense. With beginners we start by playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and end on a pitch other than the tonic; the children immediately recognize that it sounds wrong. At first we may overblow and create nasty sounds to make them laugh, but after a few funny endings we play wrong notes with a good tone so they hear it as musically wrong instead of merely funny. Then we sing the tune but stop before the last note and ask them to sing the note for “snow.” Most find the correct pitch. The exercise is repeated and students are asked to end with something that does not fit. This type of exercise is the first step to teaching how composers make logical choices.
    Beginners do not have the highly developed inner hearing of accomplished musicians, so they should write music only with sounds they can make on their instruments. To hear the sounds as they compose, they should sing or play each pitch. As students mature, they can begin to use sounds that they cannot play, but it seems that restricting them to two or three notes early on assures that they think about the flow of the melody carefully. The leap from composing with only sounds students can produce to more difficult music should be accompanied by other guides to prevent the pieces from lapsing back into random sound.

Composition Lessons
    We begin to teach composition more formally with second-year students during small group lessons that occur about three times a month. We introduce ear training and composition exercises for five minutes at the beginning or end of class, or as a break from playing in the middle. We start by playing a few phrases and ask students if they end correctly. Then students get three or four notes to start a two or four-measure phrase that I will finish. Students have only 30 seconds or so to write these short phrases. To complete these tunes, one option is to simply repeat their phrase and point out that many band pieces have similar short, repeated patterns. We also do the opposite, beginning a phrase with three pitches and asking students to finish it using the same pitches. It helps to play the phrase a few times or teach them to play it so it is solidly in their ears.
    Use these techniques to develop listening skills as part of daily warmups and expand them by asking students to improvise melodies or responses to the director’s phrases. As the class becomes comfortable responding, make it more difficult and ask them to compose two measures for the teacher to answer. More advanced elements including repetition within a phrase, dynamics, range, mode, and articulation.

Note Progression
    Compositional choices should sound consistent with a work’s style. For example, there are conventions that establish how a piece should end, and if a composer strays too far from these expectations, it will not sound right to listeners. To help students understand how to progress through a melody, have them compose in teams of two to four. After determining the key, meter, and other parameters, the first student writes down a note. The next student plays that note and chooses a note or rest to follow. Team members take turns until the melody sounds complete. The students hear the melody before writing the next note, so they can plan a coherent sequence instead of writing a random series of pitches.
    One requirement for student compositions is that the whole band should be able to play what they write. This can be tricky because the best three or four players write pieces that most students cannot play. Large skips might make musical sense based on the emotion or idea the piece conveys, but they should be revised because young trumpet players cannot jump from C4 to D5. When this happens, We tell the student it is a good piece, but ask him to revise it so that everybody can play it. Because they are second-year students the clarinet parts stay below the break. It creates some odd voice leading, but that is better than attempting pieces not everyone can play.

Phrasing
    Most students write logical phrase endings early on, and sharper students start to end phrases on the fourth or fifth to lead to a longer melody. When that happens, help them to continue so it ends on a tonic. The best students can write tunes that follow the standard harmonic rules but do not sound bland or predictable.
    What comes in the middle of phrases often causes problems, but most intuitively write two- or four-measure phrases that end on the tonic. The most common mistake is that if we ask students to write a piece with four beats per measure, they tend to have too many or too few beats in some of them. This seems odd because so much beginning band music is in two or four.
    When students are given pitches for a melody, they are allowed to compose alone or in groups, but most prefer groups. Later in the year they are required to work together because cooperation is so important to band and orchestra. One student acts as the leader and writes the first few notes of a melody and the others write ideas to extend that melody.

