Personality. Your personality is often the biggest draw for your students. They don’t have to take your class. There are usually other options, at least at the high school level. If they do not sense that you are fun and you love being with them, they will go elsewhere.
    Some of the most talented musicians simply lack a personality that attracts students, and their programs die off for lack of student interest. As I have observed myself and other teachers over the years, I have seen a tendency to let unrealistic expectations change the way teachers interact with students. For example, teachers should never depend on our students to build our professional self‐esteem. However, it is all too easy to get upset with our students when they make us look bad. I always remind myself that there is no room for ego in music – it’s impossible to make great music together when our egos block our emotional and spiritual energy.
    Our personality not only attracts students to our program but also provides a living example to students of what a passionate musician looks like and how much enjoyment music brings to life. Although great music making takes lots of hard work, our students should see that it is one of the greatest pleasures in life.

    Passion. Students can tell immediately whether you are passionate about what and who you teach. It shows in the rehearsal room and in performances. Remember, we help students to appreciate the aesthetic side of life. I believe that the aesthetic side of our natures is a huge part of what differentiates us from all lower orders of beings. Animals don’t appreciate beauty like we do. Humanity has been given the ability to appreciate beauty in nature, in art and in each other.
    More than that, we can recreate beauty in musical compositions and performances, graphic and visual arts, ballet, and other art forms. Music teachers have the privilege of helping students learn to love and appreciate the aesthetic side of our human natures. What an exciting gift!

    Programming. There must be a delicate balance between the music that the students want to play, the music we need them to play, and the music that the audience loves to hear. Each year there are pieces that are non‐negotiable: the standards of band and orchestral literature that the students need to learn. There are also the pieces that the students want to play because they are popular that year or fun for them to play. The great teacher educates and inspires their students to learn to love the meatier pieces rather than just the fun ones.
    Students may complain the first time you pull out a standard piece from last century or before. I always tell my students that they cannot complain out loud in rehearsal until after they have had two good performances of a piece. Inevitably, the pieces they complain the most about in the early stages of rehearsing eventually become their favorites, and the fun ones become boring after only a few rehearsals.
    The last component of programming is your audience. There must be a balance of music, so that they are entertained and educated by their attendance at your program.

    Performances. Our performances are the equivalent of the chapter, unit, and final tests in all the other classes students take. However, in our case, the tests should be the most exciting part of the learning process. Our students should be eager for every performance and know that they have done everything necessary for it to be successful.
    Our students need to learn how to differentiate a great performance from a poor one. Too often, for the sake of having bragging rights, we as directors choose music that is much too difficult for our groups to perform well. All music worth playing is worth playing well, and we do a disservice to the composer and to our students when we program pieces that are at a level they cannot realistically achieve. This is not to say that each year I won’t choose a piece or two that pose significant challenges to my groups. However, I always let them hear a performance done by professionals as our standard, and then I must prepare them well enough that their first performance of those pieces is good enough for them to feel that they have accomplished something great. If it becomes obvious that we cannot perform the piece with integrity, we have still benefited educationally and had fun challenging ourselves. Each successive performance of these pieces will get better, but students know when they have hit it out of the park on a first performance, and they know when they have blown it. It is our job as directors to prepare our groups in such a way as to build the trust that they must have in us.
    Try to have a person with trained musical ears in the audience to give honest, constructive criticism. The students benefit greatly from these candid, professional comments, especially if they are written out so that you can read them out loud at your next rehearsal.
    As a director I try to follow Sir Georg Solti’s philosophy. He was known for having very intense rehearsals, but being very relaxed in the performance. This approach makes the performance much more enjoyable for students as well. If rehearsals have been thorough, the performance can be more fun – as it should be.

    Preparation. When I first thought of this aspect of teaching, I reflected on my musical training. Eventually I realized that the ongoing process of learning is even more important than what we learn in school.
    In college I studied horn and instrumental music, but my first job included choir and handbells, for which I had much less training. I promptly found local professionals in these areas and learned everything I could over the next two years. I invited regional handbell clinicians to work with my groups, and took voice lessons and vocal pedagogy at the local university. These resources were essential for my growth and the growth of the students.
    Throughout our careers as teachers, we must model life-long learning to students, and take every opportunity to improve our teaching. Only then will our music programs stay viable and exciting in this age of budget cuts.

    Since that day, I have been asked many times about what it takes to run some aspect of a music program. Each time this happens I realize that it does considerable good to sit and think about what I will tell them. Just pondering on what we do as music educators and how it can be better done is valuable for all of us.

The post What It Takes appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

    For a young band, the fall semester is a time of refining playing fundamentals, developing technique, and improving reading skills. Also important to the development of such groups is the school year’s first performance; a fall concert lays the foundation for much of what will follow during the rest of the year. Selecting high-quality literature for the fall concert can go a long way in setting up success in subsequent performances and contests.
    When selecting music for the first concert of the year, I look for pieces that fit a few criteria. They should be high-quality pieces that the band members will enjoy working on. It is also important that the music presents teaching opportunities or even develops skills and concepts for pieces we will likely perform later in the year. The music should present an appropriate challenge to band members, stretching them musically while remaining within their ability to learn in the time allotted. Finally, all the concert selections should work well together, with contrasting styles, key signatures, and time signatures. Generally, I program a march, fanfare, or overture-type piece as an opener. This is followed by a lyrical work, and a contest-appropriate grade 2 piece.
    A primary goal in developing the fall concert is to program music that will help me teach my group how to play as an ensemble. Although the music should push students to grow technically, I do not want band members to get so bogged down with technique that it takes away from their ability to listen to the ensemble and focus on tone quality, intonation, blend, and balance. Students should know the role of their section at various points in the music and be able to watch the conductor.
    In my experience, here are some pieces that work really well for the fall concert. These are some of my go-to choices when programming the first performance of the year for my middle school band. Most works are grade 2, with some falling on the difficult side of that level.

    Accolade by William Himes (Curnow). This composition has a variety of styles, with exposed passages for practically every section. There are a number of opportunities to work on transitions between styles and tempos.
    Appalachian Morning by Robert Sheldon (Alfred). This beautiful, lyrical work has a number of solos.
    Apparitions by Brian Balamages (FJH). In addition to being seasonally appropriate for October concerts, this piece introduces young players to contemporary sonorities, uses extended techniques in the percussion section, features a number of soloists, and sounds much more difficult than it is.
    Blue Mountain Saga by Stephen Bulla (Curnow). This short work contains many of the rhythms and skills students will need to master before performing more challenging music in the spring.
    The Blue Orchid by William Owens (TRN). This work features the trumpet section and has great teaching opportunities for rhythm, style, and transitions.
    Broken Bow by Carl Strommen (Alfred). In addition to presenting contrasting sections, this piece emphasizes dotted eighth-sixteenth rhythm patterns and gives bassoon players a chance to play the melody.
    A Childhood Hymn by David Holsinger (TRN). This tune will be familiar to many students and is an excellent choice for developing lyrical and expressive playing.
    Country Wildflowers by Larry Daehn (Daehn). Another piece that emphasizes lyrical and expressive playing, this work also presents opportunities to work on lifted ends of phrases, which can be quite difficult for young players.
    Dance at the Lake of Miramoor by Barry Kopetz (FJH). This lively work comes together fairly easily, allowing directors ample time to work on dance style and phrasing. The piece also contains chromatic passages and a contrasting sustained section.
    Dance of the Harlequins by Larry Clark (Carl Fischer). The eighth note-two sixteenth notes rhythm is prevalent throughout. This is a good piece to develop endurance, especially for students in the trumpet and clarinet sections.
    Down by the Salley Gardens, arranged by Michael Sweeney (Hal Leonard). Although this composition emphasizes lyricism and expression, it does so while also giving percussionists more to do than in most pieces of this type.
    El Tango by Rob Romeyn (Alfred). Accidentals, particularly those that carry through the measure, are found throughout this work.
    Electricity (Race Around the Circuit) by Brian Balmages (FJH). This rhythmically challenging piece forces students to count carefully.
    The Falling Rain by James Swearingen (Barnhouse). This is a great slow piece on the easier side of this grade level.
    Flourish by Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark (Playintime). This concert opener can be put together very quickly, allowing teachers to focus on style, blend, and balance while also permitting ample rehearsal time for other works.
    The Fortune Teller’s Daughter by David Gorham (Wingert-Jones). A great seasonal piece in 34 time, this composition has sections for exposed flutes and trombones as well as a number of accidentals. 
    Gadget by Randall D. Standridge (Grand Mesa). This contemporary work allows the low brass to shine.
    Highland Legend by John Moss (Hal Leonard). The trumpet section is featured by itself at the opening. This piece includes a number of styles and makes a great introduction to 68.
    Japanese Pictures by Kevin Mixon (Carl Fischer). Several styles are featured. There are abundant open fifths, which will take careful work on intonation.
    Jungle Dance by Brian Balmages (FJH). The clarinet section is featured at the beginning, and the percussion section has great parts throughout. The saxophone section has melodic material.
    Last Ride of the Pony Express by David Shaffer (Barnhouse). This composition makes for a great introduction to meter changes and hemiolas.
    Our Kingsland Spring by Samuel Hazo (Hal Leonard). There are great opportunities to work on 34 time and transitions between fast and slow tempos. Flutes are exposed at the beginning.
    Shackelford Banks (Tale of Wild Mustangs) by Jay Bocook (Hal Leonard). Solo flute is featured at the beginning, the timpani part is difficult, and the low brass have an extended melody. The dotted eighth-sixteenth rhythmic figure is found throughout, and many entrances are on the upbeat.
    Shaker Variants by Elliot Del Borgo (Alfred). This is a contemporary take on a melody familiar to students.
    Suspended Animation by Patrick J. Burns (Daehn). This piece is great for introducing contemporary harmonies and teaching the concepts of tension and release.
    Synergies by Robert Sheldon (Alfred). Contrasting styles abound, and just within the first few measures there are calls for almost every different type of articulation style found in music for young band.
    The Tell-Tale Heart by Michael Story (Hal Leonard). This composition is great for a concert around Halloween, and it is a good choice for teaching matching styles on like parts.

