Everyone say "Aye Matey!"

Yes, I lost my zeal for posting, I also lost all sense of ownership regarding time. None of it belongs to me really, I'm a graduate student, therefore am owned by the University. I wanted to get this quick post in however, because when I'm a teacher and am stressed and burned out, I want to be able to reset to the mindset that I now occupy.

Last spring, I shattered my preconceptions of what a junior high band looks like. I watched Clyde Quick interact with 7th, 8th and 9th graders and draw out of them musicianship I didn't think possible. Not only music, but behavior. He worked the kids so that they shared his enthusiasm for music and that overrode their egocentric little circuits to the point that they wanted to learn as much as they could about music.

When working at DHS, I never once thought that elementary music would interest me. The lack of musical maturity in the students was always a turn off. I realized that they all had to start somewhere, but I was only interested in working with the end result. Now I'm teaching general music in 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade classrooms and am completely enamored with my students and the concept of general music and am ready to champion the cause wherever I go - even if I have to do it myself. It's only the 4th week of school, I have 11 more to go with these kids, but I'm only looking forward to it.

Today I got to conduct a combined band of 6th 7th and 8th graders and again my preconceptions of beginning band were shattered. The students were engaged, they listened intently, and gave me what I asked for. I have to learn to let these preconceived notions go and believe that children are capable of doing anything as long as they are provided the right scaffolding to get there.

Audition Season

This post is part of a blog project on student teaching hosted at So You Want to Teach.

With 7 weeks 'til our next concert, I'm spending my time this week away from the podium. Mostly I've been prepping packets of audition material for next year's Symphonic and Jazz bands. 

March is a long a trying month for the music department at DHS - a school where seemingly everyone who tries makes the football team, but tryouts for the auditioned ensembles require two, sometimes three callbacks - no matter the program. Whether Choir, Orchestra or Band, it's pretty crazy if you think about it. 

There's only one high school in a town of 63,000 - one standard Jazz "Stage Band," one 32 voice Madrigal Choir, only 4 clarinet spots in the DHS Symphony, and only 12 available in the Symphonic band (we have to fight for French Horns, however). The whole school's schedule is planned around making sure the kids who get into those programs can take their other classes, and therefore the administration needs to know who they'll be well in advance. The process is intense, even students in the ensembles have to re-audition and by their senior year, a lot of kids are used to disappointment and the effort required to maintain the standard of excellence.

However, this year I'm finding I have to deal with the students facing a level of disappointment for which they're not prepared: UC admissions, or rather lack thereof. I was lucky enough to work with this same band last year as a Paraeducator, and it seems like half of the Band's seniors went to UC Berkeley, and the other half to UCLA, with a few stragglers to Columbia, NYU or Puget Sound. This year, with cutbacks in admissions and hikes in fees, one person out of about 70 got into UCLA. Berkeley is sitting on their admissions still, but that outlook is grim. This fact was brought to light when their teacher excitedly mentioned that we were going to stop by the UCLA campus on our trip to San Diego in May and asked how many got in. One student tentatively raised his hand to nervous laughter from the rest of the group. I've even had kids come up to me bummed about not getting into UCD, their hometown "backup school." 

These kids are bred overachievers, 5 or 6 AP classes on their plates, SAT scores above 2000 (they're out of 2400 now?). They're special, or at least have been told so all their lives by parents who all have Bachelor's degrees, many from UCs themselves. Now it's crashing down around them and the kids don't really know what to do, and I have no idea what to say to them. 

To counteract the anxiety we're digging through new music to play on our trip. I'm learning that finding literature that's perfectly fit for a particular ensemble is one of the most important parts of being a music educator. However, the Symphonic Band my teacher has spoils him, and me by proxy. We're scheduled to play on the deck of the U.S.S. Midway in San Diego and my teacher is pulling out all the stops. Although it would be a little too blatant to dig out Midway March again (we played it last year on our trip to Victoria BC.), the director is grabbing all the "shiny" he can and dropping his own cash on scores to the Hal Leonard "John Williams Signature Series" - basically arrangements for professionals, not rearranged for younger bands. They're really just transcriptions of Williams' symphonic music to wind band parts, signed off by the composer, and the premiered by the U.S. Marine Band. 

