My teaching career started in 1978 in Valleyview, a town of 2,000 people in northern Alberta. I was a math major when I first entered university, dropped out to get married and went on the road with a 7-piece horn band covering tunes by Chicago, Earth, Wind & Fire, Tower of Power, and the like. I could go on and bore you with the details, but the point is that I left the band when my daughter was about to be born, worked in a warehouse for six months, then went back to school and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education without ever taking a woodwind or a brass techniques course.
I was a trombone player and that’s all I knew. I started teaching beginning band with a method book for every instrument laid out over three or four music stands opened to the fingering chart page.
I was not a particularly good band teacher when I started out. I knew next to nothing about anything when it came to beginning band. I read books. I attended band conferences. I listened to on-stage adjudications for other bands at festivals. But most importantly, I talked and listened to experienced, well-respected colleagues. I was that annoying little kid who latched on and never shut up. 🙂
With perseverance I became a much better teacher of beginning bands, consistently winning Gold and Superior Awards at regional and provincial festivals. In 2013 I was part of the staff that opened a new K to 9 school. In March of 2014, after the school had only been up and running for seven months, the Westmount Grade 6 Band received a Gold Award at the Southern Alberta Festival in Calgary and the trophy for Most Outstanding Beginning Band.
I learned a lot in a career that spanned almost 40 years. This is my attempt to share as much as I can remember. I stole a lot of ideas from colleagues to place in my teaching ‘Bag of Tricks.’ You don’t need to steal any from me. I am giving them to you.
This book consists of a lot of ideas and suggestions which are entirely my opinion. No empirical data, just 35 years of experience and anecdotes. It is intended to be a resource; a collection of teaching tips gleaned over 30-some years of teaching beginner bands.
You can learn a lot by sitting with and listening to an old man do his thing. My “thing” is teaching beginning bands. There is nothing I do better, with the possible exception of fly fishing.
My beginning bands consistently received Gold or Superior Awards during my career. They won trophies that stated the adjudicators thought they were the best band in the entire festival.
Why am I writing these words at the risk of sounding cocky and arrogant? To make a point. The things you will read here will help you accomplish the same with your beginning bands.
You will accomplish this only if you are dedicated to your craft. If you are not excited to teach band, please go do something else.
You will accomplish this only if you work hard while maintaining a balance in your life. I worked my ass off for over 30 years. I loved my job. BUT, not as much as I love my family.
I hope you find the ideas and suggestions useful in one of the toughest jobs I know. This is why I structured the book the way I did. It is not a novel. It is not a research report. It is available free for you to use in any way that suits your needs.
I am a ‘list’ person. In teaching band, it seemed I added two ‘to do’ items for every item I stroked one off as completed. It is not practical in this setting for me to suggest a list of everything you should prepare for and consider before starting a school year (music folders, supplies, concert dates, festivals, seating plans, music stand storage, uniforms, course outlines, unit plans, decorating the room, assessment schedule).
Every summer I started going to work about two weeks before classes started. Some days I might only spend an hour or two before going home to do something with my kids or meeting a buddy to fish for the afternoon. Other days I might spend six or seven hours at work. Some people are good at flying by the seat of their pants. I am not one of them. I was a much more effective teacher when I had all the items on my Back to School list checked off.
A wise man once told me, “Teaching band is not rocket science.” The ability to produce consistently well-performing ensembles is not a matter of high academia. It is simply one of a commitment to prepare, put in the hours and most importantly, have a passion for teaching band.
If you are not the person to trust with starting and/or maintaining an up-to-date and accurate inventory, then find someone who is. Do you have a band parent who operates a small business in town who has years of experience with inventory?
It is our responsibility as band teachers to provide our students with the best possible chance of success. The biggest roadblock to achieving this is to put an instrument in poor working condition in the hands of a beginner.
I started teaching in 1978. The school division that hired me had a lot of excess tax revenue and a superintendent who understood the value of a good music program. I wanted for nothing.
Every student who played an instrument larger than a tenor sax or trombone was assigned two – one for school and one for home practice. The quality of every instrument was excellent. This was especially helpful in this farming community where most students had up to a 90-minute bus ride each way.
In 1988 I took a job teaching band in a different school division. The inventory consisted of two tubas, a very old bass clarinet, no baritone sax and one front-bell euphonium which needed duct tape to keep the bell attached.
I struggled with this situation for two years until I thought of a solution. I did a lot of research into instrument prices and what to expect when ordering large numbers. I drafted a proposal to admin and eventually made a presentation to the school board. I showed how a $400 clarinet would generate $1,500 in rental income over the expected 15-year lifespan. The $1,100 difference between the initial cost and the rental fees generated could then go toward the purchase of larger and/or more expensive instruments.
