Euphoria

Once in a great while, we do or experience something that lets us feel, for one brief shining moment, a sense of euphoria. That spine-tingling, heart-pounding rush of excitement, where we grin hugely, involuntarily, and glow with it for a while after the sensation subsides.

That usually NEVER happens in my band classes. Especially when you have 7th grade boys and 8th grade girls together.

But it did, Friday afternoon, just a little, not strong, but it was definitely there, and I've been thinking about it ever since. It was the last thing I ever expected to happen in that class!

On most days, we have rehearsal. The procedure is that the kids come into the room, get their instruments and music, and we get down to business. It's nice to carry out the routine of the rehearsal in order, and for the kids to know what we'll be doing on any given day. They have some time at the beginning of class to chat while they get ready, but once I indicate class is starting, they must quiet down and follow the procedure.

We usually begin with some breathing exercises and stretching. I learned this technique from the conductor of grown-up band, and although in my 15 years of playing in various ensembles under various conductors I had never ever opened a rehearsal with breathing and stretching, it seems to work so well for me right now to alleviate stress and set a good tone for the class. At the very least, the kids are quiet for a few minutes!

Next is our warm-up scale. I have the kids play the concert B-flat scale every which way--long notes to work on breath control and tone, shorter ones to work on finger and embouchure technique, and chords to work on balance and tuning. If I do whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes, they're not happy, they want to do eighth notes, too!

After that, the order of songs to be rehearsed is posted on the board. I usually work on the most urgent songs or parts of songs first, the ones that need the most attention or reinforcement (which I can't ever determine well in advance because it depends on how the kids learn each song or section) then move to more familiar or easy ones toward the end, when everyone's getting a little bored and restless or their chops are just tired.

In the middle-high band on Thursday of last week, I said that we were going to run--and then they stopped me breathlessly and said, but this isn't gym class!!--all of the songs straight through. Conductor talk sometimes confuses them. I then specified, have all the songs on your stands so we don't have to shuffle halfway through. The reward, of course, for getting the day's work done before the bell rings means a few extra minutes for them. (Although that doesn't usually work because they're so, well, immature. Keeping them in their seats right up to the bell is my best strategy to avoid running/throwing/roughhousing incidents.)

So we ran the songs for the first time. We have an opener that the kids are sick of, but it's a very nice Baroque march written by Handel for one of his operettas. Then we move on to our Christmas Suite, where we play one song with everyone, one for just the winds and brass, and one for just the percussion. If we do the suite often enough, hopefully the kids will quit staring and laughing at one another when it's not their turn because they'll get used to it. Don'tcha just love the middle school years?

We end with a beginning-band version of the William Tell Overture, minus the thunderstorm and cello solo. It opens with a trumpet fanfare, and then rolls along merrily with the Lone Ranger chasing the enemy over the prairie with Tonto right behind him, the melody changing and switching off between the clarinets and trumpets (because of course you can't hear William Tell without thinking of the Lone Ranger). At the end of the piece, the rhythm abruptly changes. The important part is that suddenly there are rests in places where there were no rests before including a full measure of rest before we gallop straight through to the end.

These strategic rests, up til now, gave the kids fits. There was always one drummer, or someone in the brass section, that would miss it and play when there should be silence. And unlike high school, the kids have to stop and laugh and then it just falls apart and we waste precious time getting them under control again.

Thursday was different. Maybe it was because I had my baton out so I could start getting the kids used to the way I wanted to start and conduct the piece. Maybe it was because running the song made it finally gel. Maybe the stars were aligned properly.

Whatever it was, by the time we got to the end, which is rather bombastic, nobody was off. Everyone observed the rests. I don't even conduct the measure of rest because, well, it's just cool not to. I just breathe and give an upbeat to prepare for their entrance. The kids were right on cue, exactly together, and nobody missed the last three notes. They even kept their instruments up and waited those few seconds for the last note to sink in and only moved after I lowered my baton--prolonging the excitement.

It. Was. Awesome. By the time we reached the end and I knew for certain everyone was feeling it, I had a huge grin on my face. Sort of; I was trying not to grin but I think the kids could see and feel what they had accomplished. I really would describe the feeling as euphoria, and it was so wonderful because it was unexpected, as I said, the last thing I ever would have thought would happen in that class.

Euphoria. The last thing. But there it was, buoying me through the weekend and renewing my faith in minor miracles.

Seventy-six trombones and a violin

It's been a while since I blogged about my 5th grade beginning band kiddoes. Last I mentioned, they were circling around me like a flock of sparrows around bread, wanting their instruments.