Creating Longer Projects
    During the second or third year of band or orchestra, students should learn to write pieces inspired by places, events, or things. This often comes naturally because they hear so much incidental music in movies and television. They understand why a piece of music that sounds right for a car chase will not fit a scene of fishing on a pond. A class composition project organized around a story provides a framework in which shorter student compositions combine to create a larger work. We use a variation of the game Mad Libs to develop a musical program for the piece. This is a funny, often nonsensical story created by filling in blanks with a requested part of speech. The students come up with a list of people, places, things, and actions and vote to choose one word from each of these categories. For example, they may pick a pizza delivery man for the person, a garage for the place, a hammer for the thing, and a race for the event. Each small group chooses a word from the list, and the members each compose a short melody for it as a homework assignment. Once these pieces are finished, they vote for the one in their group that best fits the word. The teacher can guide students and help them notate the compositions but should not offer too many musical ideas.
    If a group writes a piece that does not seem to describe the word they picked, we will give them an example of what we might do for that word. Usually they see why it fits better and decide to revise their piece. We try not to squelch creativity but explain that composers make choices and some make more sense than others. If the students insist that the piece fits with the word, then we use their work in the band piece. If they think a flute trill for two beats describes solid, that is their choice. One of the more advanced students writes the short pieces on staff paper and then enters all of the music into notation software.
    When all of the pieces are finished, we connect them to make a longer piece for the band. The product is not the most musical, but we try to make it as coherent as possible. For example, if two groups of clarinet players write pieces for the word car, transpose both to the same key and try to fit them together. This year the band had eight or 10 different words, and there were 20 small groups, so three did the noun, one did the adjective, and four did the person. The director can write percussion parts to go with most of the wind pieces and occasionally light woodwind and brass accompaniment for the percussion compositions if it seems to fit. It is not Mozart or Beethoven, but it instills creativity.
    While teachers may feel that there is barely enough time for basic musicianship skills, teaching composition has many benefits. Students develop a greater understanding of the structure of music and notation and train their ears to understand the connection between notes on the page and the sounds they produce on their instruments. Perhaps most importantly, teaching more than the basics of instrumental music develops the minds and imaginations of students.

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Notation
   At first we write down the students’ compositions for them. Younger students should think about creating without becoming bogged down by notation. The limited amount of class time we have for composing also makes it more practical for me to write, since we can do it much more quickly than the students.
   During the year at least a dozen students come to us with pieces they have written outside of class. They bring something scribbled in a form of notation they invented. When students show that initiative, we teach them staff notation. A good exercise is to give them staff paper with melodies to complete, and require neat notation. Tell students that other players should be able to read their writing.

A Simple Composition
   Last year’s band chose the word hyper as the adjective for a story. A group of four clarinettists wrote a piece for hyper with clear articulations and dynamics as well as repetition to suggest that the hyperness increases in intensity.

The post Beginning Composition Lessons appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Practicing Tuning
   A good daily tuning exercise is Carmine Caruso’s six-note exercise, although I extend it to 13 notes, from written C4 chromatically up to C5. Students can use any notes in a comfortable range for this exercise.