A Few Grade 1 Works:
    Carnaval by Michael Sweeney (Hal Leonard). This piece features trumpets at the beginning and gives young percussionists a chance to shine.
    Colliding Visions by Brian Balmages (FJH). The two contrasting sections offer a number of teaching opportunities, and the saxophone section is given more to do than in many works at this grade level.
    Dark Fortress by Rob Grice (Daehn). This fast piece has low woodwind and brass parts that are more involved than many pieces at this grade level.
    Drive by Mark Williams (Alfred). This is a great introduction to jazz styles and harmonies.
    Egyptique by William Owens (FJH). The melody moves around in scale-like passages that will challenge students without overextending them.
    To Reach the Summit by Michael Oare (Hal Leonard). This extremely simple piece works well as a concert opener and can be used to teach independence of line and augmentation.
    Top Secret by Larry Neeck (Barnhouse). A fun, tuneful piece that students and audience alike will enjoy, this piece reinforces a variety of articulation styles and contains question-and-answer phrases between the woodwinds and brass.

Recommended Marches
for Grades 1 & 2:
    Activity March by Harold Bennett, arranged by Larry Clark (Carl Fischer)
    The Big Circus by Robert E. Foster (Wingert-Jones)
    Legacy March by Steve Hodges (Alfred)
    March of the Irish Guard by James Ployhar (Carl Fischer)
    Guadalcanal March by Richard Rodgers, arranged by James Curnow (Hal Leonard)
    Military Escort by Harold Bennett, arranged by Larry Clark (Carl Fischer)
    Newcastle March by Johnnie Vinson (Queenwood)
    Norland March by John Edmondson (Queenwood)
    Pride of the Regiment by Nancy H. Seward (Wingert-Jones)

The post Fall Concerts for Young Bands appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

    My first teaching position was a small band program in a 6-12 school in North Carolina. It may have not been my dream job, but it was full of experiences that will remain with me for the rest of my career. The ideas discussed below would have benefited me greatly had I known and followed them at the start of my career.

The Band’s Role
    When I first took over the job, I was unsure of the band’s expected role in the school. It took me two years to figure out what my principal wanted out of the high school band. Eventually I learned that he really liked to hear from community members, especially those in leadership positions, about how grateful they were to the band for volunteering to perform. The principal saw the band as a good community liaison. Although some administrators want to see a competitive program, mine did not care about competition; he wanted us to promote the school.
In a rural area the band program is an important representative for the high school. It may be one of the only performing or service groups available. We performed in six parades and up to twelve community events during each year. These events took place throughout the county, which had a total population of about 60,000. We performed at Christmas tree lightings, local festivals, and other events, such as Relay for Life, Habitat for Humanity, and the Veterans Day parade.
    We once received an invitation to play for the corporate members of Butterball after they had called at the last minute and requested a jazz band. The students stayed for extra practice after school for a couple of days to make sure we were prepared. Our performance was well received, and after we played for them, Butterball made a donation to the band program. We also gave a similar performance for Mt. Olive Pickles, which also sponsored us.
    Another notable event was playing a Christmas concert at a church in a tiny town. This concert was memorable to the students because of the great hospitality they received from the church and town members. The audience fed the students and spent time getting to know them after the event.
    It is essential to develop friendly relationships with the local mayor and other community leaders. These relationships sometimes started with simple phone calls. I once called to ask the mayor if we could give a Christmas concert, and he loved the idea. In the following years when the mayor continued to ask for the band to perform, my principal was excited to have us out in the community. This made it easier for me to get permission when I needed to ask about other performance opportunities.
    Many teachers fall into the trap of thinking that their class is the most important in the school, but in a small school with only 200-450 students, everyone must share. It took time to figure out that I had to set priorities and work with other teachers. In the time shortly before concerts or marching performances, I had to approach other teachers and say, “You can have these students these days if I can have them on these other days.” This required considerable communication, and sometimes it would take a week to develop a schedule for shared students. One year a football player was also a member of the marching band. I could only have him for two days before a game and half of practice the Monday after a game, but we made it work. I retained many students in the band program because I was willing to share them with others.
    Get to know your fellow teachers and be a team player. Let the teachers in the school know that you are there to help them, too, because teaching is a team effort. There will always be one or two teachers who are unwilling to share students. Get used to it, but remain positive.
    Few teachers in the school realized how much community involvement the band program had. The school published a monthly newsletter, and I asked the person running it if we could have a fine arts page. My wife, who taught middle school band and choir, and I used it to print a calendar and pictures.
    We also developed a culture of service in the band. Students had a daily assignment to pick up a piece of trash from the floor of the school and throw it away. In addition, every time a new faculty member started, my leadership team would deliver a welcome package consisting of a school t-shirt, bumper sticker, window cling, and some of the cowbells that were used at football games. At first, this was just a good way to get rid of a few extra items in the band room, but when the new teachers sent emails saying how nice it was, I realized that this was a good way to build a rapport.

Students and Community
    I taught in a rural community with a diverse population of students, including a large number of migrant Latino students. Understanding the makeup and culture of the community can help in recruiting. I learned to limit participation in marching band competitions because many students needed to attend religious services on Saturdays.
    Sometimes the way a director runs a program may not be the best for the community, of which band students are an extension. Decisions must be made based on how important competitions and social activities are to students. If these topics are overlooked, they can cause a great deal of frustration during the school year. When deciding on structural ideas for your program, try to consider these values.
    If you only have thirty-five wind players, and five of them hate your ideas and quit band, that’s a big enough percentage to set the program back. Five of these players could be your entire low brass section, and even losing one player could wipe out an entire third clarinet section. It sometimes worked best to provide options and to allow the leadership team to vote on some of the music we played. This was how I approached marching band. For pep band at football and basketball games, the students picked out arrangements of standard pop tunes that they knew and liked.
    For concert band performances, I picked pieces that I thought students would enjoy and that worked with the limited instrumentation we had, but in class, we would read and rehearse pieces they had heard other bands play and wanted to try. We played them in class, but we would not perform these pieces because we lacked the instruments to make them work.
    That said, students can sometimes be overzealous with their ideas. With a small school it is difficult to have multiple ensembles because there are too few students to fill them in a traditional sense. I noticed all of the ensembles offered had the same students in them.
    We put on an annual talent show and spaghetti dinner to give students a chance to perform in a small setting. That was our best fundraiser. The original plan was just to have a spaghetti dinner, and then my wife proposed getting students to play. It was scheduled for Valentine’s Day, so she suggested making it a jazz night. Two hours of jazz band was impractical with the number of students we had, so eventually we decided to make it a recital night. Students could play individually or in chamber groups, and they loved the idea. We had a jazz quintet that played 20-30 minutes of music. One student was a singer-songwriter, so he gave a 15-minute performance. The drumline ended the performance, and this became a tradition. We set up a flute choir and a woodwind quintet, and the students rehearsed for this by themselves.
    The first year it was an easy sell, and we made $3,500, but the second year we booked the event on the same night that a local church was holding a fundraiser. We still made around $2,200. A number of people went to the church and then came to our fundraiser. They did not eat but still bought the plates. When scheduling events, it is a good idea to check not only the school calendar, but also the community calendar.

Teacher Characteristics
    Flexibility was the key to making the program successful. I had to get past what I wanted and understand that the students really do come first. Many young teachers fresh out of college are excited and filled with hopes and dreams. It took about a year of trying my ideas before one of my students suggested something that the students wanted to try. I let them try the piece and did not worry about it other than to have fun, and the students had a blast.
    For marching band I asked students what kind of culture they wanted for Friday night. They had seen college bands do some fun things. Through that we found a way to meet in the middle, doing some things I wanted and other things the students wanted, while still having a high-quality program and getting a good education.
    Keeping the students the main priority is important. This is true for all music programs, but it especially matters in a rural school. Get to know the families, as this will help in getting the students as well as the parents on your side. When band members know that you care for their well-being, they will support you forever. This is important at schools of all sizes, but it is even more beneficial in a program with only 20-60 students.
    One of the best things I did in my first year was to stand in the parking lot and meet with the parents after marching band practice. I asked them how they were and told them what we had done that day. This made the parents and students feel that I was approachable. I also stood in the hallway every day and joked with students.
I told students from the beginning that they could come to me with anything. There were a few early incidents. One student got into a lot of trouble one year, and when I stuck up for him, the other students noticed. It took a year and a half for students to decide that I meant it when I said I would help them.
    One night, one of my section leaders called me to say she had run away from home and was scared. She asked if I could come pick her up. I called her mother to talk with her, and my wife and I got the student home safely. The mother and I had a good relationship, and when I called her she said, “I’ll keep calm, just bring my daughter home. She won’t answer my calls.”
    Another key factor to remember is that you will be the only source of music education for the faculty. Embrace this role and help teachers with any music or musical technology question they may have. It always pays to help others.
    Never make fun of the town or community. When you go out in public, remember that there will always be a student or parent who will see you, so keep your behavior in public professional. In a rural area there are usually few places to eat or visit, so many people will observe your behavior.
    For those who are young and single, it can be difficult to relocate to an isolated area with a limited population. Find ways to keep yourself entertained and enjoy the beauty of the rural areas. Take weekend trips to stay refreshed and visit friends until you become rooted in your new community.