The music we choose is not just a festival set, but also enough to put on hour long "Pops concerts" around town while we're there and then come back and perform in the park in downtown Davis during the farmer's market to thank the community for their support.

The students have locked in Raider's March - the main title to Indiana Jones but the big problem we're facing is having to decide between the 1984 and 1996 Olympic Fanfares to kick off the set. This year we have an incredibly strong trumpet section. 10 kids - 7 of which are powerhouses and 3 are, well, third trumpets by definition. But selecting music like this requires a director to play towards the ensembles' strengths, and this year it's brass.

I don't know how he manages to pull it off time and time again, but their teacher has the ability to trick his students - baiting them with amazing music, and then saying something like "You know, I just don't know if you guys are up to this... " enlisting jeers and pleading from his kids to give it a shot, challenging them and forcing them to push themselves. This time though, I think he really means to cut "Summon the Heroes" the 1996 theme. Some worry or another about not being able to handle the articulation required of the piece. This kind of tears at me inside because it's absolutely gorgeous and our 1st chair trumpet player nailed the solo today. Music is supposed to evoke emotion and this piece does just that - not just fanfare, excitement and flourish, but something much more. 

What do you mean lesson plan? I just direct a band.

This post is part of a blog project on student teaching hosted at So You Want to Teach.

My director is going to be out tomorrow - this is when all the effort put into obtaining that pesky sub credential pays off. He's left a list of songs for the jazz bad to run, but it's a practice, and not a rehearsal. With their rhythm section, they're pretty much autonomous, and I couldn't really have much constructive input since most of the kids know more about Jazz than I do about Irish trad - or anything else for that matter.

However, everything about the other two periods was left to me. What to rehearse, and how. And more importantly, he wants me to rehearse the kids, even his audition ensemble, not just run them through their music. We only have a few weeks and he just dropped new music on them this Wednesday. This is the difference between being a conductor and being a teacher.

One small problem: I've never even seen a lesson plan for an ensemble course. I've put plenty together for the Music Theory course I interned in last year, but here I'm doing everything backwards. I've none of the credential programs under my belt, but have over a year's worth of observation and teaching experience in this same classroom. I fretted about this for a while until I realized, I put a lesson plan together before I step up to the podium every day. 

In preparing my score, I go through it, listen to a recording endlessly, or more often, sing it (much to my brother's annoyance). Anywhere I trip in singing it, I drop a sticky note. Anywhere I think a problem will occur, sticky note - usually covered with barely decipherable scribbles. These aren't notes to myself about conducting, they're to use to help direct a rehearsal. Anytime I come up with something to say about the piece that would help the kids in artistically shaping the piece - like "With Quiet Courage" being about a mother, who was later diagnosed with cancer, exhibiting the courage to face down anything and everything life has to offer without flinching, instead of the brash heroic deeds with which we generally associate courage - that's a sticky note.

Anytime we stumble in rehearsal, and I mention something to correct it, I go back through rehearsal after class and write down everything, and stick it in my score. After a while, if things are no longer an issue and the kids routinely get it right, the sticky note gets tossed.

Right now, my score for Chorale and Toccata by Jack Stamp is covered to the point where I almost can't read the music. Almost. They just got it on Wednesday, and hopefully in three weeks, the score will be clean and ready for the Festivity of Bands. Tomorrow I'm going to come in and pull down a few of his books on "Teaching Music through Performance in Band" and find the pieces we're playing to get another point of view on what's important in the piece, and a few more sticky notes will go into it.

The only other aspect is organization and pacing of the rehearsal, something I'm still working on perfecting. The pieces will be on the board before the class gets in, something my director doesn't often do and we'll tear through them with a lingering promise of giving the kids "the rest of the period off" if we accomplish everything I want. Which means maybe five minutes out of 50, but they won't know that. It's Friday, their teacher isn't there, they'll expect a bit of a break, which means they'll work for it. I just need to keep their instruments on their lips as long as possible. I say on their lips because I have ten trumpets and  seven trombones in my back row in one period. If you work with a school band, that actually means something.

