Battling Going Through The Motions during Band Rehearsals Editor’s Note: This article appears as one of a series written especially for Ala Breve by experts in the field of music education.
As the beginning of the school year excitement starts to fade, band directors and their students across the country find themselves surrounded in routines. Routines for entering and exiting the classroom, setting up and tearing down instruments, and restroom and other administrative procedures to name a few. Some directors also choose to establish rehearsal routines such as delivering announcements either at the beginning or end of class, tuning to the oboe or clarinet, having a student conductor lead warm up exercises, or choosing to warm up together, individually, or both. While establishing and maintaining routines are excellent practice for student and band success (Juchniewicz, Kelly, & Acklin, 2014), predictability in musical routines may cause students not to put concentrated efforts to play at their best, or simply go through the motions. As a result, when students are not putting forth maximum effort, bad habits of poor posture, weak air stream, or general poor technique start to form. Merely going through the motions can be detrimental to the music making and learning process. Band directors now find themselves searching for motivational strategies for the students to play well consistently instead of focusing on instructional strategies that impact the music making and learning process.
Some band directors also fall into a routine that can be unfavorable to the band’s success. Regardless of the level, hearing routine band sounds become problematic for teacher development. When band directors struggle to get students out of routine playing habits, at times they may settle for the present sound. Being trapped with the same sounds can cause teachers to overlook original expectations and the countless instructional techniques to draw those sounds out from their students. The following strategies are for band directors to maintain routines while varying activities within musical routines for ideal outcomes.
1. Long Tones As teachers, we already know the wonderful musical development long tones provide such as building tone quality, endurance, awareness of pitch, and much more (Juchniewicz, Kelly, & Acklin, 2014). When students are playing their daily long tones, be sure to emphasize fundamental technique between each breath. For example, if the students are sustaining 12
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beats each chromatic tone with mm = 60, place four beats of rest between each semitone to ensure quality breaths and most importantly, provide meaningful feedback during the rest time. Reminders could be anything from better posture, deeper breaths, faster air stream, embouchure adjustments, or tapping their toe to the tempo. Routine musical exercises, such as long tones or scales, are typical activities where students tend to go through the motions. Teachers can capitalize on instruction during these routines and reinforce the importance of the activities by being fully involved. The active feedback provided does not always have to be verbal. As the teacher, conduct the students through long tones. Emphasize technique and air speed through conducting gestures. This way the students can focus solely on tone production and you can work on maintaining their focus through a vocabulary of conducting gestures. Being actively present in daily musical routines holds your students to the higher expectations you create with consistency.
2. Air A large number of bands that I have worked
with or adjudicated still show fundamental problems of tone production but tend to focus solely on the music being performed. Often students go through the motions in terms of focusing on tone quality the moment music is placed in front of them. In addition, directors may also feel pressures of upcoming performances or assessments that they too negate foundations in lieu of focusing on notes and rhythms found in the music. Remember, your job is to teach music to band students, not teach the band music to students. Reinforce foundations of air during rehearsal to vary rehearsal routines. Producing characteristic tone quality on band instruments comes first and students need reminders and activities to produce great tone quality. It does not matter how wonderful the piece if the sounds producing the music are not quality. Avoid allowing the students go through the motions when it comes to production of air.
3. Rehearsal If you find yourself rehearsing the same section of music with the same unprepared students repeatedly, you and your students are probably frustrated with the predictable
By Susana M. Lalama
routine of the rehearsal. The bigger problem is that students tend to shift their attention to anything but playing with great fundamental technique and go through the motions during rehearsal. Vary rehearsal activities. Involve all students in learning the troubled musical sections.
Tonal. For musical problems dealing with note accuracy or intonation, create activities in which all students sing the troubled sections. Uniform singing builds confidence in the weaker musicians, allows more opportunity for repetition with a different approach. Involve all students — which keeps them involved in the learning process and avoids potential behavioral problems, and is ideal for strengthening awareness of pitch (Worthy & Thompson, 2009). For the students without the music in front of them, either transpose a section or have the students learn to play the problematic section by ear (Musco, 2010). For the struggling students, vary the routine by first singing the problem section, then sing while fingering through the section, and finally play through the section. Many students and teachers skip the middle step of singing while fingering through the section, which ultimately connects the physical with the aural skills.
Another idea that is helpful with learning and perfecting tonal passages is altering the rhythms before returning to the original. For example, if there are multiple sixteenth note passages that are problematic for your students, isolate five successive sixteenth notes and change the rhythm so that students rehearse two notes as sixteenth notes and the rest as eighth notes (see figure 1). By altering the rhythm, students are able to isolate the difficult connections without becoming bored by repetition. Varying the activities will help break the rehearsal routine while helping the students improve fundamental music skills that go beyond the music.
Rhythm & Articulation.When students are having problems understanding particular rhythms, verbalizing the rhythms is a common strategy. Similar to singing tonal music patterns, chanting rhythmic patterns aloud helps weaker musicians learn from others, builds confidence, and is a way to keep all students involved. However, if the same
August/September 2015
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