Now that we've had several weeks to work on learning their instruments, I feel they are at last, at least, getting a little comfortable with the whole idea of holding this strange cold metal thing in their hands, blowing into it, or banging, or what have you, and making a loud noise.

Notice I didn't say music, we're not yet making music, but that'll come. It usually does, with time, patience, effort, and a lot of chocolate for the teacher.

Because I had so many trombones available, I now have a lot of trombone players in the 5th grade. Girls, guys, small, large. Each class has at least four, which is awesome. The Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll have a killer low brass section in a couple of years. I tried very hard to balance the drum players with the rest of the instruments, because, unlike trombones, you can have too many drummers.

And then there is the gal who asked if I would let her play her violin in band class. Honestly, since I was strapped for instruments, I decided sure, if it was ok with her parents. (Turns out her dad has a trumpet in his closet, but whatever.) I don't know if I've mentioned this yet or not, but I only know the first thing about playing violin. I mean, I've seen so many good players I can show her how to hold it, how to create a good sound with the bow going across the strings, but it remains a mystery to me where to put your fingers for the correct notes.

I told her I'd learn along with her. Now I can play Hot Cross Buns on eleven instruments!

Every day that I teach beginning band, and I'm paying attention to what the kids are doing, the more I realize how much of the learning process of music is about discipline and self-control. In other classes, it usually doesn't matter how a kid sits (unless the back of their chair is about to tip over). It doesn't matter at what speed they do their work, and they don't always have to be paying attention to the teacher in order to be participating and getting their work done.

In a group rehearsal setting, one must: sit up straight and hold the instrument properly, feet must be on the floor, body positioned so that you can see the conductor and the music; one must be sharing a music stand and place it at the correct distance; one must play the right notes, or try to at all times, and one must pay attention to the conductor at all times, unless of course, your stand partner asks a (whispered) question about the music or you need to mark your music with a pencil; you must raise your instrument to play when the conductor indicates, non-verbally, with his or her hands, and only lower your instrument when the conductor lowers his or her hands, even if the song is over and you're dying to analyze with your stand partner where exactly you got lost or played the wrong notes.

And most of all, you must not talk or play the instrument when: the teacher is working with another group of students, when the teacher pauses to answer a question, when the teacher asks you to turn the page to the next song, when the teacher is instructing, when the teacher is asking (non-verbally, remember) you to play or not play or hold your instrument up or put it down.

It's an extremely internal, exacting, self-disciplined process, I'm realizing (with a little help from being on the other side of the baton at grown-up band). How did I not know this after 30 years of being a musician and playing in ensembles under a conductor?

Because it was so second-nature that I didn't know that process really has to be learned. In other words, beginning band students who see me for 40 minutes every other day and who are ten years old, have to be reminded over and over again and shown, and you have to be patient with them, and you have to cajole them and remind them and then go eat some chocolate when they leave to go running back to their classroom.

And then in a few years, if you're lucky, the creek hasn't risen, and the kids have stuck it out, you've got a decent ensemble with those habits beginning to be ingrained.

Sharps and flats continued

I'm seriously going to post a sign in my room that says, "I don't get it!"-Free Zone.

Kids will come up to me, their little laptops in their hands and wail, "I don't get iiit!!!" And my first response is, "Did you read the question?"

When they say, "...noooo..." I just shrug my shoulders.

If I had a back massage for every time I had to say, "What part don't you get?" I would feel a lot more comfortable than I do right now.

I wonder if other teachers I work with have the same problem? Anyone? Anyone? I wonder if we could conduct a multi-discipline approach to asking questions. A Tet-Offensive of problem-solving, if you will.

I tell the kids to ask me a question that helps me help them. Do they even get how to do that?

On to the subject of the post: Flats and Sharps are now not only giving my 6th graders fits, but also the middle and high kids. I decided that whatever the 6th graders could handle, the 7th, 8th and the few 9th graders in the other band could handle.

Turns out they couldn't.

The kids all had fits again, even when I helped them one on one. About fifteen kids stayed during my planning hour, their gym class, to get it done. And when I went home and looked at them, they still weren't done right.

I asked my husband, a science teacher, what he thought. I often ask him for advice, of the sort of, "what would you recommend in this situation?" and he's really good about steering me in a direction that feels comfortable. So I asked him if he thought the worksheet was too hard.

He took one glance at it and said, wow, that's exactly what the standardized tests in science look like. Exactly. (With emphasis.)

I said, "Oh, really??"

He explained that in science you are given a set of information, often a table or graph, and asked to find information or fill in something based on that information. In other words, the answers are given, you just have to find them, reinterpret them, or put them together somehow.

He also commented, no, the worksheet is not too hard.

For example, I gave them the following information, quote: "All flats and sharps that appear in a key signature go in order. The order is: Flats: BEADGCF. Sharps: FCGDAEB."