My lesson plan needs to be modular and flexible, it's not seventh grade science or 9th grade english. Sometimes I wish it were, other times I'm glad it isn't. I have to adapt what I'm teaching to what they need to work on, what they're giving me and how it measures up to what I expect. Now, that sounds just like any other class, but I'm doing it beat by beat, second by second, and not chapter by chapter or test by test.

I have great respect for the music teachers I work with, after trying to emulate what they do for just two periods. Different music for each class. I work with a teacher whose mutters a litany with pride: "I teach 7 sections of 6 classes in 5 classrooms. I have 4 bosses at 3 schools, and I commute 2 hours a day for 1 job." After years of doing this, they just fall on their feet, as if they were airdropped onto the podium ready to go and can rehearse without too much preparation. But I need my sticky notes and an overarching plan, so here we go:

6th period: Symphonic Band. Theme for the day: LISTEN!

Warm up, tune.

Masada, the first fast part. I don't have the score with me.

Really tune.

Run the Times Square 1944 section towards the end where it pits 4 against 3, take them through it slowly, which will hamper their ability to match up, force them through it and speed up. Spend no more than 6 minutes doing so.

NEW MUSIC. Chorale and Toccata. Not technically new, they've read it once, and I'm sure my bass section has been going nuts. Skip the showery entrance straight to the beautiful bassoon/english horn solo. Normally, I wouldn't make the kids sit through a solo section, but it's important that the trumpets listen to the soloists. Make sure the soloists understand that they have a give and take dynamic in this duet. One pushes and the other gives, then pushes back. The trumpets come in right after and need to match not just the dynamics, but color of the solo. Something hard to do pitting 10 trumpets against two double reeds. together they need to bring out the warmth of their lower register, while sounding like one trumpet, over a hill somewhere for a measure or two then growing. The rest of the band needs to notice the dynamic (not volume, but dynamic) between the soloists and reiterate that when accompanying

the trumpets. 

So those four bars were a mouthful, that's why I generally speak in music instead of english at the podium. Tragically, I can't sing for you here. I know my timpanist was practicing this piece at lunch today, and I'm sure my bass clarinets are rocking the toccata and are ready for tomorrow.

7th Period.

Longford Legend I.

Tune

Longford III.

New Music. (Mostly New) With Quiet Courage. The piece is thickly scored, so the lack of horns and oboe in my concert band is not going to be a problem (though always disheartening). The problem is going to be that without varying instrumentation, the piece starts to sound cyclical and isn't interesting. I'm going to try and combat that by focusing on the countermelodies and bringing them out more, even to the point of absurdity if it will bring about contrast in the piece. It's likely too easy for them, and we won't play it past tomorrow, but it's a really pretty piece, and they need to focus on intonation. They have enough technically difficult stuff on their plate and sometimes they're so focused on their fingers, they don't listen to what they sound like. This piece will force that. 

Then come the shape note pieces, Geneva Variations and Rhapsody on American Shape Note Melodies. The first in my opinion is too hard for the kids, the latter, too easy. We'll run them and see what they like and don't like about each piece and what they can accomplish. 

My brother just popped in to ask me a favor: if I'm going to be listening to the music I make my kids play all night, force them to play something awesome like the theme to Jurassic Park. As cheesy as it sounds, it's not a bad idea, especially for our band trip to San Diego this May. I at least started playing the soundtrack for his benefit. 

I've got a bit of system down, but I really don't know how anyone else does it. My lesson plan for tomorrow? Attempt to topple my biggest challenge: shut up long enough that the kids are listening to themselves instead of me. I hope I can pull it off.

This post is really about rehearsal techniques... I think.

This post is part of a blog project on Student Teaching hosted at So You Want to Teach

DHS didn't have school today, and even if it did, I probably would have called in sick.  I put in enough hours over the weekend to take a week off if my contract allowed for comp time - but of course, it was all volunteered.

Instead of working, I drove down to Stockton to sort out the rest of my life.