The Board approved my proposal in 1990 to buy a large number of band instruments to rent out to students. The rental monies collected each year were handed over to band directors in June to buy new instruments. We called it the Evergreen Program. It was extremely successful to the point where they are now purchasing semi-professional models for high school band programs.
The main point here is to be prepared. Go through your inventory. Give yourself time to consider solutions to any potential problems, such as introducing an optional rent-to-purchase plan from a local retailer. Take a problem-solving approach. Be careful not to be seen as a complainer. Contact an experienced colleague to ask for advice.
Are you concerned about balanced instrumentation? If the answer is yes, you must have a plan or a standing policy on students starting on saxophone or percussion. Why? They are by far the two most popular choices of instrument by beginning students AND parents. My policy was that nobody started on either and students had to earn their way to switch.
I used every avenue of communication available to ensure students and parents were informed of my policy well before the time arrived to make their instrument selections. Parents occasionally tried to circumvent this policy by purchasing instruments before the selection process. My attempt at a diplomatic solution was to offer free rent for a school-owned instrument other than sax or percussion for the first year of band. I would then consider allowing the student to switch or double starting in year two if they earned that privilege.
Having no saxes or percussion in a beginning band presents no performance problems. Third year students can easily fill in at a moment’s notice. For festivals I had second year students learn, rehearse and perform on the three saxes, bass clarinets and percussion. I always informed the adjudicators of this and mentioned that all of the second years are actually first years on the instruments they are playing.
When switching to sax or percussion, first and foremost, students should earn the privilege by demonstrating consistent effort in class and private practice. I have tried various strategies to assist students making a switch or learning a second instrument in order to double.
The club was open to every student who met a minimum criterion of private practice, classroom effort and concert attendance. It started in May after school; one day a week. I recruited older students to be my peer mentors.
I made it clear to students that attending Saxophone Club did not mean they could necessarily switch completely to sax the next school year. Most students were encouraged to remain on their original instrument for concert band and double on sax for jazz band. They were also allowed a chance to rehearse for and perform at one concert on sax with the concert band.
This is where I tried many different approaches. In my early years I allowed students with advanced piano studies and proficiency to start on percussion. Another strategy was the Percussion Club, which was run exactly as described for sax. Another successful approach required students to attend a week-long summer band camp where beginner percussion instruction was available.
Whatever method you use, the one most important requirement is start on MALLET PERCUSSION! Once and only when students demonstrate proficiency on mallets, allow them to learn snare drum, timpani, bass drum and auxiliary percussion.
Some other options to consider:
I have started students in band as early as Grade 5 and as late as Grade 7. My personal preference is to start in Grade 6. There are many band teachers who do a great job of starting earlier but it does not suit my teaching style. Translation – I don’t have the patience!
I have been able to consistently start beginning Grade 7 bands in September and guide them to Gold or Superior Awards by April or May. There is a readiness factor that comes in to play at that age. In other words, something biologically and/or physically occurs around the age of 12 that enables youngsters to physically handle the instruments with more ease and develop the musical components much more quickly.
The key element in making these decisions is the starting grade. I have taught in just about every kind of program. The biggest stressor in my long career was caused by teaching mandatory Grade 8 band. Actually, it was a result of one particular incompetent principal, but that is the topic for another book.
My experience has been that by the time students reach Grade 7 they have fairly strong opinions on joining band. Band is like few other courses in the sense that improvement, learning and musical progress are so interdependent. It is truly a group activity. Dealing with students who do not want to be there is not only stressful, but they have can also have a serious impact on the learning and musical development of the rest of the group.
I once had an amazing beginner band of 135 students. At the end of the school year we received the class lists for the following September and about 10 of our better Grade 7 band students were not signed up for Grade 8 band. We had a meeting with those 10 or so students and this one brave little girl had this to say: “I loved band at the beginning of the year but after 10 months of having to sit beside ‘Johnnie B. Good’ (real name withheld to protect the guilty) I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
A colleague calls it the ‘cancer in the room’ and if you do not remove the cancer, it will spread and continue to cause damage until it is removed.
I always had a plan. It might not have been written down, but I had a plan. My plan would not suit every band director’s needs or teaching style. My plans were not necessarily the best. The following is merely one example of a list I might have written to prepare for the start of the school year.
My first class with a beginner band class was a demonstration of the instruments available for the students to choose from. If you are not proficient enough to at least play a scale or simple melody, there are other resources available.
The easiest and sometimes most effective is to have older students to come in and play. If you do this, make sure you meet briefly ahead of time and give them clear instructions on what to play, what to say, etc.