   I recommend doing this exercise with the tuner on early in each practice session. Although it is good to vary how you warm up and practice, this tuning exercise is the one part of my routine that never changes. It takes about two minutes, and from this exercise I can tell whether I might have difficulty with intonation on any given day. Sometimes the room temperature can cause flatness or sharpness, but other times my embouchure might simply be stiff from working hard the day before. When consistently flat, just push the tuning slide in rather than fight it.
   Students can also play through this exercise as a part of warming up before rehearsal. Many tuners can pick up just one person, even in a noisy room, and it is better to take care of tuning before rehearsal starts.
   Students should record themselves and review the tapes to see how in-tune they are. I am often my toughest critic, as is true for many people, and listening to a recording will make apparent any poor intonation in my playing. I recommend recording to check pitch at least once a week.
   Twice a year students should survey every note on their instrument with a tuner to see where the natural center of each pitch is. Every note on an instrument has a center, a pitch where the note is naturally most resonant. Ideally this is at zero on a tuner, but that is not always the case. I recommend doing this in spring and fall, because the temperature of the room should be fairly consistent; doing this in spring and fall eliminates climate as a possible reason for a change. Any changes noticed should be changes in the ability to control the instrument.
   A musician may need to bend the sound, but to know which way to move off the center of the sound, it is necessary to know where the starting point is. For example, on a trumpet, E5, Eb5, D5, and C#5, the notes played on the fifth partial, are usually flat. If one of these notes is the fifth of a chord, the player will have to bend the pitch up quite a bit more than the usual two cents to be in tune. When playing, students should be especially aware of the notes that are difficult to get within five to eight cents of zero on a tuner.
   Students should work on coming in right on the sweet spot of each note; sometimes a student may slide into the center of a pitch because articulation bends a note sharp or flat. I practice this by playing a scale in every key every day.
   Use a drone to practice bending pitch. This is one of the best ways to learn the pure widths of intervals, the point at which there are no beats in the sound. In fine tuning, there will be considerable playing that is slightly off-center, as much as 16 cents sharp for the third of a minor chord to 31 cents flat for a minor seventh. The ability to bend the pitch even further than these limits ensures that these extremes are easy to hit. Musicians should strive to be able to bend the pitch 20-40 cents on any note at any dynamic. I recommend playing both intervals and arpeggios with a drone.
   Every instrumentalist should have a bag of tricks for changing intonation. Trombonists have the easiest time of this; their main slide is easy to use for fine tuning adjustments. As a horn player, I was taught to adjust the embouchure looser for flatness or tighter to be a bit sharper. Changing the tongue or jaw position can also change intonation. Alternate fingerings are another way to change pitch, as some fingerings are flatter or sharper than others. Hornists can also adjust the right hand; adjusting how cupped or flat it is will affect pitch as well.
   Some notes on woodwind instruments are extremely inflexible. For a major third, the distance between those two notes should be lowered 14 cents. However, this doesn’t always mean that the person playing the third should lower his note; it may be a difficult note to adjust on his instrument. The two players should communicate about such things, and if the player with the third can only lower the pitch seven cents, the other player should bend the root sharp to make up the difference. This may be the only way to eliminate beats.
   Although checking an instrument’s tendencies is  best done in temperate weather, students should also learn what happens to their instrument during temperature extremes. There were studies done on this back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tubas and horns are most affected by temperature, followed by trombones, flutes, and trumpets, with slightly less change in clarinets, oboes, and bassoons. Horn and tuba players should remember that temperature affects them more than it does other people; in a hot room they need to pull the tuning slide out.

Tuning Chords
   Take chords apart to tune them. The first step is tuning the root, which should be done with a tuner. Tune the lowest octave first. Starting with the bottom octave makes it easier for everyone to hear how they fit in. While tuning chords, students should play at mp-mf regardless of the dynamics written in the music.
   Tuning a chord should always start with the root, regardless of which instruments play it. If a major chord is in first inversion and the root is primarily in the highest-pitched instruments, tune these first. If the third is in the lowest instruments, they should tune last. This forces the low woodwind and brass players to think about pitch more than they may be used to. If tubas play the D in a Bb chord, starting with tuning that D to zero on the tuner is going to throw the pitch of the entire band off, as the instruments with the root will have to play 14 cents sharp for the chord to be in tune.
   If the low players adjust poorly, it can throw the medium- and high-register players off quite a bit. An error of four cents on a tuba playing the third of a chord doubles the beats per second with every octave. If that third is doubled or even tripled, the players in the upper octaves, if they want to tune a good octave with that tuba player, will have to double the beats. The tubas might only be off enough to create a few beats per second, which will not sound like a big problem, but an instrument three octaves higher will have eight times as many beats per second.
   When the root is in tune, add the fifth. If directors want to hear this note alone, it should not be at zero on the tuner; ideally it will be two cents sharp, a distance that few tuners can measure well. Turn the tuner off when the root is in tune. Again, start with the bottom octave.
   When the fifths are pure, add the thirds. For a major triad, the pitch should be lowered by 14 cents, and for a minor one the pitch should be raised 16 cents. After a chord is in tune at a medium volume, have students play it again at the written dynamic.
   I have my students sing frequently; this is the best way to develop students’ ears. Sometimes I tune chords using these steps, but by having students sing rather than play.
   The simplest chords are the most difficult to tune well. Chords with 7ths, 9ths, or 11ths are not as worrisome as the simple ones. Often, tuning dominant sevenths is an artistic choice; on a seventh chord it is sometimes acceptable to leave things a bit unstable. That may even be the composer’s intention. To eliminate the beats, it is necessary to lower a dominant seventh by 31 cents, but if the seventh appears in a middle voice, lowering it 31 cents will bury the note. Conversely, if the seventh is in the highest voice, lowering it by 31 cents might draw way too much attention to the note; sometimes it is better to leave some of the beats in.

