eckroth total band director workshop

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

Shakespeare — The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1

I attended the Eckroth Music Total Band Director Workshop last week and was privileged to hear from the likes of Col. Lowell E. Graham, Samuel Hazo, Michael Mossman, and more. Hazo quoted the portion of Shakespeare above to emphasize the importance of music to us as human beings, and he and others gave me a number of things to think about.

1. Pyramid of sound (Graham) — I'm still sorting through my thoughts on this topic. Col. Graham called it "American folk pedagogy," and said that people don't grasp what Francis McBeth was trying to get across in the pyramid concept. I'm planning on doing some more reading on McBeth and then writing a full post later with my thoughts on band sound.

2. New Music Reading Sessions — It's usually pretty fun to play in a band director band, and it is nearly always valuable to spend some time on the other side of the baton. One of the highlights of the sessions was reading Due North (Michael Sweeney), which was commissioned by a consortium of schools including SCPA. I think the piece turned out very well, and it was a simple and easy project to take part in.

3. "Every emotion but joy is dissonant" — Sam Hazo pointed this out when talking about the need for musicians (especially young ones) to emphasize dissonances so that they sound right. Perhaps it is a bit of a stretch, but I don't think it is much of an exaggeration. He used the piano to demonstrate how he would make a single interval sound with a variety of emotions. Try it yourself for an interesting exercise.

4. Equipment is Important (Nick Petrella, Shelly Jagow) — I learned some things about percussion (check out the difference in sustain on the vibes with the paddles open and closed all the way--you might be as surprised as I was) and about woodwind sound. Most eye-opening was a video of a college-level clarinet section playing some Persichetti on their normal equipment and then switching out only the mouthpiece for their original student piece. What did they sound like? My clarinet sections. The tone and pitch got worse, the articulation got worse...everything sounded worse on the student mouthpieces. Resolution: get students to play on equipment that helps them sound their best.

writing program notes in band

Curious remark about life with questionable punctuation; followed by a question? Description of how music connects to the curious remark including the title of the music being played. A compound sentence involving a fact, another fact, and an additional fact, as well as a (perhaps inappropriate) use of parentheses to further describe the music. Succinct explanation of the story behind the music. Gushy statement, including a comma-separated clause, about how much the music means to the writer. Brief exclamation! Assertion about why this music matters with a pithy concluding thought.

I'm a fan of humor and wanted to inject some into an assignment on writing program notes with my students in grades 7 – 12 this past year. Writing in band class became a "necessary evil" and I wanted to make the best of it. The paragraph above is a sample I wrote of generic program notes (see a real set based on the generic one at the end of this post). A few students used it as a model for their own, but my intent wasn't to have everyone simply parrot my form. Instead, I wanted students to see that there was a form to program notes, and that certain details are nearly always included.

Before I describe what I did, here's my idea of what program notes should be. Program notes should...

1. Tell the audience something that will help them appreciate the music more
2. Arouse the curiosity of the reader and show why the music is worth listening to
3. Connect the music to other relevant parts of culture

I can't stress enough how important it was for me to complete the same assignment as the students before I gave it to them. Here is the full sequence of my approach to writing program notes in band.

• Cycle One (of two--the final concert of the year proved too busy to fit this in)
  • Show examples of good program notes and the music they were written for (from the MN High School Music Listening Contest)
  • As we listened and read the examples, we practiced picking out details
  • The more details we picked out, the easier it was to see patterns and group the details according to three categories: biographical information, context of the piece, and things to listen for in the music
  • In class, we walked through a lot of details that related to several of the pieces to be played, and students recorded them here
  • Students brought their rough drafts to class for some peer editing as well as comments from me, and then they completed a final draft
• Cycle Two
  • After the experience of doing program notes the first time, I made a few tweaks
  • Adjustment #1 – With the middle school students, we practiced picking out relevant details and then writing sentences based on those details
  • Adjustment #2 – I took real student rough drafts, projected them on the screen, and we talked through (as a class) the strengths and weaknesses of some of their writing

Here are a couple samples from these assignments.

“Most of the time, events in history are only remembered in history class, but why not remember them through music? Composer John Edmondson does just that in Valley Forge. In Valley Forge, a few bars of the Revolutionary War battle hymn “Chester” and the well-known tune “Yankee Doodle” can be found during the piece. Edmondson highlights his instrument of choice, trumpet, in several places and uses his experience from being a member of the U.S. Army Band to create a high-spirited march. The piece mixes a classic march with a tribute to the Revolutionary War, while still remaining modern and unique. Pay attention! You might just recognize multiple tunes in one march.”

— 8th grade student

“Can one define what music comes from? The famous American composer, John Mackey, wrote an outré and unorthodox piece called Foundry that goes outside the frame that others had placed before him. While most music contains some light melodies from the flute and heroic tones from the trumpets, Mackey chooses to highlight the percussion section throughout the entire piece. That’s right: the percussion. The basic idea behind Foundry was to turn anything and everything into an instrument, from salad bowls to plastic buckets. Each bang combined with the offbeat and unexpected entrances the wind instruments make throughout the piece implies the idea of a foundry (a workshop or factory for casting metal). Mackey’s work will certainly keep you on your toes as you listen to the way music can be created with the help of items you might find in your kitchen.”

— 10th grade student

Last, here are my notes to Alex Shapiro's Paper Cut (based on the spoof at the start of the blog post).

Sometimes we hear music so much that we don’t listen to it; why do we tune out our minds from our ears? It often takes a piece like Paper Cut to reorient ourselves and start listening to music again. As an electro-acoustic piece, Paper Cut is a combination of band instruments, pre-recorded track, and (of course) paper. Shapiro imagined the music as something akin to a film score, and I hear mystery and determination aplenty in the piece. I love this piece for the way it helps us, band and audience alike, remember that we have to listen to the music to appreciate it. So listen up! It isn’t every day that you have a chance to hear something new and appreciate the creativity and inspiration behind music.

instrument review: Schiller 4-valve (rotary) tuba

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There were lots of surprises during my first few years of teaching. The year that our new school building opened, I discovered that there were not one, but two, tuba players who were coming to SCPA, and they both happened to be in the same grade. This posed a problem since I hadn't put any thought into getting tubas for the school without anyone to play them. I had already spent my budget on other needed items (a bari sax, bass clarinet, and an oboe), so I did two things:

1. Beg for more money
2. Find the cheapest tubas

#2 is what got me started on looking very seriously at Chinese imports. Postings at TubeNet and David Werden's forum convinced me that there some things worth looking at, and so I picked out two models: a smaller, 3-valve piston tuba, and a larger, 4-valve rotary tuba. The cost? Just under $3k, delivered. You can't even get one Yamaha tuba for that amount new!

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Those first tubas have seen five years of daily use, and they have held up great. The rotary valve tuba is fine mechanically, plays in tune, and just went in for its first ultrasonic cleaning this spring--no major issues. Students lost a couple stop nuts by the rotor paddles and they were replaced no problem. My only complaint is that the case has not held up as well—but it is clear from the tubas I've purchased since then that suggestions to the company about case design have been taken into account, and I think the newer cases are holding up much better.

What else do you want to know? Leave a note in the comments or send me an email.