After interviewing with the faculty, (who are awesome) I was told that as long as I filled out the paperwork I was guaranteed tuition remission for 9 units of study per semester for two years. 9 units, with a 20 hour assistantship AND student teaching is a full load. If I get everything in and they have the money, they'll even toss in a 3,000 stipend per semester - which, considering I won't be able to hold down a job that doesn't require me to work during normal business hours (school), or nights (rehearsals), would be pretty much necessary. I'm in a far better state of mind now than 6 months ago when I got the acceptance letter. I know my parents read this, and they can breathe a little easier now.

So, buoyed by some promise of a future, I sat in on the rehearsal of Pacific's Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Eric Hammer (under whom I'll be working as my graduate advisor next year).

This is an auditioned ensemble of conservatory musicians, all of whom are miles beyond me in any aspect of performance (Shh! don't tell anyone). But, what impressed me the most was the balance and instrumentation of the group. Used to a high school or general college wind ensemble, this group surprised me by having each part in the score covered by one or two musicians. Instead of fifteen flutes or clarinets, there were six each - balanced by three oboes, three bassoons, a bass clarinetist, four horns and a sax quartet, 5 trumpets, 3 bones, euphonium  and a tuba. 

This was professional instrumentation, and they were sailing through pieces like John Barnes Chance's Blue Lake Overture (Track 6), and Copland's Lincoln Portrait (9:40 in the interview)- a piece that I've loved since I had to rip it apart for a ten page paper for an American Studies class on semiotics and images in society. 

However great the ensemble was, it was due to its director, and I want to bring to light some observations of rehearsal techniques he used that I want to adopt for my own.

1. Ear training. - This is something I'm sure high school teachers wrestle with: how much time to spend rehearsing the music, and how much time to spend on things like theory when the class is designed to be little more than a performance opportunity. If I have the chance as a high school teacher, I'm going to remove all work required by a marching program during rehearsal in the students first year to focus on theory. 
   
   Dr. Hammer started rehearsal off by getting everyone to hum America the Beautiful off of the B flat they tuned from (casting it in the key of E flat), then play it, then sing it in Solfege and play it again, which fixed all the problems. It was impressive watching the student's theory brains kick as they figured it out. He does this with a new song every rehearsal.
   
   
2. "Sizzling" - Air control. I know how important it is, but it's something that I practice on my own, usually with buzzing, and definitely not in rehearsal. Dr. Hammer had the students "sssss-ing" their parts for part of the Blue Lake Overture, and while he conducted it, I could hear the phrasing and dynamics with just their air. I could focus on the melody bouncing around the room and afterwards, something clicked with the students and the entire piece had more substance behind it - it wasn't heavier, just more massive - if that makes sense.
   
   
3. Metronomic Abandonment - They are planning on including the Washington Post March in their concert just in time for President's day, and what surprised me was after all their work, they started falling apart on Sousa. They were stretching the time at the trio, and people weren't watching the director, it started to bounce along like an accordion, stretching out to compensate for speeding up, etc. In a response to this, Dr. Hammer placed his right hand behind his back after a preparatory beat and only gave artistic gestures and cues with his right and, leaving the band to fend for itself, and forcing them to listen to each other. This might end up in a trainwreck with younger groups, but the awareness sudden awareness of a lack of visual cues caused many to focus more on listening.
   
   It cleaned up well.
   
   
4.  Itinerary - Dr. Hammer conducted all business at the end of the rehearsal. At the top, he had a sheet with everything on it, and students picked it up as they walked in. It had a breakdown of every piece to be played during the 1.5 hour rehearsal, and a meticulously structured schedule on how much time was to be spent on each piece. This allowed the rehearsal to move swiftly and orderly, and end with reminders and motivation on the part of the director. Also included on the itinerary, which the students took home with them was everything for Wednesday's rehearsal, and what they needed to practice to be prepared. A little much, but the smoothness with which the rehearsal ran was testament to the order and discipline of the group.

To sum it up, I'm really excited and am chomping at the bit to work with someone whose conducting is as controlled and powerful as it is fluid and  graceful, and am looking to get some real feedback on my own. 

Is it August yet?

<3 Parents.

This post is part of a blog project on student teaching, hosted at So you Want to Teach

Forgive typos, I haven't slept since Saturday morning and I'll edit this later.