(Raise your hand if you noticed they were opposite order from each other.)

A little while later I wrote, "Notice that in your different key signatures if you have one flat, it is always the first one, B-flat. If you have two, it is the first and second, B-flat and E-flat. You will never have one flat that is a D-flat, for example. Same for sharps—one sharp is always F-sharp, two sharps is always F-sharp and C-sharp, and so on."

I wanted them to tell me what the flats were, in order, if you have a key signature with three of them.

BEA. Right? Does everyone agree? First three flats, in order, are BEA. (Key of E-flat, but we're getting to that.)

Next I gave them a table listing names of keys depending on how many sharps or flats were in the key signature. Below, I wanted them to fill in another table: I set up a column that said "three flats", or "two sharps", or things like that, and then they were to fill in the second column with the flats or sharps in order, and then the third column telling me the name of the key. None of the information was stuff they had to look up on the internet, or in a book. They didn't have to pull it out of thin air.

It was right on the worksheet.

It feels sometimes like I am going out of my mind trying to figure out why the kids don't get what they don't get. (Especially when they wail at me, "Miiiiiss, I don't get iiiit!!!")

My husband's comment to me was that kids don't get enough practice with problem-solving skills like this. They don't want to read what they need to read in order to figure out the correct answer, so they skip it, and of course don't get it, and of course do poorly on state science tests.

The other issue is that just like science and math, there are what I like to call Musical Laws of the Universe that don't change. The order of sharps and flats is one such. There are others, like the order of whole- and half-steps on the pentatonic scale, or the fact that an eighth note equals exactly half of a quarter note. These things are Inviolate and Must Be Memorized.

We'll see how long it takes for the last kiddo to get the worksheet done and completed. The 6th grade have had since the 31st, the 7th-8th grade since the 5th. Any bets?

Sharps and flats

I have introduced the concept of sharps and flats to my fifth graders and pushed it farther with my sixth graders, and they are giving these kiddoes fits. Fits, I tell you.

Part of it was to give them work a sub could have them do because I decided to take the day off last Friday--had to, in order to take the wee munchkin to the doctor. And I guess the worksheets were not really all that self-explanatory. I worked so hard to make them so.

All the kids came rushing to me saying breathlessly, "Miss, I didn't get it!" Or, saying disgustedly, "Miss, we didn't get this. At all." One lil' gal even wrote on her paper, "I tried hard hones I did."

Of course you did, dearie.

So I was having to redo the assignment with them. In the fifth grade, if they would sit still long enough, they would see how easy it is to write the sharp sign in front of the note, or the flat sign. It does take some concentration, a characteristic these darlings do not have in spades, unfortunately.

I didn't even tell them that when the sharp or flat is on the staff it's in front of the note and when you write the note name under the staff, it goes behind. That would have caused them to just lay their little selves down on the floor, arms spread wide in helpless surrender.

Sharps and flats are the building blocks of key signatures. Do you remember that scene in O Brother Where Art Thou? where they are in the public gathering at the end of the movie, and the guys are on stage with their long fake beards playing their songs to entertain the crowd? And the character played by John Turturo says, "Jailhouse Now, neighborhood o' B?" (Of course you do.) Well, he was communicating to the musicians in the band that they were to play the song in the key of B. Or thereabouts.

You can play Happy Birthday in approximately thirty different keys, including the minor ones. Musicians wouldn't know which end was up if the key signature didn't indicate what sharps or flats to play. I tell my nephew that sharps and flats are (generally) akin to playing the black keys of the piano.

And for a trumpet player who blows a C that comes out sounding like a B-flat while the flute player right next to him playing the same melody is able to play a C that is actually a C, somebody is forced to play a key signature with sharps or flats. And since trumpets and clarinets, both B-flat instruments, trump flutes in size, number, and sheer ego, it is up to the flute, trombone (and oboe, speaking as one myself) players to suffer the additional flats so their pitches match with the rest of the band.

It's a cruel world.

In the sixth grade class, they are getting a lesson in the order of sharps and flats so they can actually learn about key signatures. That they have names. And no, the names are not Sarah and Billy and Fred, but names that sound an awful lot like pitch names, which adds an additional level of confusion.

The most fun part of the sixth grade class the last two days is watching them triumph over a set of randomly (ah, but are they???) ordered letters. "FCGDAEB--!!!" they rattle off as they squeeze out the door to lunch. Ten minutes later the stragglers and I are chanting, "F-C-G-D-A-E-B" over and over. The order of sharps and flats is finite and does not change. It is a law of the musical universe, of which there are many. And the sooner they learn them, the better off they'll be.