Conductor Hero III Legends of the Concert Hall!

My son recently bought "Guitar Hero III: legends of Rock" for his Wii.  I have to say that I am impressed with the game and enjoy the heck out of playing it.  If you haven't seen this game, the controlled is shaped like a guitar with 6 colored buttons on the next and a "strummer bar" in the body where you would normally strum the strings.  When you play the game a series of colored dots corresponding with the colors on the buttons on the fret board comes streaming toward you.  When the dots reach the front of the screen you must simultaneously press the corresponding button and strum the strummer bar.

At the easiest level of play the notes don't come down any more often that once per beat with the occasional 8th note scrolling past.  At the highest levels there is about a one to one correspondence between the dots you see and the notes in the lead guitar line of the song that is playing.

Will playing guitar teach you how to actually play guitar?  No.  Will it teach you to read music? No.  Does it have some value?  It just might.  The whole game is set to rock music.  You need good rhythmic skills to listen to the music, follow the dots, and "play" the notes at the right time.  

That's great if you like heavy metal, but what about the rest of us.  We are band geeks after all, and probably have interests in music that lie outside of (or perhaps for some of us overlapping) the heavy metal genre.  I propose that these software developers come up with a game with a more classical flavor: Conductor Hero III: Legends of the Concert Hall.  The controller could be a novelty sized baton into which the Wii controller fits.  Then the "conductor" could respond by gesturing with his baton to visual cues on the screen all while classical music plays.

Perhaps this game idea wouldn't have as big of a popular appeal as the Legends of Rock, but we band geeks can still dream!

Call For Music Education Bloggers

I was looking for other music education blogs today and found this:

http://www.mustech.net/2008/03/call-for-music-education-bloggers/

Dr. Joseph M. Pisano and Mr. Owen S. Bradley began/announced an initiative at the Florida Music Educator’s Conference (FMEA), in January of this year, asking music educators to create 100 new music education related weblogs (blogs) by January of 2009. The goal of these new blogs would be to become part of the music education information repository on the internet and begin to provide accurate, timely, and needed information about music and the music profession to other colleagues, musicians, ensembles, educators, and the general population.

The Music Education Blogger (ME Blogger) initiative is global in nature and music educators from throughout the world are invited to participate and create blogs about their particular interests. Blog content may very from specifics like, Kodaly, Orff, Dalcroze, elementary choirs, or classroom management to global topics like elementary music, secondary music, instrumental music, the entire music program, etc.

I guess I'm not the only one blogging on band directing.

Don't Bother Arguing with the Students

About 3/4 of the way through my first year of teaching, it occurred to me that it would be nice to have made a list of all of the things I had learned in my first year of teaching so I could look back and reflect.  By the time I had decided that I ought to make such a list, I had forgotten so much of what I had learned that making a list would be pointless.

That isn't to say that I unlearned any of those things that I had forgotten, just that I had forgotten what they were.  Sound strange?  Let's see you sit down and make a list of everything you know.  Odds are, you'd have a hard time listing them all.  Does that mean you don't know anything?  Certainly not.  

On that occasion in 1996 when I decided I ought to make a list, the thing that I decided I would like to write down is: "Don't argue with the students."  I sometimes have to remind my self of this when I am teaching.

I know I am not the only instructor temped to argue with my pupils.  I have seen colleagues do it.  I have heard colleagues complain about it of themselves.   Has it ever happened to you?  Imagine this seen:

Teacher: Joe, please stop talking.

Joe: I wasn't talking.

Teacher: Yes, you were.  You turned to Mike and were telling him....

Joe: No I wasn't

...

No good can come of this.  You can't win the argument.  It would be clear to any outside observer that you were right, but the students isn't going to change there story.  Does Joe really believe that he wasn't talking?  Who knows?  Perhaps he knows he's wrong but believes that if he repeats the untruth "I wasn't talking" enough times that it will become true.  Perhaps he is hoping that by engaging you in an argument he can make himself the center of attention for just a while longer.

Is there ever a good time to argue with a student?

Perhaps.  Sometimes I will debate a student in some sort of Socratic dialogue to guide them toward a correct answer.  But this is a more reasoned debate than the mere repeated contradiction that students so often pass off for argument.

Try this:

Teacher: "joe, stop talking"

Joe: "I wasn't talking."

Teacher: gives the next instruction and moves on.

Deprive Joe of the attention he craves.  You told him what needs to happen and moved on.

I never did start that list of things that I've learned in my years of teaching, but occasionally I'll share those ideas here.  What have you learned lately?