Curriculum
    Designing a curriculum for a small school took me a couple of years to really grasp. Small schools necessitate limitations with class offerings, and as a result, many of the ensembles you want to create have to be held after school. By my second year I learned that I had many more grand ideas than one person could implement and fit within the schedule.
    We ended up having a concert band/marching band class in the fall that would be concert band-only for spring. The administration would not change it to be concert band-only for the whole year; we had to have a combined marching/concert band class in the  fall. This was difficult because many of the middle school students who wanted to be in band did not want to march. Ultimately, we changed the approach so that marching band was treated an extracurricular activity, and I allowed a few students to continue participating in band without marching. These students were given alternative assignments, and they were able to continue in band. One of the reasons the students did not want to march was that they did not like the uniforms. To make the uniforms seem cooler, we asked the girls’ varsity basketball coach to dress up in one of the marching band uniforms and lead us through a parade. She agreed, and it was a huge hit.
    In addition, there was a small jazz combo after school. The jazz combo would meet after school, pick out tunes, arrange them, and rehearse them. I attended all of the rehearsals, but this was a student-led ensemble. The students loved it. We also tried to put together a big band, but every single band member wanted to be in it, which was too much. In the end we compromised by playing a big band piece arranged for concert band once a year, which was a good way to give everyone some jazz experience.
    We also had a percussion ensemble that met after school. This group was open to anyone, but because many percussionists were athletes and played basketball, I couldn’t have them after school in winter. We offered this ensemble for middle and high school, and each year the ensemble performed at a local university day of percussion.
    My wife ran a non-competitive winter guard. At a 6-12 school, we had to work around both middle and high school basketball, and there was no gym time available for anything except basketball. We did a stand-still winter guard routine with dancing and choreography, but there was no drill. We had uniforms and everything else, just no floor. This became a staple of the curriculum, and it was also our big recruiting tool for color guard for the fall. The winter guard only performed at basketball games and the spring concert.
    Many teachers in rural areas may be asked to teach classes outside of their specialty, and for me this meant teaching concert choir and show choir. Concert choir was held in the fall and show choir in the spring. The students organized all of the choreography for the show choir. I could help them with staging and music, but the students themselves handled the choreography.
    When choosing music for concert band, think realistically about your instrumentation. You do not have to play the same concert music you played in college to be successful; on the contrary, this music usually will not work in a small setting. Rewrite parts or choose music from flex literature; there are many options for teaching high-quality literature in small program. It is also worth noting that a competition or festival is sometimes not an achievable goal. Find alternatives to these types of events. One alternative that a nearby band director and I used was to take our ensembles to a local university and play for the band directors. The students enjoyed the trip because they were off of school grounds and could spend time on a college campus.

    When taking this position there were many things I did not consider that could have made the experience more successful. Over time I developed ideas on how to make the program work. Following these ideas helped me to build the program and made what could have been a difficult job into a great one.

The post Teaching in Small High Schools appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

    Although memories of beginning band have become cloudier with each passing year, I can still remember the process of trying out instruments during the first few weeks of school. I joined band wanting to be a trombone player and was happy when the director said that it might be a good fit for me. She also suggested that I might do well on baritone or tuba.
    I had some idea of what a tuba was, but I had never heard of a baritone and was even more confused when I saw one. Here was an instrument that played in the same range as the trombone and used a similar mouthpiece, but it had valves instead of a slide. I tried playing baritone and sounded good on it, but I did not understand why it existed or what its role in the band was. When the director agreed to let me start on trombone instead, I felt relieved.
    Years later when I started university studies as a music education major, I began doubling on this instrument, which the professors there called the euphonium. It was at this time that I first learned the characteristic timbre of this instrument, as well as its important place in the concert band sound.
    Judging from the sounds I hear from high school euphonium players, the confusion I initially experienced with this instrument is not uncommon. Even students who have advanced technical skills often fail to produce the beautiful characteristic sound of the euphonium. These students often have no idea that this characteristic sound is even possible, and without any such concept, they do not know how to begin achieving this sound.
    To address these areas of confusion, this article briefly considers how to develop the correct sound concept for the euphonium, how to achieve that sound with the right technique and equipment, and how this timbre fits in the concert band’s tonal palette.

Sound Concept
    The most important step toward producing the characteristic timbre on any instrument is to start with a correct mental concept of the instrument’s sound. Developing a good concept of euphonium sound is sometimes hindered by a tendency of beginning and intermediate bands to pair the euphonium section with the trombones (which happens because these instruments often double each other’s parts). As a result of this approach, many beginning euphonium students conceive of their instrument’s sound as akin to that of the trombone. The sound that results from this concept is often a timbre that is somewhat darker than a trombone sound, but the sound is not the warm and rich sound desired from the euphonium.
    This tendency to mimic trombone sound can be corrected by teaching students to think of the euphonium as a tenor tuba. The tuba represents an appropriate sound concept for the euphonium because, after all, the euphonium is the tenor member of the tuba family. To develop the tuba sound concept, euphonium students should be taught from an early age to listen to the tubas and to emulate that type of sound, rather than trying to sound like the trombones. To further promote this concept, it may also help to seat the euphonium and tuba sections next to each other.
    Recordings of great euphonium players also are valuable in helping students develop a good sound concept. These recordings give students useful models of the correct euphonium sound.

Blowing Technique
    Although a correct sound concept is the most important part of achieving the desired euphonium timbre, there are also technical and equipment-related steps that should be taken. The technical step is a subtle difference in the airstream. Whereas the trumpet and trombone should be blown in a way that is very direct and energetic, blowing on the euphonium should be more relaxed and expansive. Point out to euphonium students that most of the tubing on their instruments gets progressively bigger through the length of the instrument, and ask them to visualize blowing in a way that is similarly expansive.
    I sometimes tell students to imagine that the entire ceiling is a mirror that needs to be fogged up when they play. This illustration helps students to understand that their blowing should be big but not excessively forceful, and  this simple mental concept often yields great improvement in very short order.

Mouthpiece
    The most common equipment-related impediment to developing a characteristic euphonium sound is poor mouthpiece choice. Because trombones and euphoniums share common mouthpiece receiver sizes, it is often wrongly assumed that a mouthpiece that works well on one will work equally well on the other. This tends to result in young euphonium players being given mouthpieces that are appropriate for beginning trombonists but too shallow to yield the best result on the euphonium.
    A mouthpiece with a narrow diameter but a relatively deep cup, such as the Schilke 46D, can help even first-year euphonium players begin to cultivate a dark sound while still using a rim size that is appropriate for beginners. As students become more advanced, this pattern of using euphonium mouthpieces that have deeper and fuller cups than trombone mouthpieces should continue, because this will facilitate the desired tenor tuba timbre. The Schilke 51D and 52E2 have long been standard choices for this purpose, although a number of makers have introduced mouthpieces expressly designed for the euphonium. Two such mouthpiece lines are the Denis Wick SM series and the BB series from DEG, both of which were developed in collaboration with well-known euphonium virtuosi (Steven Mead and Brian Bowman, respectively).

The Euphonium’s Role in the Band
    Although sometimes misconceived as just a slightly modified extension of the trombone section, the warm and rich timbre of the euphonium brings a darker color to the concert band palette. This timbre is more like that of the tubas than of the trombones, and yet in the hands of a skilled player it will become more than that. To grasp this, one needs only to hear a beautifully played euphonium countermelody in a march, with flowing slurred lines often soaring into the upper register. The euphonium’s cello-like voice is vitally important, and it is unlike that of any other instrument in the band.
    By cultivating a characteristic sound concept, teaching correct blowing, and helping students to choose an appropriate mouthpiece, directors can help their euphonium students pursue this beautiful sound from day one.

The post Quick Euphonium Tips appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

The Role of the Piccolo
    The piccolo has a unique and important role to play in any band or orchestra. Like other auxiliary instruments (English horn, contrabassoon, Eb and bass clarinets), the piccolo operates as an extension of the range of its parent instrument, and as a hyper-distillation of that instrument’s particular color. In the best cases, this miniature-flute is just that – a tiny instrument with an exceptionally agile, vocal quality that brings the flute’s expressivity, virtuosity, and coloristic variety to the extreme upper ranges of the ensemble. However, the dark side of this little flute is well-known. More often than not, listeners experience the piccolo as a weaponized woodwind, violently shrieking out the top line in ensemble passages, and the poor piccolo player is held hostage to the treacherous intonation of both the instrument and the harmonic series, coldly multiplying upwards into oblivion.

Piccolo Personality
    It takes a particular kind of person to embrace the challenges, potential pitfalls, and great rewards of playing an instrument like the piccolo. Although some methods of teaching start very young flute students on the piccolo (especially in South America), most flutists in the United States begin playing the flute in middle school and are not exposed to the piccolo until they have been playing for a few years.
    A good candidate for piccolo is a student who has developed strong fundamentals on the flute, particularly with tonal control, technique, and intonation. A flutist with a clean, efficient sound (even one on the smaller side) does well with the piccolo because such a sound usually generates from a controlled, firm embouchure. Embouchure control is of paramount importance in managing the airstream and allowing a flute player to transition to piccolo without just blowing harder to get the notes out.
    A good candidate for the piccolo chair embraces the soloistic nature of the instrument, but also has a cooperative nature. The piccolo is part of the flute section, and often doubles flute material. It is also the only instrument in the ensemble with the ability to play in the very top octave. It is a great thrill to be at the center of the action, riding the high moments of the band or orchestra, and this can be an excellent selling point for students considering piccolo. However, there are also plenty of moments when the piccolo player should compromise and blend to create beautiful colors that are more than the sum of their parts. An ideal piccolo player is someone who is both very independent and a good-natured collaborator.