Parents.

If there's one thing I'm going to drag away from my experiences working with the bands at Davis High, it's that parent involvement and support are probably some of the most important things in teaching any child. Whatever the subject, only a small amount of learning ever happens in the classroom and anything taught there is reinforced by learning at home. When it comes to a performing arts program, however, parental support is paramount due to all the effort required by a student outside of a classroom. Any performance program requires a regular practice regimen -akin to homework- but all the concerts, festivals, workshops, trips, everything done to make the students better musicians (and make the elective more appealing than art or yearbook), requires a substantial amount of time, effort and money on the part of the parents. Most of my students have their own instruments, many are in extra curricular performance groups and about 80% receive private lessons, and have since fourth grade. This is all a substantial financial investment on the part of the parents and reflects the affluence of the community, something I know I can't replicate when I step into my first job as a teacher.

Operational budgets for performance programs are generally barely enough to pay for routine maintenance on their instruments; let alone venues, festival fees, travel, and the ubiquitous annual "band trip." Fundraising is an integral part of every performance program I know. Those stupid candy bar scams are the first thing to come to mind but thankfully the students I work with have parents who are deeply involved in both the school and community, and the kids are able to do most of their fundraising with their instruments. The bands rent themselves out in small combos at winter time to play for christmas parties, the jazz band and choirs put on an annual Cabaret, the Madrigals hold a Madrigal dinner between thanksgiving and christmas, but the one big thing our band program does is something called a "Playathon." 

I don't know whose idea this was, but it's akin to the "jog-a-thons" I did in elementary school. Kids beg for money, er collect pledges from close family and friends, either by hour or for the entire night - promising to attempt the amazing feet of playing for 12 hours, straight through the night without sleep.

This money doesn't go towards the band's operational budget, but towards the kids cost of the trips we take, some upwards of $600. Each student has their own account and the money is deposited and kept there for them, and any left over is carried over to next year's account. None of this would be possible without the Band Booster's program, and I am routinely surprised at the amount of organization and continuity in the program. They have an extensive charter and binders for each event throughout the year holding the lessons learned from the years previous and instructions on how things are done. The amount of parental involvement in this program is phenomenal and building a booster's program, or taking active involvement in an existing one will be a large priority of mine as a first year teacher.

Although too much parental involvement can lead to twitching, murderous glares from teachers, in building an amazing performing arts program, no matter how big of a pain they may be, parents are a teacher's greatest asset. 

Playathon.

So.... anyways, our director is past 60, and three years ago he declared the last Playathon. The kids got so upset because they loved the program so much that alumni came in, and parents stepped up to make it happen the next year without the director, bringing in student teachers to help conduct instead. Both this year and last I was put in charge of the music, while parents put up the organizational front and provided chaperones for the entire night. This playathon went so well, I want to keep the schedule and music somewhere for next year, and this is as good a place as any.

19:00 - Kids show up, warm up, tune.

19:30 - Kids give a "Concert in progress," performing works that they've only seen since they returned from winter break. This year, the Concert Band played Longford Legend, Appalachian Morning, and ... (I'm honestly too tired to remember the other one). The Symphonic Band performed Masada, Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, The Whispering Tree, and a roaringly busy piece they got on Wednesday called "Applause," one they pulled off marvelously. With set changes, these two concerts take about an hour and a half.

21:00 - The Jazz Band steps in. They gave an hour long concert, after playing all day at the Folsom Jazz Festival today. They scored all Superiors, scores in the 90s, but our director was less than satisfied with their performance - the best part is, so were they. They're looking to place at Monterey in a couple of months and need to tighten up quite a bit to do so. 

22:00 - Between ten and eleven, the pizza arrived, donated in small amounts from most of the pizza joints in Davis, a small college town with lots of pizza places. Before the kids got to chow down, we allowed guest conductors to jump in and direct the band. Mostly parents, some who have no idea what they're doing but a few are "regulars" and ham it up to the point where some of the kids are laughing so hard they can't even play right. This is another chance for fundraising, getting donations, or prizing this out at raffles. 