Why Do We Take Bands to Contest?

This week I took my middle school band to contest for the 12th time in 13 years and, as I often do I have to ask myself, "Why?" Do we take our groups to "win?" Do we take our groups because that plaque/certificate we will hang on the band room wall will somehow improve and enrich their lives? Do we do it to feed our own ego's?

I think the most beneficial parts of contest lie not in the rating that seems so important to my students and to many of my colleagues, nor in the actual act of performing for an audience other than our own parents, but in the clinic portion and the opportunity for the students to sit in the audience and see and hear what other young bands look and sound like.

Most band directors spend anything from several weeks to several months preparing our two or three pieces for contest. In the course of those rehearsals we dole out many morsels of advice to our students to improve their performance of those pieces. There are some things that I feel like I have said so many times, that the students must have absorbed them by now only to realize during a performance that there are problems that went unrepaired by the conductor, or went unnoticed by the students. A clinician could come to the stage and say the exact same thing you said in a different way, and suddenly it makes since to the band. In 12 years of going to contest, there has only been one occaision in which the band did not immidiately make some sort of improvement when working with the clinician. If the clinician is wise and skilled they will be able to provide comments that will not only improve their performance on those 2 or 3 pieces that they performed that day, but to their performance of future pieces as well. For example, a judge could waste 5 minutes of his clinic corecting a complicated, but fairly insignificant rhythm, in this piece which the band is likely never to play again, or he could spend the time wisely talking about sub-division, couting, and listening that might not only improve that rhythm but help the students in future performances as well.

In the area where I first taught, after the band performed, we went to a clinic room down the hall from the stage where one of the adjudicators gave a half hour clinic geared toward improving our performance. This 20 minute clinic was great for the students in the band that just performed, but I like the way we do it in my current area better. Here, when each band finishes playing, one of the judges comes to the stage and presents the clinic not only for the benefit of the students who just finished performing, but also to the benefit of any students or directors that may be listening from the audience. This way the students not only get the benefit of there own 20 minutes clinic, but also of the clinics of every band they have the opportunity hear play.

The more noble among us read the above and say to ourselves, "Of course that's the reason that I take my band to contest." Yet, some of our actions say otherwise. How many amongst us schedules our regular concert in the week prior to contest? I know I and many of my colleagues here have.  If we are really want contest to be about improving our students musically, wouldn't it make more sense to have our own school concerts (where the audience presumably cares) scheduled the week following contest so our audience could benefit from our contest experience?  Because of scheduling, at my contest this week we had literally NO audience.  There were 3 judges, 3 chaperones that rode the bus with me, and 1 recording engineer.  Why all the hype for that "performance?"  Is it because our contest experience is all about getting that I rating?

Is there another way?

Well, yes and no.  There is no substitute for the opportunity for our students to sit in the audience for high quality performances of their peers.  There certainly is not a more convenient way to get so many students to a performance.  We could cooperate with the other teachers in our area and share concert schedules  and distribute them to our students with the expectation that they will attend some of those performances, but it's not quite the same as all of your students sharing the experience of many performances together.  

What about that other important reason we attend contest: the clinic?  In my area contest costs about $90 + the cost of the bus which is not insignificant (per mile cost, plus a per hour cost which is charged whether the driver is driving, or waiting around on standby).  The bus costs at least $200 even for a short trip.  Couldn't we, in the week prior to a performance spend that $290 to pay a clinician to come and work with our band during a regular rehearsal, or, better yet, trade planning times, or arrange for an after school rehearsal so we could have the benefit of a 2 hour clinic rather than the 15 minutes we get at contest?

I will most likely continue to bring my bands to contest, particularly since in my area we all have to take turns running the contest, but the reasons behind that trip need to be clear.  We are going to learn and improve, not to win, or beat the other bands.  

Call me Maestro

In the movie Dead Poet's Society, Robin Williams character, the English teacher, told his students, if they were really brave, they could call him "Oh Captain, my Captain." And his students did. I have thought it would be funny to insist that my students call me "Maestro" instead of by my surname. I have never been brave enough however to ask this of my students.

Why not though? Maestro is just Italian for teacher, which I am. Maestro is the traditional title for a professional conductor, and aren't I a conductor too? I can just imagine a parent getting upset that I insisted their child call me Maestro, and just who the heck do I think I am anyway?

Titles aside, conducting is a very important part of the job of a band director and something that needs to be taken seriously whether you're conducting the AAA High School band that wins all kids of contests, or the hokey pokey elementary school band that's playing one liners out of the beginning band method book.