Airstream and Embouchure
    Piccolo playing requires a great deal of support, but actually uses less air than the flute. The airstream is narrower, and the speed required to access the high register comes from channeling that air through the controlled, small aperture of the lips. Students learn to form a flute embouchure by imagining they are spitting a piece of rice or tissue off of the center of their lips (say “puh”). A good piccolo embouchure also relies on allowing the airstream to exit from a tiny, focused hole between the lips, and then sustaining that level of tone in the muscles surrounding the aperture.
    Firmness in the embouchure differs greatly from tension, and a flutist with an extremely tight embouchure may have trouble with buzzing on piccolo. Buzzing occurs when a narrow, fast airstream is forced through a too tight embouchure, and the lips cannot contain the airstream so they vibrate together. This phenomenon occurs mostly in the highest ranges of the instrument and can be eliminated by the counterintuitive solution of relaxing and blowing less. An excellent way to practice relaxing into the high register is to play slow, even, five-note scales (tonic to dominant) from the top of the staff, moving up by half-step, making sure to keep the airstream free but supported, and not shying away from the high notes.

Transposition
    Since the piccolo sounds an octave higher than written, it is useful to encourage students to practice piccolo parts on flute in the octave that they sound whenever possible. For example, if there is a piccolo solo in the top range of the staff that can be played an octave higher on the flute, playing the excerpt on flute first can help relate the aural result, as well as the necessary support and em-bouchure control, to the same passage on the piccolo.
    This is particularly helpful in the sometimes overlooked middle register of the piccolo, which can be unstable in comparison to the same written notes on the flute. Imagining that you are playing a high E on the flute, while playing the middle E on the piccolo can help center the tone and provide a reference for the necessary support in that register.

Technique, Vibrato, and Intonation
    Besides embouchure control, potential piccolo players should have control of their technique and intonation. Being half the size of the flute, everything on the piccolo is miniaturized. Technique should be closer, cleaner, and more economical. A student’s natural hand position should be comfortable enough on the flute to allow them to bring the whole apparatus closer to their face without increasing tension in the arms and left hand (for some smaller-bodied flutists, the hand position on piccolo can even be more comfortable than the flute, but this does not preclude larger students from comfortably making the transition). 
    The vibrato too should be smaller. Flutists with a light, internal, spinning vibrato will adapt much more easily to the piccolo than those with a thicker, slower, fuller vibrato. Again, students should relate the piccolo vibrato to the appropriate vibrato in the same register on the flute, and consider that vibrato exists within the sound. Since the airstream and tonal resonance on the piccolo is smaller than on the flute, a much narrower vibrato should be used in order to fit inside the sound.
    Perhaps most crucially, a flutist who aspires to the piccolo chair should have a good grasp of intonation on the flute, and the ability to make subtle changes to correct the pitch. The piccolo is often out of tune as a function of its place atop the whole harmonic series; the frequency of A=440 is actually 880 or 1760 once you get to the octave of the piccolo, so any discrepancies in intonation are quickly magnified. A piccolo player often makes small adjustments to correct the pitch. It is highly advisable that piccolo players make a pitch tendency chart for their instrument with a tuner. A student should note which pitches have different tendencies from the flute. In tricky intonation tangles, it can be extremely helpful to have a concept of what the problem might be and to remember how much adjustment that note typically requires. A flutist who already has a natural ear for intonation will be able to make these corrections subtly and without over-analyzing the situation.

Metal, Resin, or Wood?
    The type of piccolo someone is first exposed to will have a great effect on whether they enjoy playing the instrument and want to go further with it. There are two basic types of piccolos:  cylindrical bore metal piccolos and conical bore wooden piccolos. Metal piccolos are great for beginners and for use in marching band because they are the least expensive ($200-$1000), most indestructible, and look most like the flute. However, they are also the shrillest and have inconsistent intonation. Conical bore wooden piccolos (made of Grenadilla or Cocus wood, like oboes and clarinets) are the standard in the professional world because they have a more consistent, flute-like tone throughout the range of the instrument, blend better with the other winds, and usually have better intonation. However, they are much more difficult to care for and are much more expensive ($2000-$8000). 
    A wooden piccolo should never be taken outside or used for marching band because it is prone to cracking. An excellent compromise is a plastic or wood composite model. These are durable, have a pleasant sound, are less expensive ($800-$1200), and provide a good bridge to a better instrument later on.
    When I won my first job on piccolo, David Carroll, of the New York Philharmonic, told me he thought any great wind section was defined by its piccolo player. I found this very surprising, coming from a bassoonist, who was married to a world-famous principal flutist (my teacher, Jeanne Baxtresser). His point was that the piccolo is almost always audible, so a piccolo player adds something wonderful to the complexity and completeness of an ensemble’s sound. While every instrument adds its own crucial voice, the right person on piccolo will lend any band or orchestra a new polish and, quite literally, take the ensemble to a new high.

The post How to Choose a Piccolo Player for Band or Orchestra appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

    Improvisation can be easily learned through bite-sized, sequential development. However, the greatest information in the world, given to students in the wrong order, will only produce glassy-eyed looks.    Teaching scalar improv too soon will result in students improvising mostly with scales, and putting changes down in front of students will produce arpeggio improvisations in which the chord is the end, not the means. In addition, students accustomed to using scales to improvise rarely have ears for melody, and they also eventually plateau in their improvisation development; students have some early success but eventually start playing the same ideas over and over. Getting them beyond that can be difficult.
    The ideal choice is to begin teaching improvisation by paraphrasing melodies. This is using a liberal amount of the melodic line and tweaking it by changing rhythms and adding some scalar material to connect phrases. For example, on a phrase that has a long note in the melody, you could use the length of that note to weave in a scale pattern. It is still essentially the tune itself.
    In the early days, this is how jazz players improvised. The harmonies in most 1920s tunes are occasionally quirky, but usually transparent, and in Kansas City in those days, it was mostly blues. Virtually everyone played by ear. Some Kansas City bands had no physical book at all. At one point jazz musicians were judged in part by the number of tunes they had memorized. Non-diatonic chords are often passing chords. They had the tune to work with and only a short amount of time, because in early recordings bands were limited to three minutes on a record side. Generally, a player would get only one or two A sections or a bridge and an A section, and that would be it. This meant they could not explore far away from the melody, at least on recordings.
    Jazz moved away from the melodic paraphrase style of improvisation as arrangements became more complex, leading to great dependence on what was on paper. As a result, people used the melody as a basis for improvisation less frequently. Some of it is just the evolution of the art form, but there was a generation of players who, if told, “Summertime in D minor,” could play without any music. There are still some players who do that, but not many young players. We almost lost this art, but in recent years, ear playing has made a comeback.
    Playing by ear is the foundation of melodic paraphrase. Antonio García wrote a book, Cutting the Changes, using these principles. The first part of the book contains only melody and lyrics. Chords are in the back of the book. One year at the Midwest Clinic I expressed my admiration for the book and asked him what inspired him to take this tack. He said, “People have been doing this (having no chord changes in front of them when they learned tunes) for 90 years.”
    Don Doane, the great Maynard Ferguson/Woody Herman trombonist and jazz teacher, used this as the foundation of his approach, only his version was pared down even more. You learn everything by ear. This method is also espoused by Dave Demsey of William Patterson University, who says, “When you read it, it doesn’t stick.” This has been my experience. One student I worked with was a good player but just not progressing. It was difficult to get him to improvise based off of the tune, because when students see chord changes, that is what they use. If they don’t have them, they can’t run to them.
    In the jazz improv course I taught this spring, we learned everything by ear. To teach tunes, I played a phrase on my horn, and students played it back. We could learn a tune by ear in roughly 15 minutes. I picked easier tunes they would know, such as Summertime and When the Saints Go Marching In. We learned more than ten tunes by ear, getting as advanced as Take the A Train, and the more that we did it, the faster students became at it.
    John Cooper wrote a book called Linear Transitions, which is about using a number system to learn tunes and improvise. We tried it with When the Saints Go Marching In. I gave students the number of where each note fell within the scale (1 3 4 5). Another tune we learned was Moten Swing. This chart lent itself well to the numeric method because of the flat 3 in the melody and the modulation of the bridge from Ab to C major. We played through it, talking through the form (AABA). This helped shorten the time needed to learn a tune. We still used imitation primarily, but we did a bit with numbers, particularly on bridges, to reinforce intervallic skips. At the same time you practice melodic recognition, you can also improve ear recognition of the chordal aspects.
    When students started to improvise off of these melodies, solos sounded more natural and less stilted, because students were less hung up in the vertical aspects of playing. If all you have is the melody, then all you can do is play with the melody. I have talked to musicians who play this way. A man who coached combos here for a number of years is an engineer who taught himself jazz and plays everything by ear. When he solos, there is almost never a wrong note. I asked him if he saw the chord changes in his mind while he was playing, and he said, “No, usually I don’t even know what chord I’m playing over, but I know what will sound good.” I bring him in on occasion to play a couple choruses of A Train. He will whip through it with no missteps of any sort, and students’ jaws are right on the floor. If the focus is on chord changes, you will be thinking in terms of vertical realizations of the chord symbol, meaning making sure you’ve included the right notes for the chord. If you don’t have that at your disposal, you can start to think about creating longer phrases.
    Even without having changes in front of them, students frequently play in tiny cells at first; they will get an idea and try to play around with it that way. I then asked them to make two-bar phrases out of their ideas, which pushed them in a linear fashion. If you can get them to think in a one or two bar linear phrase, then the next step is to turn that into a four-bar idea.
    When students get to the point of developing a four-bar idea, then they should look at the music briefly, find the chord in that fourth measure, and pick a destination note. Picking a destination note gives students a sense of where the harmony is and starts them thinking about the journey rather than the destination. With vertical thinking, the tendency is to think of every measure as a destination, and that should be avoided.
    I like to use the third of the chord as a destination, because I read somewhere that 75-80% of all resolutions are to the thirds of chords. If you listen to Miles Davis in his Porgy and Bess era, there are frequent resolutions to thirds. So when it comes time for students to think in four-bar ideas, have them pick the third as a destination note. The second most common choice is the seventh. When working in this way, students’ mindsets change. Melody is not vertical, and if you want to improvise melodically you have to have a grasp of the idea of horizontal movement; this concept is extremely important.
    The second step is the scalar approach, which I sometimes call the Lester Young approach. In the late 1920s and 1930s tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins was the king of vertical (chordal) playing, which relies a great deal on arpeggios. His rival, Lester Young, was the polar opposite. Young rode a horizontal approach that created lines of great fluency and beauty. He had a knack for finding pretty tones, particularly on the sixth scale degree. Lester Young’s developments were so revolutionary because he was one of the first to think horizontally. Jazz players have to get to the chords eventually, but this is why many of the players who focus exclusively on arpeggio improvisation to be more clinical. No one ever accused Lester Young or Miles Davis of being clinical.
    Miles Davis’s music was extremely lyrical in the 1950s, and that evolved into the modal playing that he did in the 1960s, in which, if you have two chord changes in a tune like So What, you have to think horizontally. You can’t think vertically because there is no vertical to think about. This is the root of much of today’s pentatonic playing.
    We start with the melodic line, but when students start to play with it, we have them connect ideas with the pentatonic scale. Antonio García uses the major scale first in improvisation, because this is something students will know. I prefer to start with the pentatonic, which is the same scale with two notes removed; it is worth noting that the remaining notes are all consonant. The advantage of starting improvisation with the pentatonic over a major scale is that you don’t have to worry about students sitting on dissonant fourth or seventh scale degrees. We move into major scales fairly quickly after that, dealing with it fairly lightly. If the melodic aspect is emphasized, students do not immediately start playing only scales when they improvise. If students are grounded in melody, then they rarely stray too far from it. If they do, you can always stop them and say “use scalar patterns or pentatonics to connect, but don’t make that your focus.” It is an easy fix.
    The scalar and horizontal approaches are particularly helpful in the A section of 32-bar tunes, as well as with modal charts. In the latter, the static harmonies demand a strong melodic approach. In AABA tunes such as Moten Swing, we teach the A section as an entity, and then move on to the bridge. The tune is in Ab with a bridge in C. In the A section you can have students use a major pentatonic scale or the known, the major scale.
    My teaching shifts slightly from the straight linear aspect once you get to the bridge. With a chart like Moten Swing, the bridge is the time to go to the printed page and a chordal approach. Students will need a strong sense of where they are harmonically, because the natural tendency is to play the whole tune like it is in one key. This is why the best way to start chordal improvisation is with memorization of roots. I have students create root solos, which are rhythmic licks using only the root of the current chord.
    I started using root default after years of hearing students play over blues but miss the IV chord. They put a blues scale over the entire blues progression without regard for harmony. The IV chord is harmonically a startling point in the blues, and no one should simply skate over it as if it didn’t exist. However, many young players do this, assuming that the entire blues scale works throughout the blues. To counter this when teaching blues, I define the I chord with something that isn’t blues, at least when students start learning it. Rather than teaching the blues scale or minor pentatonics, we teach major pentatonic scales, so the I chord at the beginning does not have a lowered third. At the IV chord, give them one note, and when they get to measure five, we’re going to play the root default (the root of the IV chord). At the ninth measure, if this is a V chord, we play the root there too. This way students have concrete instructions for the harmonic signposts in the blues and are not playing like there are no chord changes. I have found this works well.
    Interestingly enough, these root solos often reemerge in later solos. Students understand that root default is an important part of vertical realization. That knowledge becomes important because the point of a bridge in a tune is the shifting harmonies. Bridges of tunes demand special treatment. This is especially true of circle-of-fifths bridges, where you teach them that you can make the entire bridge with four notes.

