General Information
We are continuing our hard work on our performance music this week with both groups. I cannot believe how fast this semester is flying by. The students are doing a great job stepping up to learn their music when I ask them too. I cannot wait for you to hear the improvements they have made over the course of this year. Our March Madness is now complete! Our final winner was Jupiter from The Planets. It faced off against Carmina Burana from Germany and won quite easily.
So far the only date we have left on the calendar is Fine Arts Night on May 15th. If anything else changes, I will update you as soon as I find out.
Private lessons: I have had a couple people ask what these are. Private lessons are an excellent way to help support your student’s growth on their instrument. They are an opportunity for them to learn from a licensed teacher of their specific instrument. These teachers are able to meet your student where they are skill wise and provide additional support and techniques to help them improve outside of band. Various music stores offer lessons, my college MidAmerica Nazarene University has a program, and there are various individuals across the metro that teach out of their homes as well. Please let me know if this interests you at all!
Announcement: n/a
Advanced Band
Practice logs will be tracked from Tuesday-Tuesday. I gave them out next Tuesday and would like it back filled out and signed by the following Tuesday. 30 minutes minimum a week is a place to start. Please encourage your students to fill these out!
This week we learned about tuning our instruments. Each instrument has a unique way to tune their instruments so they can play better together. They learned to pull their tuning section further out if they are sharp and to push in when they are flat. This skill will help us continue to improve our overall group sound as well as their individual ones. We also continued our work on our Fine Art music. Down to the River works on developing their lyrical sound. This also becomes a great piece to practice listening for their tuning as it is slower in tempo and more exposed. We also worked on Pirates of the Caribbean this week. They did a full run of the piece on Thursday and did an excellent job adjusting to the slight tempo changes as well as time signature changes. I am still considering making one change to the piece by cutting measures 87-95. My reason for this is the piece is already quite long and this section is very exposed. They can play it, but I want them to feel completely comfortable when they go to perform and this section might not feel that way. The students are aware of the idea and are okay with it.
Beginning Band
Practice logs will be tracked from Monday-Monday. I gave them out next Monday and would like them back the following Monday. 30 minutes minimum a week is a place to start. Please encourage your students to fill these out!
This week we starting working on playing their piece for Fine Art Night in longer sections. They have become more comfortable with 4 measure sections so now we are working on pushing it to 6-8 measure groups. The piece for Fine Art Night is from their books on pg. 20 and is titled Procession from Water Music. This piece is a classic piece of musical literature and continues to challenge the students on playing for longer stretches and more independently. We might also look at Banana Boat Song, on the same page, depending on time so if they want to start looking at it at home they are more than welcome to. Exercise 56 introduces their most recent new note that we are working on in class. We have worked on breaking it down and finding the pitch of their new note so I would like for them to continue working on this exercise at home. Long tones also will continue to be a great way to build up their playing muscles when practicing. This is seen in exercise no. 42. This will really help out brass players specifically. They can also practice just sustaining their buzz on a mouthpiece to help maintain their sound.
Upcoming Events
05/15- A AND B BAND- FINE ARTS NIGHT AT 6:30 PM