Another option is showing some videos, such as the following from the U.S. Army Field Band.
I know a lot of band teachers who use a band method book as soon as their students can assemble the instrument and produce a sound. Some of these directors produce good beginner bands because they teach their students how to read, interpret, understand and apply musical concepts, and so on.
There is nothing wrong with teaching by rote, if it is used at the right time for the right reason. I contend the first 2 to 3 months of a band student’s first year on a band instrument should be completely rote learning. Going back to the spoken language analogy, we listened to our family talking, we tried to imitate everything we heard which included not only vowels and syllables, but also tone, inflection and emotion.
After we learned to speak we were gradually taught to read, starting with our parents reading to us. We eventually learned enough to the point where we could read an entire novel without help from others, interpret the plot and enjoy the suspense and emotion intended by the author.
My theory is that we should emulate that same process, but on a different timeline. I also contend if you eliminate everything that is not needed when a student is starting out; reading notes, remembering fingerings, counting rhythms – you are opening up that student’s mind to focus on a few tasks at hand – tone, articulations, dynamics.
I wrote out and transposed a few pages of simple and recognizable melodies for my beginner band classes when I first started teaching; nursery rhymes, folk tunes, a few popular songs. I am not a pianist, but I know how to chord. A basic rock progression using I, IV and V can be used for a slew of rock tunes.
A few years after I started teaching, Brian Appleby, a prominent junior high band teacher in Edmonton, published a method he developed called ApRo Sound Start for Band (Beginning). This wonderful tool comes with a CD with accompaniments that Brian created and recorded; every style imaginable, from classical to polka to heavy rock. The first several songs require students to know two notes. The method progresses gradually to where the use of five notes creates sophisticated-sounding arrangements.
The arrangements are not really that sophisticated, but the audience does not know this. I used the ApRo system for a concert every year in early October. The concert was used to get a majority of our band parents gathered in a room so that the executive of our band parent group could conduct an AGM, hold elections and encourage parents new to the band program to volunteer to sit on the Board and/or help plan events.
Getting back on track, the Sound Start method allows band directors to teach and beginner band students to learn the same way they learned to speak their native tongue. I used a few of Brian’s arrangements of Christmas carols found later in the method for our winter concerts. I also have a colleague who wrote some very simple and easy, yet interesting, arrangements which he sent to me via PDF. I used Sound Start until the beginning of December.
My students did not see a band method book nor a single note on a staff during the first three months of school. I used this time to teach posture, embouchure, tonguing, breathing, tone, tuning, phrasing, shaping of a line and a hundred other concepts that make playing a musical instrument so complex.
I handed out the traditional band method books the next day following the Christmas concert. It takes me two lessons to teach students how to read music – notes, names, location on the staff – even less if they have had a good elementary music education taught by a music specialist. The band always soars through the method book.
Regular band arrangements and compositions in the Very Easy range of difficulty are learned quickly. Why? Because my students have been taught all of the concepts listed earlier and simply apply them to the music. They are not trying to learn how to read at the same time as they are being urged to sit properly, get a better tone and all of the rest of the concepts I expect. These have already been learned and have become an integral part of their ‘language.’
Is this a blatant promo for the ApRo Sound Start method? Damn right it is. It is a proven pedagogy and the kids love it. Almost as importantly, the parents love it. The biggest thing for me is … IT WORKS!
Reading Rhythms: I firmly believe in teaching students how to read rhythms from Day 1. EASY – start every class with a short rhythm on a board (black, white, SMART). Use Kodály and all of the other proven techniques. But don’t forget to write the counting over top of the rhythm. Have the class count out loud while clapping the rhythm. You can help students develop quite a number of skills by adding some other exercises. Once the class is comfortable counting and clapping, they can sing it using the syllables ‘doh’ or ‘dah.’ Sizzle it. Buzz it on the mouthpiece. Play it using one or more notes the class has already learned.
I teach all my students how to do a short 5- to 10-minute warm-up. The warm-ups consist of mouthpiece, long tones, woodwind trill exercise, lip slurs and tonguing. These kinds of individual warm-ups develop tone and technique. I often use sporting analogies in my teaching. For example, I will ask the question: What would happen if a sprinter did not warm up before racing in the 100 meters on a cold day? The answer is always some sort of injury. I relate this same thing can happen to musicians.
This also allows me to have 5 to 10 minutes at the beginning of class to attend to student ’emergencies’, hand out reeds, or read a note from home. I have read and heard of some directors who train their top students how to run group warm-ups.
Once the band is comfortable physically playing the instruments and can perform simple songs with note names or solfège,it is time to start teaching them how to read.
