General Information
This semester is flying by. I cannot believe April is almost over! The students are continuing to do an excellent job working hard on their music in class. I have also appreciated all of the parent communication when students will be missing class due to sickness or other reasons. It really helps me figure out lesson plan changes if I know people are missing so that I can adjust to work on other sections of music that do not feature the missing students. Please continue to encourage your students to practice at home as Fine Art Night is coming up quick and any extra practice done at home will be extremely beneficial.
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: Fine Art Night is at 6:00pm NOT 6:30! Also please look at the added in school rehearsal days.
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 continued to work on listening and tuning to each other. The students are learning how they can adjust their sound to better match the group now that they have grasped the basics of tuning. This skill is something that musicians are always working on as our instruments change to the weather and we listen to the group we are playing with. We also continued our work on our Fine Art music. Down to the River is starting to sound amazing. The students are listening more to each other and it really shows in the balance. 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 dynamic changes I made. I did make the decision to cut the section of One Last Shot. The students will now jump from measure 77 to 95. The students are aware of the idea and are okay with it. We have also been doing periodical runs of Zig Zag and may add that piece in for Fine Art Night as well.
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. We are still working with playing it in 4 measure chunks. I would love to push to 6-8 measure groups, but the students need to practice at home more for this to work. The piece for Fine Art Night is from their books on pg. 20 and is titled Procession from Water Music. This piece challenges them through rhythms and more independence so please have them work on it at home too! 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
05/6- A AND B BAND- IN SCHOOL REHEARSAL AT 12:30
05/3- A AND B BAND- IN SCHOOL REHEARSAL AT 12:30
05/13- A AND B BAND- IN SCHOOL REHEARSAL AT 12:30
05/15- A AND B BAND- FINE ARTS NIGHT AT 6:30 PM