Frosting the cupcake

It's that time of the semester when we are getting ready for our Winter Concert. Well, we've been getting ready for it since before Fall Break, but now we're really getting ready for it, know what I mean?

It's not the time for fooling around any more, and way past the time for assigning percussion parts or even doing sectionals so kids can learn their parts.

The time now is for frosting the cupcake. Isn't that such a delicious little metaphor? I thought it up all by myself. I thought it up while thinking about the glorious little pumpkin cinnamon cupcakes I made for my niece's birthday.

The whole meaning is that making the cupcakes--learning notes, rhythms, and getting down how the songs go--is one thing, but putting the finishing touches on the whole endeavor is quite another.

For that you have to have a different approach. Frosting the cupcake requires patiently mixing the frosting to the correct consistency, and applying the embellishment with the appropriate level of deftness and subtlety.

With regard to teaching junior high band, the deft embellishment goes something like this:

"Low brass. On the ends of phrases, I need more of your dotted half notes to bring out the balance and resolution."

"First trumpets...on your high D, I love they way you're really making effort to reach that note, but try to change your embouchure without restricting your air flow."

"Bass drum...sigh...that first note at the beginning of William Tell could be a little softer. We're not running from cannon..."

It's making sure we are prepared to go from a cushiony--in terms of sound--and absorbent room, to an auditorium where the sound bounces around like a three-year-old in a toy store. Short notes need to be really short, so that the whole thing doesn't sound like mud when we get in there. Balance needs to be adjusted ahead of time, it's awfully hard to tell drum players to play softer if they haven't been asked to do it that way all semester except for football games.

It's the time of year that is the most exciting, and the most frustrating. Exciting because the countdown is here, the end is in sight, the event for which nearly every class day has been preparation for. Frustrating, because it's a tightrope act to know when you've crossed over the line to beating a dead horse.

If it's one thing junior high kids can't stand, it's beating a dead horse.

I try to avoid it at all costs, because once you've gone down that road, it's over. Goodness knows how I feel having to play the same dang song one too many times, and it's magnified times ten for these kiddoes. You just lose all desire to do it right, and then the whole thing goes out the window.

The first Winter Concert for the 5th graders is just about them being able to play Hot Cross Buns on something other than a $5 recorder, and for their parents to take pictures while they hold up their trombones or French horns or whatever. It's more for show than anything, and for that reason, I do the most work with the 5th grade on sitting, standing, instruments up and down, and things like that. They love it.

So that's frosting the cupcake. Why not a whole cake?

Because, dear readers, 5th, 6th, and junior high band is best listened to in cupcake-sized doses.

T minus eight days and counting.