    I’ll go into my improv class and say we’re going to play Tenor Madness, blues in Bb. For your first chorus, I want you to do root defaults, and they know what to do. After that, I let them do what they want, but they come back to root defaults from time to time. The same is true with guide tone lines over circle of fifths bridges. Students aren’t going to play these all the time, but it will inform their improvisation choices, and they do know what is in the chords, which is the most important thing. The harmonic knowledge is important but should not be the prime focus of what you do. Harmonic knowledge should be one tool in the arsenal.
    Arpeggios are the last thing I teach, and with these, I initially avoid recorded tracks. Recordings are good tools, but what I’ve found is that when students are learning arpeggios for improvisation, sometimes a recording goes by just a little too quickly. Students become so concerned with just keeping up that they get vertically discombobulated. Often, the entire solo ends up looking like this:

    To make it easier on students, remove tempo and let students be thoughtful about what they are playing. If the first chord is C7, have them focus on really hearing the chord rather than worry about keeping up with the track; students should burn the sound of 1, 3, 5, flat 7 into their minds. When that is fluid, then it can be put back into context. Ultimately, for this knowledge to be helpful, it must be memorized. Only then can a set of changes be approached in a complete, in depth fashion.
    Improvisation is perhaps the greatest creative outlet and whole mind builder in education’s arsenal. It deserves the best we have to offer, and in improvisation, teaching the steps in the correct order is everything.

The post Steps to Great Improvisation appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

     Dan L. Peterson was the director of university bands and conductor of the Wind Symphony at Truman State University, where he taught for 36 years until his retirement this summer. In this interview, he shares his thoughts on music education and some of the lessons learned over his career.

How have school band programs in the midwest changed during your 36-year tenure at Truman State?
    I think that the biggest change in school band programs has been a greater emphasis on marching band. There is no question that marching bands have made a profound contribution to the success of many programs. There are programs that have gained regional and national recognition because of their marching bands. That can only help the public impression of bands in schools. I have also seen an improvement in the quality of the concert bands in those schools that have done well with marching.
    Marching band can also help the band take on a more prominent role in smaller schools. It is always great to see a smaller school band do well and develop a sense that the program is growing, getting better, and providing a good musical experience.
    I also like what I see in the jazz programs at many schools. In Iowa almost every school, regardless of size, seems to have a jazz band, and most often, it is a very good one.
    Finally, I see many, many terrific young music educators these days. I am impressed with the quality of teaching and the enthusiasm of the teachers. Sometimes I feel that my music education colleagues and I should take a bow for the good work we have done with these students.

What are the biggest challenges now facing public school or university band programs, and what solutions would you propose?
    For high schools, I think the biggest challenges are about making the most of the time spent in the classroom. I believe that good planning and preparation is the only sure way to achieve success with classroom work. Good planning involves four parts: a daily plan, a weekly plan, an event-driven plan, and a yearly plan. With a good plan in mind, and with goals for each of these four areas, success is much more likely to be realized. For example, if a goal for the year is to have the clarinet section perform at a higher level, then I might do some event-driven planning, such as planning to play at a state band contest. As part of this planning, I would choose music that has challenging clarinet parts that allow for growth for the individual players and the section as a whole. The weekly plan for this goal might be to devote a segment of time each week to emphasize the clarinet parts in rehearsals, and the daily planning might be to provide as much individual help as possible. All of this work would be done with the yearly goal in mind of having the clarinet section perform at a higher level.
    The second problem, especially in rural areas, is a lack of opportunity to hear truly fine performances of solos, ensembles, and bands. Students in rural schools often do not have an idea of what a really good band sounds like. In metropolitan and suburban areas, there are more opportunities to hear musical performances, including performances at other schools. Directors should encourage their students to attend as many performance opportunities as possible.
    The third big problem is the budget.  In rural schools budgets for music programs are sometimes almost non-existent. Booster groups for smaller rural schools also tend to have a more difficult time with fundraising. That said, there are some wonderful small town bands in Missouri that find a way to make it happen every year. These bands put in lots of hard work every year on their fundraising activities. With schools in most of the larger towns and cities, the programs are usually rolling, and they are supported by fantastic parent groups. Funding and budgeting in the schools, however, seems to be pretty deficient, both in rural and in more metropolitan areas.
    Finally, personnel is a challenge. It is always difficult to find adequate personnel to run all aspects of the marching band, including flag choreography, drumline tech people, and a drill designer, among others. For jazz, it is best to have a specialist who can come in and work with the rhythm section, as well as a person who can assist in teaching improvisation, but these people can be hard to find and also can be another high cost factor.
    As for universities, I can only speak to challenges affecting smaller universities, where the budget is a big concern. Universities normally do not have booster groups, but some outside help can be provided by a university foundation on occasion. Budget challenges have forced us to make changes over the years at Truman State. When our budget dropped a few years back, the music department made the decision to cut travel budgets for ensembles, so now the large ensembles rotate yearly for tours. Our guest artist budget has also been cut to almost nothing. Despite the cut in that part of the budget, some of our studio faculty have done a great job of finding other funding to bring guest artists to campus.
    Secondly, finding and keeping good faculty is a key to success at the college level. We have been very fortunate to have a faculty that has stayed together for long periods of time. In the rare instances when we have had an opening (the last one was eight years ago), finding a person who would fit in with our department and match up with how we do things was the first priority. It has been nice to find people who are fantastic musicians as well as excellent faculty members who are a good fit based on the department’s goals, concepts, and challenges.