Wind Players in Orchestra
   Orchestras use Pythagorean intonation, so it is beneficial to know the tendencies that strings have; they use this system because it gets rid of beats on their open strings. String players keep the same distance between do-re and re-mi, which pushes thirds higher than they would be in a band. Knowledge like this can help students adjust in advance.
   As an example, the orchestral version of Shostakovich’s Festive Overture has a section in which a solo horn plays a melody along with the cellos. Knowing the characteristics of the Pythagorean system will help a hornist play with a  cello section better; in this example the hornist, perhaps used to lowering thirds, will have to raise it to match what the cellos are likely to do.

   Each member of an ensemble should always assume he is the one who is wrong and adjust when something sounds wrong. The musicians who adjust the fastest are the ones who develop the reputation for playing in tune.                 

The post Taking Care of Tuning appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

   John currently teaches band at a high school in Brooklyn, and he has been very successful. He started his interview by describing his first-year teaching experience, which was in the North Bronx, where he taught sixth- through eighth-grade general music in a difficult school setting. “The students are almost entirely from the projects – very, very low income neighborhood. The school is the second to the last stop on the 5 train, adjacent to New York City’s largest housing project – a very impoverished school community; I was there for one year.”
   The position was very different from his initial expectations. “I was brought in under the assumption that I was going to be starting a band, but that was not really the case.” He was given an overwhelming number of sixth-grade general music sections, along with several sections of Academic Intervention Services (or AIS students).
   While John’s administration knew that his area of expertise was as a band director (he was a trombone major in college), he felt that his interviewers were so eager to fill the position that they may have misrepresented the job. “I was shown a room full of instruments,” he said. “It was a little messy, but they made it sound like they wanted me to start a band.” When school began in the fall, however, he discovered that he was really a full-time general music teacher, and he was also dismayed to learn about the future of his band program. “On my first day of teaching I went to that music room to start cleaning the instruments, taking inventory, and every single case was empty,” he said. “There was not a single thing left; they all had been stolen over the years by God knows who.” John began the year without a single instrument, but he was persistent and creative in his programming, not willing to give up on the band he thought he was employed to initiate. He started a drumming program and found funding through an After-School Beacon Grant program. He never did get enough instruments to start a real band, but he “did get about eight trumpets and a couple of trombones and a few saxophones, but that was not enough to meet the needs of something like 300 students a week.”
   John wasn’t entirely convinced after this first year that urban teaching was right for him; he looked for a new position and found a job in Brooklyn, where he continues to teach and is very happy. “I walked into a program that at the time had two bands, and the support was much greater.” He has been able to develop this program by adding a beginning band for high school students.
   He says that teaching students in an urban setting is not a lot different than teaching students anywhere. He also discussed his experimentation with different rehearsal techniques:

    I thought I would go down the line and hear them play individually. It completely backfired. The ensemble shut down. It didn’t work. I found that the only way you achieve discipline in a setting with students from an urban background is through the musical and aesthetic experience. Sometimes people will say you can’t do that and it doesn’t work in the real world, but so many teachers are not actually in the real world and they’re only able to get away with their bad teaching because they’re in such good districts. I find that you don’t get away with that in the urban schools. The kids will shut down. They won’t respond to it. It’s not worth their time. They have enough other drama in their lives that they are dealing with. If you’re willing to go in and you’re willing to work and just have the same high standards for them that you would have for the kids in the suburbs, you will be successful. A good director from the city is the same as a good director from the suburbs. You have to be willing to be flexible for a couple of years and maybe teach a couple periods of gym when you first get there, and you have to be able to advocate. It’s not so much advocating to parents in the community; you have to be able to work with administrators. Often, you have to know how to work with incompetent administrators; you have to show them how you can make their life easier, and then you get what you want.