When I was a band geek fresh out of high school and beginning my career as a music ed. major (which is really just another way of saying band geek) those in my cohort all had the same goal in mind: we wanted to be big time high school band directors. We spent our time perfecting our conducting gestures and thinking of the day we would conduct First Suite in Eb by Holst and Variation on America by Ives with our own award winning high school band. As we got closer to graducation we came the the realization that most of us were going to hokey pokey elemntary school or home on the range middle school and not AAA high like we had always dreamed. No matter where you end up, those conducting skills you worked so hard to acquire by spending time in from of the mirror while listening to Fredrick Fenell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble will not have been spent in vain.

Like so many of my classmates my first job, and my second (which I still hold today) were at Home, Home on the Range Middle School HHOTRMS (not it's real name). While in both of those jobs I had my top concert band, but most of my job was teaching beginngers (at my first HHOTRMS job I actually spend half of my day at Hokey Pokey Elementary School HPES). When conducting the HPES or the HHOTRMS beginning band in their performance of Jingle Bells, or Mary Anne I decided that I had two choices: I could stand there and wave my stick "floor, door, wall, ceiling" over and over while the students ignored that I existed, or I could actually conduct and lead the students. Why settle for the former? It relegates my role as the conductor to a mere back ground dancer, and, as I have pointed out to my students before, I am a lousy dancer.

Even from the first three note songs that can be found in any beginning band method there are musical elements that the condcutor can and should bring to the attention of the musicians in the band. How else will they now that it's more appropriate to breath at the end of the fourth bar of jingle bells rather than breathing every bar, or worse, between every note! How else can we demonstrate the stylistic difference between the stacatto notes in Polly Wolly Doodle and the lyrical style of a warm-up chorale.

I realized in my second or third year of teacher that I conducted my beginning bands with as much gusto as I did my concert bands and it made a difference. I team taught with a colleague 2 years and there was a difference in how the band played under the different direcotrs, even when playing one liners out of the method book.

Perhaps this would make a good topic for a disertation or thesis. I could collect video tapes of various conductors leading their groups and to some sort of analysis on both the quality of the condcuting and on the quality of the performance, but perhaps there is to my subjectiveness in that reasearch.

For now I can call myself Maestro in my head and I'll continue conducting my beginings like they're AAA High School or the New York Philharmonic for that matter.

...and the band geeks loved him so much, they made him their king.

I was a band geek in school. There are millions of us out there in the world. What probably started as a slur meant to insult those of us devoted to our school's band has come to be a title worn proudly by so many of us. My high school had a huge band program when I was an eighth grader. My school's sports teams were an embarrassment (in particular the football team), but the band program we something to be proud of. By the time I arrived, because of the departure of a very popular band director, the program dwindled into a mere shadow of itself. Although the band was no longer the biggest and best thing in our school, the "band geeks" were still recognized by all as one of the most recognizable (although probably not the coolest) cliques on campus.

In my four years of high school, we had five different band directors hold the position. If you include my three years of middle school into the mix, during my seven years of secondary school I had seven different band directors. The only director that I had for more than one year in a row was Mr. C in 6th and 7th grade and in freshman year I had two different directors. Rumor had it at the time that the school's administration wanted to get rid of the band director, but, contracts what they are, they could not simply fire him. So they demoted him to assistant band director with the previous popular band director who had left to go into administration, returning to finish out the year as band director. As expected the "assistant band director" quit faster that you can say "Vivace."

The parade of band director's continued through my senior year. The men that held the post had varying degree's of competence. Of those seven band directors 3 were brand new to teaching and 1 was new to teaching high school (he had formerly been an elementary school band director). The challenge faced by band directors in such a situation is that, no matter how charismatic you may be, it is hard to retain students in your program when there is someone different on the podium every year.

While I stayed a loyal band geek and even served a year as our band's drum major (unfortunately of a very small band by this point), I couldn't help but think that perhaps I could do it better. After performing with the county honor band, I realized that I could do it.

Before naming this blog I googled "King of the Band Geeks" and found several claiming the title. While these people claim the title because they were perhaps the geekiest or most devoted of the band geeks when they were in school, and they are still devoted and loyal to their band geek friends, they stopped being the king the moment they put on that cap and gown. Who then can rightfully claim the title? My friends, it must be the band geek that never left the school band. Sixteen years after high school has ended I still spend all of my time in the band room. As the band director - as the maestro - I AM the King of the Band Geeks.