What factors do you consider when determining ensemble and chair placement at the university level?
    In all of our auditions, I use an audition form that evaluates tone, intonation, musical expression, technique, and maturity in the first segment, scales in the second segment, and sightreading in the third segment.
    Our top two bands have a two-part audition. The first part of the audition is for incoming freshmen only, and this part of the audition is conducted during our freshman orientation week. At this initial audition we ask students to play prescribed music (which was sent out during the summer), two major scales, a chromatic scale, and two sightreading excerpts. The objective with these auditions is to identify the pool of freshman who are able to play at the level of the top two bands. Those who are not accepted into the top two bands are placed in the third band, our concert band, which does not begin until after the football season is completed.
    The second part of the audition occurs during the first week of classes.  This part is done one section at a time. All of the returning members of each section, along with the newly accepted freshmen, each perform individually, one after another.
    The most important factor to evaluate in the audition is tone. Next I am looking for musicality, nuance in phrasing, and technical accuracy. I check for intonation on the scales. The sightreading portion of the audition helps me to form an opinion on the maturity of the player.
    The section audition leads to top-down seating (i.e., with the best player on top and moving down from there).  So, the first seven clarinets go into Wind Symphony I, and one of them will be assigned to Eb clarinet. The next group of performers will be placed in Wind Symphony II, and again one of those will be assigned to Eb clarinet for the year. All sections in both wind symphonies are filled in this way. After completing the auditions, I consult with the studio professors, with the concern that I do not want to cause any kind of internal issue in the studio. The studio teacher also may be able to offer some insight regarding which students can provide better leadership in the section. Other than that, my decision is based solely on who are the best players.
    The concert band is an all-volunteer band, comprised almost entirely of non-music majors (although music majors playing a second instrument can also be in the band), and it rehearses twice a week. This band has auditions for chair placement only. For this band, because of a shorter preparation time and a membership that might not be as musically proficient, I consider the age and the sightreading ability of the players to be especially significant factors. Placing good sightreaders at the top of the section often will move the section along faster technically and musically.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in your career, and how did you overcome them?
    I graduated from the University of South Dakota in three and a half years and two summers. I was just 21 years old. I began my career in January working at the smallest school in Iowa (or so it seemed to me), with 99 students in grades 7 to 12. The band had 39 members, and the choir had about 20. Some of the students seemed to be at least as old as I was, and they all seemed to drive newer and better cars than mine. My age was probably more of a concern for me than it was for the students. I initially worried about this, but very soon the students just thought of me as the new music teacher.
    The first two schools I taught at had small numbers and maybe one or two outstanding players; there was certainly no depth of high-quality players. There was a good player at the top of a couple sections, but not all sections. At these schools I had to do all of my teaching from the podium, with very little time for individual assistance because of the schedule of the job. This was challenging, but I soon learned to use the band buddy system as a way to have the older students help the younger students.
    These were small rural schools that I worked in, and my biggest challenge was to inspire the students to want to learn more about music. On the podium I learned how to ask questions that were pertinent to what we were rehearsing, and I tried to tweak the students’ interest in what we were doing. I still do this today. I have learned a great deal over the years about moving a rehearsal along at a good pace.
    The third school that I taught at was much larger. The junior high school had a director based there. He also helped out with the three elementary school bands. It took some time to work out a good coordination of our efforts, but once the other director and I started coordinating together, we were cooking. Before then, I was trying to do way too much on my own.
I soon learned about concepts like getting students to want to play better by selecting good, appropriate, and challenging literature. I wish I had known more about literature early in my career. Around this time I started to do a lot of listening and talking with other area directors, trying to soak up every good idea they had. I also learned to really look thoroughly at scores to find the best, most appropriate music for the band. I learned to give the band good challenges. I would tell them, for example, “we are going to work on this tune for three weeks, with six rehearsals to prepare it, and during that time I need you to give your best effort on this piece.”
    The last public school I taught at was Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa. This was Iowa’s largest high school at the time. The band had built a great reputation as a parade band, and with over 300 members, it was the largest marching band on the field. I took over the job from a true icon of a director who had done a great job and who had many supporters in the community. I was told that I had dim prospects for success there because the shoes I had to fill were just too big.
    I knew that I had to win over the students and create an environment of learning in the band. I also knew I had to win over some of the faculty members and parents. I had a few things going for me that I felt would be positive. First, I did not want to change the 300-member parade band, because I was comfortable with that part of the job. On other hand, I knew that I wanted to change the field show concept to corps style, which was almost unheard of in 1974. During that first year, I was able to make dramatic improvements to the sound quality of the field show band by making changes to our drill design. We also added flags, which gave the band new additional color. The marching band took on a new life in my first year, and the students seemed to like it.
    The second change I made to the program was to add a jazz band. Many of the students in the band had wanted to play in a jazz band, so this was an easy change to make. I had put together some fine jazz bands at my previous schools, and I felt very comfortable about adding jazz to the curriculum. By the end of the year, I was directing two jazz bands at the high school.
    The students also achieved some measurable success during my first year at the school. At the all-state auditions that year we had ten students who were accepted into the all-state band and orchestra. I believe that achievements like those helped me survive that first year.

What was your first position after directing band in public schools?
    After four years teaching at Valley High School, I was hired to be the director of bands at Northeast Missouri State University in Kirksville, Missouri. At the time this was a regional university servicing an area of northern Missouri, southern Iowa, and western Illinois. The school had about 5,000 undergraduate students. The music school, and particularly the jazz program, had an excellent reputation. However, the program was small, with only 73 students signed up for marching and concert bands in the fall. Increasing our numbers was the first challenge. I chose to do this first by drawing from the students who were already on campus. We put up a lot of posters, held music rehearsals outdoors in different parts of campus, and had the drumline (which was a new concept) rehearse in the evening in the campus quad grass area. As a result of these promotional efforts, we gained about ten new members in the band and three or four in the drumline, and we also recruited an entire color guard of sixteen members.
    I thought it was important to make sure that not only the campus, but also the recruiting area, was aware of our ensembles, because I knew that our groups would attract new students. We traveled on three occasions that fall to various events outside of campus. Two years later we had approximately 140-150 students in the marching band. Five years later we had 240 sign up for marching band. We also attracted so many students to the concert band that I had to divide it up into two ensembles.

What traits do you think are the best predictors of band director success?
    Passion – passion for teaching, passion for students, passion for conducting. You must be a people person and enjoy being around people. It is also important to be a good communicator, hopefully with a vision of where you want to go with your students and your program.
    It is also valuable to have a good ability to organize on several levels and to focus on goals for the group. People who are self-centered do not turn out to be as successful as those who are all in it for the group. People who are all about themselves on the podium just don’t seem to make it.

What traits are the best predictors of a performer’s success?
    For a music performance major, it all starts with good practice routines. Students who have established good practice routines will have a greater chance for success. The music performance students also really have to love playing their instrument and take every opportunity to make music with it. There has to something inside them that says, “I want to be the best I can be.” There must be an internal competitiveness.

What advice should high school teachers offer to students who express an interest in pursuing music education after graduation?
    Do it! You will have the best time of your life, but you must be ready to become completely immersed in music. If you are excited about continuing to perform on your instrument, and then teach everything you have learned to other people, you will love being a music major.
    Beyond that, I find that a lot of students come to college believing, “I learned to play well, so I can be a music teacher.” These students should be told that there is more to it than just playing well. They need to be aware of the music theory component, the music history component, and all of the music education classes. It is not just about playing the instrument. I would recommend that high school teachers encourage the teaching of music theory in high school, if possible. Not only would this give the student a leg up in learning theory, but it might also give the student the ability to test out of the first semester of theory in college. (This might also happen if the student scores well on the AP Music Theory exam.)
    I think it is also important to work with students on developing some piano skills. In addition, I would also hope that directors could somehow give their students the opportunity to observe some junior high or elementary classes to get a small taste of what goes on in that part of the job.

Why did you initially enter the field of music education?
    I had a great band director in high school and was part of a very good band. I thought that I might want to do this, and there was a buddy of mine who was thinking the same thing. My band director sat us down one day, and we had a chat about it. During our senior year he got us going with some music theory that he put together, and he also got us started on some beginning piano activities. (He was a wonderful jazz pianist, and I was really intrigued and inspired by this guy being a band director.)
    More than anything, our director was very concerned about where we would be going to college. He was not an advocate for one particular college or another, but he recommended that we check out where the good directors in our area of the state had gone to college. He said that you need to look at the schools that have proven results in preparing music education students. I believe he was right.

Have you changed as an educator?
    I can’t believe how much I have changed. I have learned so much – way too much – by trial and error, and I have also learned through continuing education, attending so many conferences and clinics, and reading things like The Instrumentalist for 48 years. Over the years I have learned never to be afraid to try something. Always be ready to change. I recently read an article on conducting using boxing analogies. These analogies are now a part of my graduate conducting class.
    I also work harder now at being ready for every rehearsal, every performance, and every new project. I believe my conducting technique has gone past a level where I am just surviving to a level where I am trying to truly inspire the musical performance. The pace of my rehearsals is also quite a bit quicker now with, for the most part, much less verbal content from me. I smile a lot more during rehearsals than I used to. I acknowledge great musical moments by the students much more often. My knowledge of literature has also grown immensely over the years. I wish I had known so much more about the literature when I was starting. I now include a band literature segment in all of the graduate courses I teach.

What do you want your students to remember about their collegiate music experience?
    I want my students to remember that they were better performers and musicians when they finished than when they began. I remember a year when the flute section had three freshmen in it. After a rehearsal in the fall, one of them looked up at me and said, “Every piece of music you give me is the hardest thing I have ever played!”  Four years later, she looked up at me at the end of a rehearsal and said, “Why don’t we play any of those really difficult pieces that we played when I was a freshman?” We were working on the Hindemith Symphony in Bb at the time. I also hope that the members of the bands I have conducted will remember our rehearsals as being the best part of their day.