   In John’s limited experience, he felt that some administrators were so overwhelmed with the amount of responsibilities in their own job that creating or maintaining a viable band was relatively low on their list of priorities.
   “The most important thing is that you just go do it,” John said. “The reason a lot of the city band programs fail is that they have poor directors. The city doesn’t really make a distinction of who they hire. They see that you are certified eighth-twelfth music and they’ll hire you.”
   John’s current school administration was very supportive and involved. Administrative support was necessary in order for him to raise money and receive grants for instrument purchases, but that support meant that they were sometimes very involved. “The administration’s hands-on approach is at times negative, but at the same time I would much rather have that than the apathetic administration that I had with my first program.”
   Another big lesson was in classroom management. When he taught in the Bronx, he had many students with undiagnosed severe behavioral disorders. He said,

    My first year teaching, I was breaking up a fight – which was almost a daily occurrence – and I was punched in the face by a student. I was not given any support by the administration. In fact, I was told that if I wasn’t really hurt I did not need to file a report. Many city administrators are under pressure and receive pay bonuses based on whether or not they get their school’s incident rates to go down. So the easiest way to do that is to not report them.

   When asked how he handled management in his own rehearsals, he said,

    It was difficult. I used the point system. I would work with their classroom teacher, who would see them more. It was hard to have authority over students that you only saw once a week or twice a week, especially when my classroom was by the cafeteria and it was completely isolated from the assistant dean and the rest of the school. Students were basically allowed to run through my room on their way to a scheduled fight. You had to roll with it, I realized, to avoid confrontation. I’m not saying avoid correcting bad behavior, but students were seeking confrontation. When I didn’t pick my battles, I learned I was providing them with attention that they were seeking and you don’t reward that. You give attention to positive behavior. Eventually, I learned to modify their behavior by keeping them busy. For instance, I would find a student who looked like he was about to give me a problem and I would ask him to take attendance or hand out the drums. I learned to give them responsibilities – so I found ways to give them attention for positive things that they could do.

   John said things are easier now because he has established a reputation. His professionalism and consistency as a role model has helped:

    I wear a tie every day. I stand in the hallway, and every time I see a kid wearing a hat, I ask them to take it off. I enforce the school rules to the T. I had to establish an atmosphere. For instance, rehearsals always start three minutes after the bell, allowing them time to get instruments and music. I walk to the podium and there’s silence. If you are not at your seat, you’re in trouble.

   John said that he tried many different things to establish this atmosphere, including making students stand behind him for the entire rehearsal if they arrived late. He did not care why they were late and did not allow for any excuses. Sometimes he made them play their parts for the ensemble if they were late. He found however that “there were some students who enjoyed standing behind me, so that was bad. Some trombone players liked it, for some reason, but for the most part they got the point.”
   John said that he tells students what the expectations are on day 1. He lets them know that he won’t tolerate negative attitudes or mediocrity. He knows some kids will quit but feels that his high expectations are best for those who want to make music and be part of the program. “What’s nice with my program is that I have complete control over my enrollment.” He comments,

   I told the students on the first day that if this is ever too hard for them or if they are unable to accept my policies, the door is right there. I know it is a little bit of tough love but at the same time, I started about one hundred ninth grade beginners this year and we are down to eighty-three right away because seventeen had to quit. The only requirement to be in my band is that they are expected to come five periods a week. I sit them all down and tell them this at the beginning. They have to give up their lunch to take it, plus two days a week after school. I don’t give aptitude tests. Students are expected to be at a minimum of five practice sessions a week with a journal entry for each one, and that is the basis for their grade. Every time they miss a practice session, it’s a minus two on their average. I basically explain to them how hard it’s going to be and if that doesn’t scare them away, if they want to do this, and if they can give me their word that they will keep trying even when it gets hard, then they can be in my program.

   This approach seems to work well, but he also believes one of the main reasons his students stick with band is for the friendship:

   This is the only disciplined environment many of them are in, in their entire lives. They enjoy the sense of camaraderie. There are two “high schools” in my building and it is interesting; one of the high schools has a very good reputation and one of the high schools is on the verge of being shut down. Students from both “schools” come together to be in the band. Most of the freshmen are from the school that is about to be closed, so for those students, band is the only disciplined, organized, coached environment in their entire lives. Their math class involves students throwing stuff at the teacher. Their home environment may consist of housing projects, where they are sharing a bedroom with four or five other siblings, or they might live in a group home. Band is a great experience for them. I told them and I promised myself that I would have the best band program in New York City.

