Festivals As Learning Opportunities by Jeff Skogley


President, Montana Bandmasters Association jskogley@cascade.k12.mt.us Reprinted from Montana Cadenza


tunities for them to learn. Aside from solo and ensemble festivals, there are the massed group festivals. At the very least the students get to play their instruments more than normal. That can help them improve their playing abilities. There are numerous honor band festivals across the state. Most seem to be organized by music district, either one district hosting or multiple districts being involved at one festival. The scheduling of these festivals varies widely. Some meet be- fore the festival for several rehearsals, some have an intense couple days of rehearsal. One of these honor bands goes on tour as their performance routine. All-State is the biggest honor band hosted in state. Recently I had yet another opportu-


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nity to observe a master teacher working his magic with young musicians. This festival was a great deal more than face time for these students. Other than some returning members from the year before, this was a band that never been together before, and with students that previously had never worked with this director. This sounds like a common setup for these festivals, doesn’t it? These musicians showed up at varying stages of preparation. The first sounds that came out of this group were not exactly pleasant; wrong notes, different ideas of balance, widely varying pitch centers; you get the picture. Student leaders needed to learn to listen to different players to blend and match styles. This festival director took these students from their diverse musi- cal places and gradually got them to form a band, a band that had common ideas of style, tempo and what the music needed to convey to the audience. The rehears- als were, by necessity, filled with starts and stops. Notes and a few other basic things needed to be corrected. But a lot of time was spent on larger concepts. Things that, if remembered when they get back to their


TEMPO


he variety of music festivals our students have available to them provides fantastic oppor-


own schools, these musicians can continue to use no matter what music is in front of them. There was hopefully some positive motivation that these students will hang on to as well. These festivals are great learning experi- ences for the students. They can also be great learning opportunities for the teach- ers of these students. I’ve been involved in more than few of these festivals, and it is rare that I don’t find some teaching tools to take back and use with my own classes. There are big differences between the large band of motivated students with above av- erage musical ability and the group of stu- dents waiting back home. The students al- ways seem to pay better attention to a guest conductor than to their home teachers. A


dents more about their instruments, more about music theory, more about style and in general just advance the students’ musical knowledge. When students come prepared to these festivals and their parts are learned ahead of time, they have the opportunity to take their musicianship to new levels. When the students show up and need to learn their parts from scratch, it seriously inhibits the opportunity for musical growth. As the band teachers of these students, it is up to us to encourage and assist our students in this. That is a big step in assuring worthwhile ex- periences for our kids. A large part of what we do as teachers is to lead the students to a place where they can make more and more musical decisions on their own. Teaching by rote is often a


psychologist could have a field day explain- ing this. Watching these rehearsals one can find that the basic ideas of making music are pretty universal. There are variations of interpretation but music is written to be played a certain way, no matter who is play- ing it. For me, the most interesting part of the rehearsals is how the directors go about getting good music out of the students. The best band festival directors don’t just work on notes and rhythms. They teach the stu-


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quick way to get a respectable result in the short term. But in the long run it saves a lot of time if we teach the students the things they need to know to make music on their own. When they can perform rhythms, fingerings, pitches, etc. without any help from anyone else, then we as teachers can take them from that plateau to even more in-depth and better musical places. If we simply teach them by rote day after day, we will always have to start at that low level


MARCH 2013


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