The post A Passion for Teaching, An Interview with Dan L. Peterson appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Concert F – horns, clarinets, bassoons
Concert A – strings, flutes, oboes, saxophones (all sizes)1
Concert Bb – trumpets, trombones, euphoniums, BBb tubas used in band playing
Concert C – C trumpets, CC tubas used in orchestral playing

The reason behind most of these suggestions should be readily apparent. The choices in many cases are based on the overall length of the instrument with few or no valves or keys depressed.
    Most school bands will find that tuning to F, A, and Bb (C is seldom needed), as suggested above, helps to improve the intonation of the ensemble as a whole. This process usually works much better than just tuning everyone to either Concert F or Bb. Using these additional tuning notes does not take much longer, and the results are worth it.
    One extra cautionary point about the tuning process is that students should be aware of the tendency to want to hear their pitch on the sharp side. Players may seek to find a comfort zone in which they are able to hear themselves, and more often than not, this tendency leads to a player’s pitch being high. To counter this tendency, especially with wind players, it is often a good idea to have everyone pull out so that all players begin the tuning process flat. It is usually easier for players to come up to the desired pitch, rather than come down to pitch. The director’s goal should be to bring everyone’s pitch to A440 and to try to keep it there so that this increasingly becomes the norm.
    Another general rule to note is that when players are having trouble hearing themselves, they usually are closer to being in tune and blending with the rest of the section. Similarly, when two different instruments are playing perfectly in tune, they usually will blend their timbres, creating a new sound quality. Thus, when a flute and clarinet player are playing perfectly in tune with each other on a unison pitch, they will create a tone quality that is a hybrid of these instruments (a flutinet, if you will).
    After the initial tuning is done, there should be an ongoing process of evaluating intonation, and this should continue throughout the rehearsal or performance. During this process pitch adjustments will be made through adjustments in embouchure or adjustments of the hands or finger, rather than from any changes to the length of an instrument. In making these adjustments the teacher and students will need to draw upon good listening skills.
    Maintaining the initial pitch standard should also be an ongoing goal, especially when the performance is held on a well-lit stage that continually gets hotter as the concert progresses. Longer pieces may also cause the overall intonation to become progressively worse if individual players give in to the tendency to want to hear themselves, which usually makes the pitch go sharp. When this happens with a number of players, the overall pitch will continually climb as each player unconsciously gets caught up in a game of one-upmanship.

Modes of Tuning
    Satisfactory intonation has been the subject of much study. Experimentation over hundreds of years has led to the development of a variety of tuning systems. Despite all of this study and experimentation, there is no tuning system that fits every situation, melodically or harmonically. Therefore, the goal with all tuning methods is to find a process that involves the least invasive compromises.
    To appreciate the struggle to create functional ensemble intonation, it takes a basic understanding of Pythagorean, Just, and Equal temperaments, along with an understanding of how these three interact with each other.

Pythagorean Intonation: Tuning with Melodic Sense
    Western tonality is based on scales of eight notes within an octave designed from varying patterns of whole and half steps. The placement of the half steps is the most critical aspect of each mode. For instance, a major scale (Ionian mode) can be divided into two identical groups of four notes. The first group of a C scale is C D E F, and the second is G A B C. Each group represents a perfect fourth, and each contains a leading tone, with half steps leading from E to F and B to C and with the intervals in each group being whole step, whole step, half step.
    Pythagorean tuning raises the third and seventh scale degrees identically, placing them higher than Just and Equal temperament would. This raising of the third and seventh scale degrees creates what is known as tendency intervals, which allow for an enhanced melodic feel.

Just Intonation: Well-Tuned Intervals
    Just intonation is the natural harmonic pattern based on sounds occurring from an open tube or a stretched string. For example, when a string is stopped at the mid-point of its length and then plucked, the resultant sound is double the vibrations per second or one octave higher. Just intonation requires an analysis of how intervals should be tuned, based on the interval relationships evident in the overtone series.

    Just intonation is most helpful when analyzing intonation problems that occur with simple chord intervals, such as fifths and thirds. With perfect fifths, Just intonation would call for fifths that are naturally higher than in Equal temperament (which occurs when the pitches in a scale are divided as a series of evenly spaced half steps). Just intonation produces major thirds that are naturally lower and minor thirds that are slightly higher than those in Equal temperament.
    After studying the intervals and tendencies in Just intonation, students will learn how best to tune these intervals. This understanding will help students to eliminate the sound of beats that occur when two or more notes in an interval are being played out of tune.

Equal Temperament: A Compromise
    Equal temperament is a tuning system that is  based on an octave divided by a series of half steps in which all of the half steps are equidistant from each other. Keyboard instruments, including piano and percussion keyboards, are all based on Equal temperament. Instruments with Equal temperament tuning do not use the natural sharpness of leading tones that occur when music is thought of melodically (as in Pythagorean tuning). Equal temperament also does not use the natural flatness of the third of a major triad, which occurs when pitches are thought of harmonically (as in Just intonation). Thus, except for octaves, Equal temperament is ultimately is a compromise, as it is different from both the Pythagorean and Just temperaments.
    When comparing the various scale degrees in the frequency ratios listed below, pay close attention to the fifth scale degree (G), the third (E), and the seventh (B). Melodically, the third and fifth are noticeably higher in Pythagorean tuning when compared to Equal temperament, which reflects what the pitch tendencies of a melodic line should be. Also, the major third in Just temperament is noticeably lower than in Pythagorean and Equal temperament, which reflects how low the pitch should be in a triad that is correctly tuned. Notice also that the interval of a perfect fifth (C-G) and perfect fourth (C-G) are the same ratio in Pythagorean and Just temperaments.

    The result is a blend between listening for what seems best both melodically and harmonically. All of this can seem overwhelming when trying to listen to everything with two different ears. The task of the conductor is to listen critically to all that transpires and to use the information above if any problem arises. Concerning the different temperaments and band intonation, Mark Hindsley once observed:

“It is my conclusion that we should try to have our bands play in a the combination of the just and Pythagorean temperaments. Theoretically and for practicality, wind instruments would be tuned to equal temperament in manufacture and adjustment: in their playing we should go as far as possible toward the tone pitches of the other temperaments. We should prefer the Pythagorean scale for melodic lines, but at the very worst may have to accept the equal scale,  We should prefer the consonant, simple-ratio relationships of the just scale harmonically, but at the very worst we may have to accept the harmonic relationships again of the equal scale.”2

Which Method Is Best?
    Research has analyzed which of these three modes of tuning performers most commonly use. In a study of how string players perform, the research showed that no particular method of tuning is adhered to at all times. However, it did show that when melodic patterns arise in tonal music, then the intervals tended to lean more toward Pythagorean tuning. Performers placed more importance on creating melodic leading tones, rather than on harmonic blend.3
    The two other approaches, however, proved to be important at other times. When tuning simple chords, Just intonation is valuable. Equal temperament is acceptable when working on melodic lines and is preferable when tuning chromatic harmonies. In sum, however, no one temperament is completely acceptable in all cases, and all three approaches have their virtues at particular times and situations.
    There also are times when inevitable compromises must be made. When playing with mallet percussion and piano, which are Equal temperament instruments that cannot make adjustments, the best choice may be Equal temperament. On the other hand, if the wind instruments are sustaining their notes, while the sound of mallet instruments or piano is decayed, then the sound of the winds may be the dominant sound to address when tuning.
    Another occasion for compromise occurs when pitches are playing a dual role. For example, a pitch may be both the third of a chord and also the leading tone of the melody. It would be impossible to lower the pitch of the third to tune the chord, and yet also simultaneously raise the pitch of the note as a melodic leading tone. In these places, the ear has to be the guide. It may help to consider the length of the chord. If the chord is held for a long time, the tendency may be to place value on the chord intonation over the melodic tendency of the notes.  Conversely, if the chord is short, the melodic tendency may be more important. Ultimately, you have to listen and decide which factor carries more weight at that moment in the music. It is also important to remember that a sustained note held through several chord changes may require an adjustment in pitch to fulfill the nature of the note within each chord.

Intonation and Balanced Dynamics
    Achieving balance with dynamics can have a dramatic effect on the overall quality of the ensemble’s sound. This includes good balance between high and low pitched instruments, balance within chords, balance between octaves, as well as balance between musical components such as melody and countermelody. There are several concepts that may help in the ongoing challenge to play two or more pitches together with the proper balance and alignment.

Balance of Low and High Sounds
    First, correct balance between low and high sounds is critical, not only for a good ensemble sound but also as an aid to better intonation.  When played softly, high overtones are less audible. The upper instrument played at pp and the lower at mf will produce a more satisfactory result, both in intonation and in dynamics. Because there are fewer overtones audible in lower frequencies, it is generally perceived to be easier to tune to a low pitch rather than a high one.
    Francis McBeth advocates this approach in his book Effective Performance of Band Music. McBeth takes the position that the band has better balance and better perceived intonation if the lower instruments play successively louder than the high instruments. For example, the tuba should play louder than the piccolo and the third clarinet should play louder than the first. The balanced pyramid effect that McBeth proposes is shown in the diagram below.

    When the ensemble plays in this manner, the lower overtones are not as easily dominated by the upper overtones, and a darker sound results. Whether the ensemble actually plays better in tune this way (as I think it does), or whether the ear just perceives that it is in tune (as some believe), the better results are obvious.4
    An experience years ago gave me greater insight into this concept. I had arranged to have a concert recorded, and the person in charge of the recording process used new microphones that were attached to the floor at the front of the stage. The results were terrible. The recording reflected a great imbalance in the sound of the ensemble because the microphones picked up mostly just the first and second row players (i.e., flute, piccolo, oboe, and some clarinet). The sound of the ensemble with these instruments predominating was shrill, and it magnified every intonation inconsistency in the band, with very little of the rest of the group able to be heard. When I first heard the recording, I was bewildered as to how I could have allowed the ensemble to sound that awful, not realizing that the microphone placement had created a version of the McBeth pyramid in reverse. It was only when a student presented me a different recording of the same concert, made from the balcony situated well back from the stage, that I heard, much to my relief, a much more balanced ensemble, which sounded more like what I had anticipated for the performance.