   John was asked if he could identify one aspect of his teaching style that has changed or evolved during his first few years of teaching in New York City. He said,

    That’s hard to explain because it is sort of like watching a tree grow. You know it gets bigger, but it’s your tree so it is hard to notice. I’ve made many little changes, but one thing: I find I raise my voice less. I’m able to instill discipline more constructively. I’m more in control of myself and my program, and I think that affects the ensembles. I realize that most ensembles are actually a mirror of the director—a direct reflection of someone’s personality and attitude. Your students will behave the way you behave. Your students will value what you value.

• • • •

   Leslie teaches in an urban school district in Connecticut, where she is responsible for teaching elementary and middle school band, plus 120 recorder students each week. This is her second year in a district that she describes as a Tier One school – part of the lowest socioeconomic bracket.
   Her job description has changed slightly since last year, when she was split between two school buildings and taught several sections of music appreciation.
   She was asked to talk about her most memorable experience from her first year of teaching and she immediately told the story of the ten-piece middle school marching band that was required to perform in a parade three weeks after the school year began!

   Three weeks into the school year I had to take my middle school band to a parade; they didn’t know how to march. We only knew two songs, and I had maybe ten kids. The principal insisted that I do it for public relations reasons and said the parents would be very upset if we didn’t march – but they didn’t read music because their last teacher had taught them to play by rote. I had students who were playing a mellophone and thought they were playing a flugelhorn. We played the only three songs they knew from the Essential Elements method book. We marched to “Ode to Joy,” “Hard Rock Blues,” and “School Spirit March.”
   We had only had two trumpet players, so I asked a colleague to play trumpet with them so we would have enough melody. It was very stressful, and I learned lots of administrative things right away – for example, reserving the building on the weekend. I needed to make sure the principal was there, and I was in charge of finding parent volunteers. Then I forgot water for the kids. The actual parade was delayed two hours, and we walked up and down the parade route two times because the map they drew for the starting points was wrong, and I had to call all the parents on the way home to tell them that we would be two hours late. It was not exactly the way I wanted to get introduced to a program, as I know basically nothing about marching.

   Despite this rocky start, Leslie started to settle into the new job and learned a lot about teaching in the urban setting. Her first big challenge was to establish a routine for her classes and develop a curriculum for general music. She said,

    Things got better, but I had no planning periods and I taught four sections of middle school music appreciation, even though they already had general music. I was there to provide prep time for the classroom teachers, even though I didn’t get any. We did a survey of American popular music, and I traced the development of jazz through hip-hop, and tried to show them that jazz actually matters.

   Leslie said she started to develop the curriculum based on the things she had learned from a music history professor in college. She surveyed her students, asking them what music they listened to and what was their favorite radio station.

    I programmed their favorite radio stations into my car and listened to their music, and tried to find things I could connect back and forth from jazz to hip-hop. I know pop, but I had to really listen to hard rap and hard hip-hop, which I don’t really like. I went from there and tried to plan out a curriculum based on the music they liked. I searched lyrics online, and spent hours looking at the lyrics so I knew what was appropriate. “Urban Dictionary” has become my best friend – I’ve learned what all the slang means. We went on a field trip with the entire seventh- and eighth-grade class, and one of our students kept saying the word “Becky” over and over. It’s actually a really derogatory term toward females. I knew what it meant so I could put a stop to it. I have a whole new vocabulary since I began teaching in the city.

   Leslie had a difficult time earning the students’ trust at first. She had been hired to replace someone who was on paid leave; her predecessor had been accused of inappropriate behavior. In addition to her predecessor’s legal challenges, he apparently had given up trying to teach music. Leslie said,

    The kids would even admit that they could do whatever they wanted. They could show up whenever they wanted. Band was after school until he left in March, and then band just stopped. The district did not get a replacement band teacher. All the kids had their instruments over the summer, which isn’t supposed to happen because the district provides instruments. So, it was a very hostile environment. They just didn’t trust that I was going to be there every day. I spent a lot of time with kids – I stayed after school every day, and helped them with their homework in their other classes. On the first day of class I told them that I expected all band students to be honor students and I would stay after and help them with their math or their English or whatever they needed to just prove that I was really there. If they had baseball games or basketball or football, I would go. I would stay after the game and embarrass myself by playing basketball with them – anything to build that relationship with them.