N.B. Don't loan your baton out to someone who doesn't know how to use it. Mine was broken before I had the chance to direct.

23:00 - The fun begins. At this point we have 45 minutes of rehearsal every hour running through pieces the kids have never seen before, or at least haven't seen in a year. During the other fifteen minutes, the kids run off to a dark room with a strobe light, thumping techno music and enough sugar and caffeine to put several large animals into hyperglycemic shock. I, myself stuck to a diet of carrot sticks, wheat thins and chai tea, learning from last year that a steady diet of Mountain Dew inhibits my ability to direct and causes my hands to shake. I also brought in help, a few extra directors, the student director, manager and drum major of the Aggie Band, all current music majors at UCD. There's no way I could direct a band for 7 hours on my own. Working with a combined band of about 150 kids, I lost my voice as it is, and that was working with them only 15 minutes every hour. 

Between 11 and 12 we started them off easy with "With Quiet Courage" "Three Ayers from Gloucster" and Holst's First Suite in Eb

00:00 - 01:00: WE decided to get the harder stuff out of the way while everyone was awake: Culloden III, El Camino Real (a beast to conduct on the fly), Holst's Second Suite in F (running the march as fast as we could).

01:00 - 02:00: Mars, Baroque Hoedown, and American Elegy

02:00 - 3:00: Here if the kids were dragging we made them sing instead, playing arrangements of Les Mis, Aladdin and the Lion King

03:00 - 04:00:  Continuing in the same vein we did Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast and Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

04:00 - 05:00: Rock Bottom.  This was a bad time to pull out Vaughn William's Folk Song Suite. I think the flutes were about to cry when I called it up. Between that, Mary's boy child and an arrangement of Avenue Q, it was a disaster. We should have pulled up much easier music for this late in the game.

05:00 - 06:30: To rally the troops we played a bunch of their pep band music, (Black Saddles, Cortez) which with a full band, rivaled the Aggie Band in power and quality. We then set out to rehearse three pieces from the night to get them sounding decent for a concert at 7:00. - when their parents and people who threw money at them come to see them perform without any lips.

We chose Baroque Hoedown (The theme to the electric light parade in Disneyland), Beauty and the Beast and American Elegy as those pieces with the balance of "easy," "engaging," and "impressive."

06:30 - 0:700: Breakfast, keep everyone off their instruments to allow a bit of recovery.

07:00 - 07:30: Concert, a little flat here and there, with lips as droopy as their eyelids. But promising the kids that this is the last thing between them and sleep seems to rouse the spirits. And students always play better when their parents are watching. 

I pushed the pace on American Elegy, but as I said, it was the only thing between me and sleep. If you look closely you can see the sun rising behind the curtains of the multipurpose room.

Why I love what I do.

This post is part of a blog project on student teaching, hosted at So You Want To Teach

I know that I don't reflect back nearly enough on the amazing amount of opportunity upon which I've stumbled over the last two years. I know my situation is fairly unique and am continually grateful for it, except when I grumble about commuting from Sacramento to Davis 5 days a week. My job barely pays for the gas it takes to get there every day, but it's worth enough to me in experience that if they didn't pay me, I'd probably still come in every day. Having graduated in June, and deferred my enrollment in a master's program, I'm stuck between undergraduate and graduate studies and am currently taking music education courses that weren't offered in the UCD music department over at CSUS. There I'm lumped under "post baccalaureate studies" and am not currently in a credential program, or student teaching, but my work at Davis Senior High School in the position of "Paraeducator III - Music Specialist" hits very close to the mark. At the very least it's paid classroom observation and mentorship, and at its best it's hands on experience leading a class of kids in making awesome music. 

Most of my job consists of doing whatever the director doesn't want to do, which is a lot. On paper, I'm little more than an aide, something his student T.A.'s could do: be more mobile than the director (he's post-polio) and facilitate an efficient rehearsal. I make copies, grab scores, part music or file it away, take attendance and enter everything into his grade sheets. Sometimes I get to re-arrange music or write out new parts with Sibelius, other times I work as a section coach with any particular section while the director works with the rest of the band. But the reason I show up every day, and would do so without being paid is the chance to conduct the DHS bands.

