My Day
Today I went to a day of meetings with my supervising teacher and some of the other band directors in the area. We had a speaker at the beginning of the day that I really liked by the name of Dr. Rick DuFour. The discussion was about education collaboration and assessment...awesome lecture! I spent the rest of the day visiting and learning tons of useful information from a handful of band directors, and then attended the all city band rehearsal in the evening which was a great experience to see so many students come together from all over the city to play and build relationships. I observed many of the directors running sectionals and definitely learned a lot!
Instrument techniques
-When the student is playing a triangle, have them hold it with their thumb and finger and don't let them interrupt or dampen the sound.
-The students were working on trumpet buzzing. I really liked how the director had the students buzz an entire section of a piece to get a better sound and feel. There is a new book about buzzing called "Buzzing Basics," by James Thompson.
General Instruction
-I saw something interesting during a sectional; the director asked the students to mark a measure but one student wasn't paying attention so he didn't know what measure to mark. As a director a solution to this would be to make sure you say the actual measure number, not just "that measure." I think that saying an actual number will get the students' attention, just a thought.
-To achieve good releases on notes, have the students consciously take a breath on the following rest. This worked so well!
-Tell students to go home and listen to all of their band pieces on youtube, and multiple versions too.
-The 3 levels of listening, 1) Self, 2) Section, 3) Full Ensemble. The students seemed to really latch onto this and started to listen more, even during their rests.
Quotes and Other Random Happenings
- "Sizzle for clarity." While explaining the why of sizzling parts before playing.
-Band directors chew gum in tempo!
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