   Leslie said that it took time before the students realized she was really serious and committed to them. While the principal didn’t seem to care about her challenge to the band students to become honor students, the teachers supported her efforts and even began communicating individual student progress with her.
   Leslie said she had good relationships with the parents who supported her efforts to improve academic success. Overall, her “band students as honor students” challenge was a great success. About sixty to seventy percent actually made the honor roll.
   Leslie did have one particularly difficult problem with one parent, however, during her first year. She described the incident,

   I teach on the stage in the cafeteria and there are many setup changes because I would get kicked out a lot and I would tear down after each class. Part of my percussion section’s responsibility was to get their own stands (we have twenty percussionists, three drums). During this setup time, one of my students got bumped on the head, and I sent her to the nurse right away. The nurse said she was fine, gave her an ice pack, and sent her home because it was the end of the day anyway. I found out later that day that she went to the doctor and was told she had a concussion. Then, she went and had an MRI, which was negative, but it eventually became this whole big thing. According to the doctor she was fine, but according to the parents she wasn’t, and she was put on bed rest.
   It became a year-long saga, and the parent kept sneaking into school on the days that I was there to try to catch me off guard. The principal kicked the mother out of school a couple of times. She sent a really nasty e-mail to every teacher in the school except for me saying how irresponsible I was, and how I don’t care about student safety. In the end, my administration was very supportive. The parent did make motions that she was going to sue – it really was this whole big saga. The sad thing is that her child is fine and wants to be in band, but the mother won’t allow her to be in the group anymore. It was frustrating. Here is a child who wasn’t allowed to participate in gym but was going to roller skating birthday parties. I understand she is an only child and I know it is very scary when something happens. You don’t know what is going on, but at the same time, accidents happen.

   Leslie talked about the instrumentation and recruitment of her band program. When she started, she had a handful of percussionists and a clarinetist in her top ensemble. She was determined to take this ensemble to adjudication festival, and helped them set this as their goal:

    I called it drum-line with clarinet solo because the instrumentation was five drummers and a clarinet. That was my band! At that point my beginners were still sharing instruments. I didn’t get instruments for every student in the band until March, so I took the drum-line to adjudication, and we used the MENC rating sheet. We scored a 2 out of 5, with 1 being highest. I sent a letter home telling the parents – it was really exciting.

   While all the extra effort does affect her personal life, she doesn’t appear to make a sharp distinction between her work and her life:

    Well, I played in a community band and a community orchestra last year. I think it’s really important for teachers to show their students that we are performers too. I teach privately for six hours on Saturday, so my kids know I’m really busy. I kind of have a life, but, it revolves around music. I had a standing dinner date with colleagues on Thursday nights before we started our rehearsals last year. Sometimes I would get to go out for a beer on Saturday nights if I was really lucky.

   Leslie quickly established solid classroom management skills. She said,

   I pretty much told the kids on day 1 that band was going to be different than they were used to. I told them that I expected them to work hard, and if they didn’t work hard they could stay after school for detention, and we’d go over how you participate in band. It took them a couple of weeks to realize that when I was behind my stand, it was time to make music. I didn’t actually have to issue any detentions. It took some time but they did get it. I keep my pacing quick.
   Last year my rehearsals were just a gift from God because so many times I was at a loss for what to do. I didn’t have a full band, and I teach in the cafeteria so people kept coming in and interrupting the rehearsal. The room wasn’t a dedicated music space, but the kids were patient. I think what worked in my favor is that I was so different from their last teacher. I just came in with energy, and was gung ho. I’m short but mighty! I told them that if they wanted to mess around I had parents’ phone numbers programmed into my cell phone.
    I did call a couple of parents in the middle of class. Sometimes that’s what it takes. Those parents were supportive and didn’t get defensive. One father came into school and programmed his cell phone number into my phone himself and told me to call him anytime his child misbehaved!

   Leslie said that things are a little different this year because her enrollment has grown tremendously. In some ways, her classroom management skills are more challenged because she has more students now and a diverse group of abilities.

    All of my veterans who are now in eighth grade are excited because many of their friends saw the things we did last year and have now joined band. My middle school band grew three hundred percent. I had a total of nine kids last year, and this year I have forty. It’s awesome – half of them have never played an instrument. I have kids who have played three and four years, and kids who don’t even know what their instrument is called. So, it’s an interesting balance of, “You guys go and practice your regional audition pieces while I show them how a saxophone goes together.”