When I played with the UC Davis wind ensemble, we'd go to a gig every year called the  "Festivity of Bands" it was the "Causeway Classic" for band nerds. CSUS and UCD give a joint concert, pitting the wind programs of each music department against the other. Well, for a few years now they've been inviting the audition ensemble from Davis High to come play with them, and I was always a bit bitter leaving knowing we were schooled by a bunch of high school kids. They played harder music than we did and sounded better doing it. 

This of course is the result of an amazing amount of support from the school district and community in Davis and is completely not representative of any public school program I've ever seen. Last year, when the Governator decided to cut the budget 10% across the board, we were going to lose funding for all elementary band and orchestra programs, and the community promptly raised over $400,000 for the "Save our Music" Campaign, and then voted to implement a parcel tax to cover the expenses for the next 3 years, saving the programs and teachers who had been pink-slipped.

I get to work with kids who are musically literate and have a musical maturity greater than some college ensembles. They can sight read anything and sound decent doing it. They regularly play grade 5 and sometimes grade 6 music. The non-audition ensemble, with which I get to work, regularly starts the year at grade 4 and works their way up, auditioning on grade 5 stuff by the end of the year. Last year as an undergraduate and now working towards my credential, this is experience I can't get anywhere else. I'm allowed to peruse a huge catalogue of music and choose pieces that I get to rehearse with the band and conduct in concert, going through the whole process as a director from start to finish and perfecting my skills and confidence at the podium. Right now I'm walking around with about 30 scores in my backpack preparing for a fundraiser for the kids: an all night band-geek-a-thon where I'm responsible for keeping them playing music -all sight reading- from midnight until 7:00am at which point they are to pull together, rehearse three pieces and perform a concert for those parents picking them up - with whatever lips they have left.

Basically, I'm spoiled for the rest of my career and have a template from which to work and build my own band programs. One that starts with strong elementary and junior high programs. 

Anyways, the Symphonic Band got their hands on a piece called Masada and have been working on it since January 5th - they're two and a half weeks in and still a little shaky. The piece is a programmatic work depicting a great siege of the Judean fortress, casting the Romans in sober, relentless 4/4 time and their Hebrew adversaries in complex dance rhythms (generally asymmetric meters that flop around i.e.  5/8 [7/8] changes from 3-2 [-2] to [2-] 2-3, mixed in with 2/4, 3/4 or 6/8 for good measure). I convinced the director to let me take the score home with me over the MLK weekend and obsessed over it for three days, trying to work out the rhythm patterns. The goal was to come in during their final period to put together some audition tapes for my meeting with faculty at UOP next Monday; hopefully to prove I'm a technically competent conductor when it comes to negotiating a teaching assistantship to support my graduate studies. I realize now that the video is not as impressive to look at when compared to the score (the composer or maybe publisher created his own meters to save on ink because the meter changes almost every bar). I had my head buried in the score, and couldn't think past the rhythms enough to do anything but mirror with my left hand, but it was a nice change from the slow, lyric pieces I normally get to work with (the ones the actual director would rather not conduct). In short, this is why I love what I do:

I get to work with exceptional musicians who bring energy and exuberance that only students can to a rehearsal. I get to engage both my creative muscle and theirs; they may know how to play their instruments, and well, but it's my job to teach and encourage them how to make music to the best of their abilities.

I don't know how to play the cymbals correctly.

I've just gone through and edited clips of video recorded from my last few rehearsals. I'm recording my conducting, it's necessary because I can't see how I look when I'm being me. Mirrors also don't work because the experience is so much different in front of a band. I'm pretty sure this isn't some illegal thing, I don't need waivers or anything since I capture any of my students, only their music. This is what I did all last year at DHS, and am continuing to do this year. I just figured I'd put a (short) segment up here as another installment of A Day in the Life. This life is free of busses and much more fun.

We were working on getting the third trumpets to acknowledge a triplet rhythm in the first few measures, which they got. I give the evil eye to the percussionists for a while... but really, who doesn't?

Warning: I set up my laptop next to the Oboe stand. My bad.