HELP! Band Teachers

HELP! Band Directors I need your best Easy Jr. High/Advanced Elementary Band Piece.

It’s no secret that I am first a choir director by choice and a band teacher by necessity. Don’t get me wrong I do enjoy band it’s just not my strong suit so I am coming to you for help. I have a band of 7th and 8th graders who have played for between 2 and 3 years.

They are definitely beginners but eager to learn and will work hard for me but here comes the hard part.

There are only 10 of them. I have 4 trumpets, 1 Sax, 2 Clarinets, 1 Flute and 2 Drummers.

Help I need good literature that will keep them learning and yet still feeling successful.

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If you post it they will come.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

I know it is way over used but what a great movie. Anyway, its true I tried a little experiment where I decided to just post a lot of my thoughts. I generally start a lot of blog posts but never post them because I was nervous to put myself out there unless I was sure what I had written was good and relevant. I decided to just post anyway and not worry what other people think. guess what I have more blog hits than ever before but even more importantly I have gotten more comments than ever before as well. This is why I originally wanted to blog anyway, networking/sharing ideas.

This is why technology is important in education. Broadening our networks to allow us to learn more. So get out there and let yourself be vulnerable its kinda fun. 🙂

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Online Garage Band

Image by louisvolant via Flickr

If you love Garage Band but you work at a school where budget cuts are much more likely than buying your class a mac lab full of the latest greatest software.

Then Myna is for you and me both! 🙂

http://aviary.com/tools/myna

I have just started using it with my students this last week so I do not know all the ins and ours yet but so far I like it. It is a lot like Garageband on a Mac but not as advanced in many ways.  Though it does have a lot better choice of loops and is even linked with sound.com to get loops from. Or you can go to ccmixter.org and find loops that you can import in.

Right now with my class we are just learning how to work with and manipulate loops but soon we want to start learning to create our own content/loops.

We go to the school computer lab and access it there. And the kids that really take off with it are even accessing the same site and all their work from home. Got to love cloud computing. The one issue we ran into at first was not all the school computers had Flash 10 installed on them. So once that was taken care of we were off.

Oh and remind the students to bring headphones if your lab does not offer them, you do not want all those sounds going off at once.

Have fun and let me know how it goes for you.

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Morten Lauridsen/Pandora

Image via Wikipedia

I love that I can hear the music of Morten Lauridsen and other great choral masters on Pandora Radio.

When I was in college my professor Dr. Glenn Bennett always told me that to really get how to direct a great choir you have to listen to great choirs.

The problem with this was CD‘s are not cheap and to tack that on top of college books it just didn’t happen as much as it should have. But now with Pandora Radio I can type in a composer or choir and listen to great choir music all day if I want.

Then I can even share what it is I am listening to, if it really strikes me, with others like this .

https://twitter.com/kgard/status/8328690517

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Snow Days

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Why do we love snow days so much? In my district the school plans a day towards the end of the year that if we haven’t yet taken a bad weather day then we get the later date off.

I love it! We are guaranteed a day off whether we have bad weather or not. 🙂

But today as its snowing I look out and wish for a snow day. I would think I would rather have the day when its warmer and being able to plan for it but today  I am longing for a snow day.

Maybe I just love surprises like waking up to find out there is no school I don’t know.

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ipad

I’m In!

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The Big Apple Announcement Today

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Regional Audition Tips

This Saturday is our Regionals Auditions in Arizona. Here are some tips I gave my students.

As you finish your preparations remember these things:

Choir –

Solos
~ All of your measures must be numbered or you will loose points.

~ You must have the original copy of your song for your judge.

~ Make Eye Contact.

~ You are performing.

Sight Reading
~ As soon as we get there go and sign up for your sight reading. The sooner you get that done the better you will do.

~ Don’t be afraid to sing the Triad out loud after you hear it.

~ Start on solfege if you get off its ok then you can jump to La just don’t stop.

Band
~ Play your etudes as slow as you need.

~ Keep the pattern in your scales and you’ll be fine.

Everyone
~ Dress to impress. The judge will notice.

~ Relax its hard for everyone.

Feel free to comment ideas for each other. Especially you Regionals Veterans.

~

What would you advise your students to be prepared for a competitive audition?

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Solfege in Elementary Band

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I have been a firm believer in using solfegio for choirs since I was taught to use it and it improved my ability immensely. But at the beginning of this year I had the idea to start using it with my 5th grade band and see if they could pick it up at that age and also because in my school the only music they get at that age is band if they choose. This meant I wanted to get them singing early on as well so when they get to the upper graves maybe they won’t be afraid of choir.

Well something that I probably should have predicted happened. Their playing improved as well. And as far as I can tell this class is progressing faster than my other classes did at the same age.

This could be because I am a little more experienced now and so surely my classroom management has improved but other than that I have not changed my teaching style or resources, besides adding solfege.

Before every song we play now we sing it on the sofege. This especially helps for brand new songs but it is also great for songs they have been playing for a while because it gets the tune back in their heads. I have had many teachers tell me if you can’t sing it you can’t play it. I don’t know how true that is but the more I do this the more I am convinced they were on to something. We just never used solfege.

I don’t know exactly this could be implemented into the upper levels of music I’m not ready to try that just yet but it is perfect for beginning band where everyone plays the same thing.

So this last week I also decided to go ahead and add the hand signs and the kids are loving it. When I try and get my older kids to learn these things they just whine and complain about how hard it is and that they arent used to it. But the younger kids are eating it up. I love it I feel like I am becoming a better teacher.

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Pandora Radio

Image via CrunchBase

If you haven’t already discovered Pandora Radio then your world is about to change whether you use it or not. In my opinion 🙂

Image via Wikipedia

I truly believe that this is the start of the death of Radio as we know it. You have probably heard the song “Video killed the Radio Star“… not true… better said Pandora is killing the Radio Star. But luckily its actually called Pandora RADIO so it can live a little longer I guess.:)

I use to subscribe to Sirius radio because it had no commercials but with Pandora there is no reason and it takes things to the next level. Now you have endless radio station possibility’s because you just enter in a group or song that you like and it builds a playlist of similar songs. You can create as many “stations” as you would like.

And best of all – ITS FREE – with the spread of smart phones aka “Always having a connection to the internet” This is the new “Radio”

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