   Leslie reminisced about an interesting behavior modification technique she tried on the first day of school:

   I made them go out and practice marching on the first day of school when they couldn’t control themselves. The first day they were having issues just quieting down long enough so I could say a sentence. Finally, I said, “Alright, we’re going outside.” They were really excited until I lined them up and taught them attention. I taught them their first step and they complained for about two seconds, until I made them start marching and it got better. They are finally beginning to understand what needs to happen in rehearsal. I’ve had to pull a few of my veterans aside to speak to them individually about their peer leadership. They know what needs to happen for us to be good again. And, they helped get their friends under control.

   Many first-year teachers struggle with classroom management because they don’t know what to expect from students. This was not the case for Leslie:

    I knew what I wanted – I wanted it to be like a collegiate ensemble, where you sit in your seat, you are ready to go five minutes after the bell rings, and you are warmed up. We are getting there. We’re not there yet – we are like a middle school band right now, but I’ve found classroom management to be very different between my big band rehearsals, my music appreciation classes, and my recorder classes. Band, I know what a band is supposed to look and sound like at any point in the rehearsal but recorder class? How many times can you play “Hot Cross Buns” a week before going insane? I try hard to not let the kids know how much I dislike recorder and to make it fun. We are starting a recorder ensemble this year so I think that will make it more interesting for everyone.

   Leslie talked about her concert last spring and the performances she is planning for this year. The students in this band program had never had a concert performance in the past so it was a big part of her job to educate the community about performance etiquette. She said,

   The children didn’t know what a band concert was. Because my elementary band kids saw me about ten minutes a week for instructional time and they didn’t have their own instruments until March, they were way behind – they weren’t even where most beginners are in December. So, they played short songs in chamber groups from the beginning of the method book. The parents didn’t know what to expect and were a little taken aback. And then in the middle, I had the drum-line play because everyone loves a drum-line. They worked really hard and deserved a spot on the concert, even though you might not normally have marching band play. I finished up with my advanced band of sixth through eighth graders. I recruited a flute player and a clarinet player at the last minute, and I asked a bunch of colleagues to play. I had bass trombone, another clarinet, and saxophone.
   We played a beginning band piece – I mean, six notes and they worked on it all spring. We got to run through it with faculty at the dress rehearsal. That was the only time the students actually heard the piece – live at the dress rehearsal, which was right after school the day of the concert. I kept all the kids after school by myself for four hours – I had eighty kids, and I was the only supervisor, so I just locked the cafeteria doors so no one could leave. We had a pizza party and I made cookies for them.

   Leslie talked about her performance goals for this year:

    We are doing two concerts, a parade, and band adjudication. I’ve picked the music for the December concert – it’s all beginning band music – no more than six notes because half of my band just started to play. We have some new cadences and my drum-line can play easy high school cadences. Some of them are writing their own. They are figuring out how to notate what they hear as I am trying to get them reading from both directions.

   Although Leslie was a relatively inexperienced teacher, she seemed fairly adept at teaching to her individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. She talked about the challenges she sees in her job because of a diverse talent and experience level. She said,

   When I walked into this job, there were two percussionists who just have a phenomenal ear for rhythm, perhaps because of the music they hear on the radio. Their ears gravitate to those complex rhythmic patterns, so when you ask them to play something they’ll play a rhythmically complex pattern even if it isn’t very melodically interesting. I try to give them different ways to connect what they already know to something more challenging.

   Leslie has asked these two more advanced percussionists to write their own music as a way to challenge them while she works with the less experienced students. She constantly finds ways to keep everyone interested and active making music. “I have to come up with different ways to get them to stay focused,” she said. “If they are each doing something that makes them kind of uncomfortable, they don’t smack talk with the other too much. We have enough smack talk!”
   When was asked to sum up the advice she would give to a first-year teacher, she immediately said,

   You won’t know what your first year will be like – there is no way to predict. You are going to show up on your first day, and you’ll have all these great ideas, and you’re going to realize that none of them apply to your situation. Take a deep breath every time you get overwhelmed. Go hide somewhere in the school – calm down.

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