Advocacy

Music needs to be a part of every child's life. It can help raise student confidence levels. Music has the potential to help students learn teamwork as well as some communication skills. Music can helps students achieve higher grades. Music is a great tool to help other subject learn concert. Having a music program is a great way to keep the arts alive in the community. Any of the music programs can play at any of the community events. Whether it be a dinner party or play some music at a school board meeting. The band plays at all the sports games. The band can also play in all the parades. The community can always attend any of the music programs concert. In the spring the High School Music programs will be participating in music festival, where each group would be adjudicated and the community is welcome to come and support. Music is important class that can help students later in their career paths.

Festival

On April 20th I observed the Willow Creek/ Harrison band’s performance at music festival. The group performed for Jay Smith and Rob Wells. They played in the Willson School gymnasium, which has at least a 4 second reverberation. Because of this the bands sounded very muddy. The band played Willow Creek Overture for their first number, which was conducted by Sandy Mabbit, the Harrison High School band director. Her stand was so high her arms were conducting at head level. The next piece was Brandenburg March which was conducted by Bill Frank of Willow Creek. Because of limited instrumentation,the band used alto saxes to double trumpet parts. The group sounded very good, but the gym caused the group to lack clarity. Jay Smith worked with the band. He talked more about the acoustics of the gym and constantly asked the students if they liked band instead of working with the group. The sight reading portion of the performance went very quickly in an effort to get groups back on schedule as they were running about 25 minutes behind.

Warm up

On Monday March 19th I did my teaching episode on “Warming up the Band”. First the activity that the band did was talk about spring break. Then Kelly Berdahl introduced myself as well as Karen. I went up to the podium and had the students start with a Bb Concert scale. Next, I had the student break into a round low voices were group one, group two was the alto voices of the band, and finally the soprano instruments. I told the band “lets do a Bb concert scale in quarter notes”... I confused them. I wanted them to do four quarter notes on one-note, they however, took it as each note geta a one quarter. I replied back at them, “Ha, I tricked you, I wanted to see if you were paying attention.” they laughed and then we played the scale the way that I originally wanted too. I attempted “POP” a warm up that make the band keep a steady pulse to all come in. Once I was finished Mr. Berdahl took the band back and they worked on Harry Potter.

Tone

Tone is important in an ensemble because having a good tone is essential if the ensemble is to sound good. In order to have a good tone an ensemble needs to learn how to breath as one. Having the ensemble breath together, also helps the group to feel the phrases. In addition, having good tone will contribute to having a good balance between sections. The pyramid of sound is the best way to achieve this balance. Lastly the ensemble should listen to recording of themselves as well as other musicians. Having a good concept of what they sound like will allow them to compare themselves to other musicians in a productive manner.

Elem Band

On April 2nd I observed Jennifer Murphy’s fifth grade band. I found it interesting that she used “Band in a Box” and had a small giggle about it because I had not considered using it with such a young group. I will probably give it a try now if I have the software in my classroom. The orchestra at Irving had about 13 cellos who meet the music room at the same time that 5th grade bands meets. Because of this, Mrs. Murphy has fifth grade band on the third floor in a regular classroom. I thought that this could hinder the learning process, because of space issues. The band seemed pretty good for being fifth graders. The music that they played was for their fifth grade band festival. One of the pieces that they worked on was Reglaial March from the Standard of Excellence Book. I had worked on this piece with students who participated in Arts without Boundaries; it is challenging for fifth graders because it features 1st and 2nd endings. However, the band handled the endings very well. The last 5 minutes of class were spent making announcements about the upcoming festival.

Jazz

On March 29th I observed the second jazz band at Bozeman High School with Steve Merriman. It was a weird day because they were missing most of the brass section due to a band tour. Most of the rehearsal was spent on doing repetitions on the harder spots in their music. I found it interesting that this jazz band had two trumpets and they were louder than the three in Studio Jazz. I had my jazz band class later that day and we talked about it . As a result we played louder. Mr Merriman played his horn with the students in order to help keep them together. The band sounded pretty good despite their missing players. One thing that I really liked was how Mr. Merriman used analogies; most of them were about weightlifting with repetitions.

Orchestra

On March 22, I observed the 12:55 Orchestra with Michael Certalic. The first task for the class was to play through and work on an etude. Mr. Certalic had the ensemble play through the etude while he was getting his violin out. The second time though the etude, he had the students work one section at a time doing different styles of bowing. He would demonstrate and then have the students imitate. Next they played Barber of Seville. It was an easier arrangement that they used for sight reading practice. The students did really well on it. They ended the class by playing an easy arrangement of Scheherazade which sounded similar to the original.