They started with Mama and Dada. This was followed with short expressions such as ‘Preston hungry.’ By the age of two or three they are asking questions; A LOT of questions. Around their 5th birthday they can read simple words.
Between the ages of five and six they start Grade 1 and they start reading about Dick and Jane walking up the hill. Oh, does that date me? My point is that we all spend several years listening, mimicking and learning to speak. Then, and only then, are we taught to read.
If you teach the right way – proper technique, learning note names, playing with good tone – then all that’s left is to start with Exercise 1 on Page 6 of the band method of your choice. You will be amazed at how quickly your band learns to read and start performing ‘regular’ music. View one of my YouTube videos below showing my method of teaching Key Signatures.
If you teach concepts you are training young musicians to be independent, skilled, knowledgeable and all of the traits that will result in excellent sight-readers.
Why is sight-reading so valuable? Young bands can learn songs quicker and spend much less time rehearsing because they are making smart musical decisions without needing to be reminded every time they see a dynamic marking or where to breathe.
In the next chapter, my Bag of Tricks, I describe how I teach accents and crescendos. If you teach the concept well, you do not need to repeat yourself every time students see it in a new piece of music.
The most critically important concept is reading music, especially rhythms. I once witnessed a band teacher singing a part to his flute section literally minutes before going on stage for a concert in May.
Teach your kids to read, understand and interpret music. It might take a bit more time when you start doing this, but the time you will save later in the year will outweigh this by a factor of 10.
Do not teach songs. Teach music.
View an example of teaching concepts below:
Perform Often: I know this might sound like a bold statement, but kids are human. Human nature says we work harder if faced with a deadline. Young musicians – no, all musicians – work harder in the weeks leading up to a performance.
So it is only common sense that young bands will progress further and faster if they are scheduled to perform often throughout the school year. I started my band teaching career conducting concerts only two or three times each year. We teach the way we were taught.
Recruiting Concerts: Pay for the busing cost to bring your next year’s kids to you. This way you do not need to haul instruments, percussion, stands, etc. to one or more feeder schools.
There are a number of ways you can approach recruiting concerts:
Keep the music up-tempo and light – marches, movie themes, dynamic overtures. Show a video highlighting the activities at band camp or the school year to date.
Try a Saturday one-day mini-camp in the last month of the school year led by your students, or try the week before school starts.
Camp Caroline: a church-run camp in Alberta with 360 acres of wooded trails, large pool, huge gymnasium, rooms each with four bunk beds, a large dining room which also serves as a rehearsal hall, breakout rooms for sectional clinics, and a kitchen staff that prepares hot meals that kids love to eat.
Banff Music Retreats: hosted at one of several hotels nestled in the midst of the Rocky Mountains. Featured are clinics, rehearsals run by a guest conductor, and many options to choose from to fill some free time.
We have the luxury of several camps in Alberta. A band camp gets the kids away from common daily distractions, allowing their focus to be on learning for two days. Discovering the impact of band camps is the best idea I have ever embraced to add to my bag of tricks.
When I hear band directors say things like, “I don’t attend festivals because the benefit gained does not merit the time or effort needed”, what they are really thinking is, “I’m afraid that my bands might not be good enough.”
Everyone is different. I once joked “I think I came out of the womb a cocky SOB.” I have often been nervous but rarely afraid. I know this does not describe every band director or even the majority, but you owe it to yourself and your students to attend at least one festival a year.
Most universities do not prepare student band teachers for the real world. That statement will not make many friends, but it is true. You start the real learning process when you start teaching. Please go to festivals and stick around long enough to hear other bands, listen to their choice of literature, what the adjudicators say.
Your band will not be great the first time you go to a festival, but take that first step and one day you will be directing a band that other band directors make their kids sit and listen to.
Attending festivals was the best professional development activity and had the most influence in shaping me as a band director.
Playing a recording of a new piece before a group has tried to read it at least once or twice has been cause for a lot of heated debate. I must admit, my feelings about the matter have swung to each end of the pendulum and everywhere in between.
My argument early in my career for not playing professional or college recordings of a piece before the band rehearses it was that the band would learn the piece by rote. Subsequently, the band’s ability to read rhythms and in general, sight-read, would be compromised.
My view has swung almost 180 degrees. If you do enough rhythm reading exercises and teach your kids how to read, they will take from the recording only what they should – a very good exemplar of how to interpret the piece.
My school division implemented Assessment for Learning for our PD for two or three years. One of the things I learned from this was the importance of using exemplars so kids will be aware of what you are asking them to do. They can’t hit the bull’s-eye if they can’t see the target.