Tuning Unisons and Octaves
    The easiest interval to tune is the unison. Listen for the beats in the sound to check on intonation. The faster the beats are, the more out of tune the music is, and the slower the beats are, the better the intonation.
    The octave is the next easiest to tune. A common problem often arises with octaves, however, which is the natural tendency of the upper note to dominate the lower. This tends to happen because the higher pitch has fewer low overtones in its sound. To counter this tendency and find balance, try to have the lower note played louder than the upper. In particular, have the upper note play at pp while the lower note plays at mf, and then notice the result.5

Overtones and Difficulty of Tuning
    The number of overtones shared by two pitches in an interval will determine the difficulty level of tuning the notes together. The more overtones there are in common, the easier the tuning will be. For instance, when the overtone series for a C is compared with that of a G (perfect fifth), there are four pitches in common. Perfect fourths have three overtones in common, while major thirds, sixths, and seconds as well as minor thirds have two. Minor sixths and sevenths have one common overtone, and minor seconds, major sevenths, and tritones have none.6
    When tuning a chord during rehearsal, a good method is to work from the easiest to the more difficult intervals to tune. With this approach, you would begin with the root and its octave. Then you would add the fifth (four common overtones), followed by the third of the chord (two common overtones). Once these notes are in tune, the seventh should be added if the chord has one. With the seventh, keep in mind the possible tendency of a major seventh to resolve up a half step and the tendency of a dominant seventh to gravitate or resolve down a half step.

Tuning Like Instruments
Versus Different Timbres
    Many players find that it is easier to tune like instruments rather than tuning to another timbre.  If the ensemble uses the approach of tuning to just one pitch, instead of multiple pitches (using the method discussed earlier), then it may be a good idea to tune the woodwinds and then the brass separately, or even tune by individual section. This way, students will be tuning to like timbres, which often makes tuning easier.

Discrepancy in Intonation
and the Length of the Tone
    Whether intonation can be discerned is directly related to the duration of the sound. For example, if two instruments sound an A4, and one plays at 440 Hz and the other at 444 Hz, the difference of four cps (cycles per second) determines that if the tone is sustained for less than one-fourth of a second, no intonation difference is discernable. With a note an octave lower, if two notes are playing A3, one at 220 Hz and the other at 222 Hz, the difference of two cps would permit the tone to be sustained for almost one-half second without any evident difference in intonation. With a note an octave lower than that (A2), if one player is playing at 110 Hz and the other at 111 Hz, the difference of only one cps would dictate that the tone could be sounded for nearly one full second before the discrepancy becomes audible. Conversely, if the note is played an octave higher (A5), with one instrument at 880 Hz and the other at 888 Hz, a difference in pitch of eight cps will decrease the time at which intonation is detected to just one-eighth of a second.7
    In these examples, even though the pitch ratio difference at each octave is the same, the time it takes for the pitch discrepancy to be discerned is much longer on the lower tones. That is because, with low notes, more time is required to establish the difference beat – i.e., the sound one hears when two notes aren’t quite in unison – and this is due to the difference in the wave-lengths. In practice, this means that a listener will notice two piccolos playing out of tune in a fraction of the time that it would take to hear two tubas or string basses playing out of tune.

Increasing Awareness
    To develop good awareness of tuning and intonation, students have to be taught how to listen. This requires students to learn to be cognizant of their surroundings, and they also must learn about the particular acoustical properties of their instruments. Good intonation cannot be the conductor’s responsibility alone. Rather, correct intonation and balance should be the responsibility of both the players and the conductor. There is never a moment in the rehearsal or performance when either the players or the conductor will have the luxury of not listening critically.
    Critical listening by the ensemble members is crucial. Here are some important concepts to emphasize when working with students on tuning and intonation.

You Can’t Tune a Bad Sound
    Players should have a good concept of the characteristic sound of their instrument – a sound reflecting the quality of a professional player, absent any excessive pressure, pinched quality, or constriction. Most students use an inadequate amount of air, so they should focus on increasing both the amount of air and the speed of the air through the instrument. Playing with more air can solve many difficulties students have with tone, dynamics, and range.

The Effects of Temperature on Pitch
    Students should have a good understanding of the effects of temperature on pitch. For winds the pitch rises as the temperature rises. String and percussion instruments react in the opposite manner.

The Pitch Tendencies of Each Instrument
    Students should also know the pitch tendencies of their particular instrument – both the tendencies of the instrument in general, as well as the specific tendencies of their personal instrument. When students try to identify the tendencies of a particular instrument, it is good to have each student partner up with another student. As one plays, the other should record any discrepancy on each note as indicated by an electronic tuner. This method  is better than having students work individually, because players working on their own may look at the tuner and adjust the pitch unconsciously.

Tuning to a Straight Tone, Without Vibrato
    Students should get in the habit of always tuning to a straight tone, with no vibrato. Use of vibrato may cause some players to play the pitch higher or lower than normal. Tuning with a straight tone will keep any changing or masking of the tone to a minimum.

Keeping the Same Pitch at All Dynamics
    Students should practice maintaining a consistent pitch while playing at all dynamic levels. A good way to work on this is to have students play crescendo and decrescendo exercises without allowing the pitch to go flat or sharp as the volume changes. Here are some instrument-specific suggestions that may help students as they work on this exercise:
    •  Flute. For crescendos, flutists should increase the opening of the aperture and gradually lower the direction of the air stream by pulling back the lips and lower jaw while increasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going sharp. For decrescendos, the flutist should decrease the opening of the aperture and gradually raise the direction of the air stream by moving the lips and lower jaw forward while decreasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going flat.
    •  Oboe. During a crescendo, the oboist should  gradually relax the embouchure while increasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going sharp. On a decrescendo, the oboist should gradually firm up the embouchure while decreasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going flat.
    •  Bassoon. For crescendos, bassoonists should gradually relax the embouchure while increasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going sharp. On decrescendos, the bassoon player should gradually firm up the embouchure while decreasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going flat.8
    •  Clarinet. For crescendos, clarinetists should gradually increase the pressure of the lips around the mouthpiece, especially the lower lip against the reed, to keep the pitch from going flat as the sound gets louder. For decrescendos, as the sound gets softer, the clarinetist should gradually relax the embouchure and decrease the air speed to keep the pitch from going sharp.
    •  Saxophone. On a crescendo, a saxophone player should open the embouchure slightly and increase the lip pressure around the mouthpiece while increasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going flat. For a decrescendo, the saxophonist should maintain breath and embouchure support while decreasing the air speed to keep the pitch from going sharp.
    •  Brass. On a crescendo, brass players should gradually increase the aperture size to keep the pitch from going sharp. On decrescendos, brass players should gradually decrease the aperture size to keep the pitch from going flat.

Practice by Singing
    Singing is also a good method of practice. If you can sing it, you will develop a better mental concept of how the music should sound when you play it.

Solving Intonation Problems in Rehearsal
    There are times when problems arise with intonation, and there seems to be no clear way to begin the correction process. When this happens, there are a few ways to start work on solving the problem.
    First, identify and separate the different melodic and harmonic components. With melodic lines, the concepts drawn from Pythagorean tuning may help. For instance, the third and seventh scale degrees typically should resolve toward the fourth and eighth scale degrees. With chords, try using the concepts of Just intonation. For example, when tuning a chord the fifth generally should be higher than Equal temperament, while the major third should be lower than Equal temperament.
    A second good technique is to identify the different instruments that are playing the same line. Then, all of those instruments with the same note or line should work on listening and matching their pitch or phrase together.
    Third, when working on tuning chords, focus on matching pitch in the following order: tune unison and octave first, fifths next, thirds after that, then sevenths, and so forth.
    A fourth key to developing good ensemble intonation is to be sure that the ensemble’s balance is correct. This requires a good balance between high and low voices, good balance between notes in the chord, and good balance between different musical components (e.g. melody vs. accompaniment, melody vs. countermelody).

    In preparing for performance the goal is always to eliminate anything that might distract from the music. To do this, a focus on the basic elements of good intonation and balance is essential. These elements will always be a challenge to musicians, regardless of their level of ability and experience. My hope is that the concepts and techniques discussed here, when put into practice by directors, will help students to achieve the goal of performing with great ensemble intonation and balance.

Endnotes
1  The Art of Saxophone Playing by Larry Teal, (Summy-Birchard, Inc., 1963), pp. 61-62.
2  “Intonation” by Mark H. Hindsley, Book of Proceedings, Sixteenth National Conference, College Band Directors National Association (1971), p. 109.
3  "Research in Pythagorean, Just Temperament, and Equal-Tempered Tunings in Performance” by Acton Ostling, Jr., Journal of Band Research, Spring 1974, p. 16.
4  Effective Performance of Band Music, by W. Francis McBeth (Southern Music Co., 1972) pp. 5-15.
5  “Methods for Improving Intonation,” by Wayne Bailey, The Instrumentalist, December, 1984, p. 50.
6  “Absolute Intonation and the Fusion of Wind Sounds” by William F. Swor, Journal of Band Research, Spring 1982, p. 24.
7  “Absolute Intonation and the Fusion of Wind Sounds” by William F. Swor, Journal of Band Research, Spring 1982, pp. 22-23.
8  Guide to Teaching Woodwinds, 5th ed. by Frederick W. Westphal (Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 1990) pp. 31, 75, 141, 184, 221.

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