Enhancing Music Skills: Focus on Fundamentals!
It’s hard to believe that we are approaching the end of September already and that the summer is nearly drawing to a close for another year. The days are getting shorter and schools are back in full swing of another busy academic year. Can you believe that they have already started to think about holiday concerts? I did my first run-through of “Feliz Navidad” with Aurelia yesterday in our clarinet lesson because her school band will be playing this for their holiday concert.
Reflecting on Fundamentals – different approaches for the same goal
In the summer, I attended the Florida Band Directors band camp in Titusville, Florida, which was a great deal of fun and an amazing insight into the school band programmes in Florida. It was attended by a wealth of talented teachers from across the whole of Florida who are all dedicated to improving their skills and knowledge so they can be better educators for the children and community they teach in.
Having taught in the UK and international schools which follow the UK curriculum for over 25 years, most of the bands and choirs were run at lunchtime and after school rather than during the curriculum time. Curriculum time was focused on general music classes for 11 – 14 year olds and exam courses such as GCSE, A Level or IB with the high school aged students.
The luxury of time was always missing for school bands and choirs in the UK system. Everything had to be done at lightening speed in the once a week session that you had the students for. Rarely did you get the full band or choir at a rehearsal because there was always an activity, trip or fixture to compete with. Sometimes the dress rehearsal or concert was the first time you had everyone together in the same space! Yet, every year we always presented great concerts and raised the standards because of the commitment, dedication and loyalty from the students and teachers. We had to work effectively as a team and there was always lots of collaboration that went on behind the scenes.
Instrumental teachers were involved in the process and sent music prior to the concert to help their band students learn. Solos were picked from ABRSM exam repertoire or HS music class requirements and the selection of the musical repertoire for the bands and choirs to shine was super important. Students were given personal practice copies and links to recordings so that they had the best opportunity to practice outside of the classroom effectively, especially for those who weren’t fortunate enough to have private individual lessons.
Most of the Florida band directors I had the pleasure of meeting in the summer have the luxury of seeing each of their bands on a daily basis during class curriculum time. Can you imagine how much you can do with your school band if you have them for 5 x 50 minutes a week instead of 1 x 35 minutes a week! That’s a lot of extra rehearsal time and something I always wish I had had more of in all the years I was a classroom music teacher.
During the 4 day workshop, we spent hours discussing and playing exercises for improving fundamentals. We worked on breathing, singing, air flow, tone, pitch, rhythm, counting, scale patterns, articulation, instrument specifics and playing as a band. It was a totally fascinating experience to see how much time is dedicated to developing these skills in the school band class rooms and that a smaller percentage of curriculum time is spent on learning the actual pieces and repertoire.
However, if you are going to have a classroom of nearly 75 players, then getting them to sound good and play together is a massive task, especially as many students do not take additional individual lessons outside of the classroom. Unlike any other curriculum area in the school, band teachers are expected to teach numerous instruments at the same time to a wide range of students with various academic and learning abilities within the classroom alone. Just managing a class of 75 students single-handedly is a big ask, let alone getting all those students to be focused and playing music together! Doing that everyday for 6 different band classes is exhausting work for the band teacher and I admire their dedication and commitment to music and their students. In fact the more successful their programme becomes the more work and stress it creates, often with little additional support offered from school boards.
So why focus on fundamentals?
At the start of learning to play a new piece of music, the focus is generally on pitch and then rhythm. Yet these two musical elements alone will not create a musical performance. Tempo, dynamics, phrasing, expression, articulation, tone and intonation are essential for bringing that piece alive. This is why fundamentals are so important and why they have an essential place in the band room, instrumental lessons and as a focus in personal practice.
When I reflected on the course and everything I learned, teaching fundamentals is essential to teaching good musicianship, regardless of your approach or experience of music education. Whether you are teaching from the general music classroom, band room or in an individual lesson, good teaching includes focusing on the musical elements and fundamentals so that they can be applied to all musical styles and genres.
How are we helping our students with fundamentals?
Outside of the personalised individuals lessons we offer, we have been creating a wealth of resources to help with developing fundamental skills for students and teachers to use in and out of the classroom setting.
We have an extensive catalogue of rhythm reading exercises from beginner to more advanced level in numerous time signatures. There are 70+ play-along videos on our YouTube channel for each exercise. You can download the first four student and teacher booklets for free on our website. Our Youtube channel is called Music Theory Made Simple and has recordings of all the exercises. One version of the exercise has the rhythm patterns with a metronome and the other version is without metronome.
We are developing a comprehensive catalogue of sight reading exercises ranging from beginner to advanced levels in various time signatures for our woodwind players. Additionally, there are 16 play-along videos available on our YouTube channel for each exercise, and playlists for each instrument. You can download the sight-reading booklets for clarinet, tenor saxophone, and alto saxophone for free on our website. We will also have the flute booklets available within the next month, which can be utilised by other instruments such as keyboard, recorder, oboe, or violin.
We also made our sight-reading exercises for woodwind super interactive so that the books would work together. We wanted to create the opportunity for students who play flute, clarinet and saxophones to be able to play the warm ups together.
Next up will be scale and arpeggio warm-ups in a variety of major and minor keys and then more original compositions specifically for our students to play.
We have a brand new original composition on YouTube for clarinet called the “Tree House”, which was inspired by the beautiful tree house above at Bonnet Springs in Lakeland, Florida. We will be publishing the sheet music on the website for free in October for clarinet and piano, and then creating transposed versions so other woodwind players can also play the piece. We see a big gap for solo woodwind pieces for young musicians and are excited to start writing works for this group of musicians to play. The greatest benefit is that our own studio students are getting to try the pieces out first and give instant feedback on the works, which is a great learning experience for us and our students.
Lots of exciting times ahead – so don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletters, pop over occasionally to our website and follow our YouTube channel!