Congrats to everyone that has just finished up their winter season at their circuit championships, and good luck to all the groups that are starting the final weeks of their season. I started a second concert group at my school that just finished up their season this past weekend. They had a great season earning a silver medal, finishing the season breaking 80, and experiencing almost 20 points worth of recognized growth. In all reality their growth was probably 10 times that. I say this because the group was made up of 7 freshmen when had middle school band through COVID (2 of which started band this year), a sophomore flute player, a junior flute player and a senior trombone player. I want to share with you what I did with them that helped facilitate their tremendous amount of growth.
So let's start with our rehearsal schedule. The advantage to doing a concert group over a marching group is that we have one singular focus...playing well. This is NOT saying that marching groups don't do that, however, they also have the visual aspect of things they have to focus on. So we rehearsed two days a week for two hours...so four hours total per week. Could we do more...ABSOLUTELY! Should we have done more...ABSOLUTELY NOT! This is where knowing yourself and your students is very important. I absolutely can go for hours in rehearsal, but for our program two hours has been the sweet spot for us. Our Open group that does WGI only does 2.5 hour rehearsals (5 hours total) most weeks as well.
So since we are such limited rehearsal time we obviously dove straight into the music right...WRONG. I believe that show music can clean itself up through great technical work. Now remember this group had ZERO previous experience in indoor, three wind players, two beginners, two freshmen who marched battery in marching band, two freshmen who played rack in the fall and one freshmen who did not do marching band. So we were literally starting from scratch since we were using no racks in this group. When both groups start, we probably do a majority of our rehearsal time in technique. In a typical two hour rehearsal, I will do 1 hour 15 minutes (sometimes more) in technique and 45 minutes in music.
Now, this is where the Open group and the A group differ. The Open group focuses on playing with great technique right away. Those students walk in the door knowing all 12 major scales and how to play four mallets. The A group had students that knew no scales and had no four mallet experience. However before we started just going in on those things we brought out drum pads.
Why start on drum pads with a concert group you ask? It is the same reason why I like starting beginners on just a drum pad. We can focus on the motion our hands are suppose to make and not worry about pitch, specifically not worrying about playing the wrong pitch. This allows the student to focus solely on what their hands are doing. At the beginning of the season we were doing this for about 45 minutes to an hour. We were doing just basics like 8 on a hand, playing accents and taps, and the 16th note grid. Again, the focus of this time was how are our hands moving and am I transferring enough energy, and weight, into the drum pad to make a full sound.
After our drum pad time, we worked on scales. Now, when I say we worked on scales...that is all we worked on. We learned a scale at a time and sometimes we only learned a scale in a week. The focus of this time isn't hand motion. Yes, we want to transfer our drum pad information over but students can't focus on that if they don't know what they are doing. We spent WEEKS on just C, F and Bb and talking about playing louder...even with less than great technique. But Ryan...why are you asking them to play loud with bad technique. Well it wasn't bad technique, and I would never let a student play in a manner that will hurt them or the instrument, but sometimes the students building confidence is more important than being exactly right. Once they have that confidence starting to build, then you can nudge them more easily in the direction you want them to go.
I will say that this is where I disagree with a lot of people that preach beating technique into the ground. Amazing technique is very important, but if your students can't play, then what good is technique? If you students can't react to what is going on around them, what good is technique? This is why I start to push students to play faster and with more energy almost immediately. One...playing faster is fun. Two, greatness doesn't come from being comfortable. So, I want to push my students outside their comfort zone as soon as possible. Once we got here, every student was on a different plan. Some students can be pushed more and some need more cheerleading. Both are totally fine, need to be met where they are and pushed to go farther.
Once we were done with scales, and we were reviewing scales even up to this past weekend, we would get into a little four mallets. Now, I write the music for both groups so I am able to customize the process to what they need. With the A group, we played one four mallet exercise - 77558. The first time we played this (after breaking down how to hold four mallets and playing basic block chords) was ROUGH. I mean almost all wrong notes and people getting lost rough. And that was totally fine for where they were. Just playing four mallets was making their hands stronger. I very vividly remember the first time we played the exercise right after weeks of it being not great, I looked at the students and told them it was awesome to finally have it right. One student said, "that's called a coincidence" and we all had a good laugh. Now, he was right because the next rep was ROUGH ROUGH. However, the goal was build the four mallet hand strength NOT play the best reps of 77558 ever. The open group plays that exercise too so that wouldn't have been a realistic expectation.
Another story about this exercise. We were at the first show and the A group played this in warm up. The Open group watched them and cheered for them after every rep, which was awesome for both groups to finally see each other. Turn around about an hour later and the Open group is getting ready to warm up, and they have a couple of variations of the exercise they play. We started our first rep of the exercise I saw some of the A students eye get real wide, and then some jaws drop when we started to play some of our combination variations of the exercise. It was a cool moment that will stick with me for a while.
So, if I had to break down the system for the A group (and really the Open group as well just at a different level) is to invest in the strength, and confidence, of the students even before pushing how correct they are. The stronger the students are the better they will individually sound. The better they individually sound the easier it is to get them to match sounds. The easier it is to get them to match sounds the better the ensemble will sound. This also allows them to focus on playing together. The hardest part of this system is that it takes patience. However, when starting at zero that is what is needed most.
The students were talking me about and talking about how I have two different personalities for the groups, and they were right. This A group was created because last year we had only one group I couldn't give the students that needed a slower pace the experience they needed. I also wasn't able to push the top students as much as I wish I could have. That group was very successful earning a WGI Bronze Medal, but I was not happy with the experience. Having two groups has been awesome because they travel along the same kind of path at very different paces and with different goals in mind.
Since I am talking about exercises, you can find the exercises I use here. They are now free of charge. The exercises I used with the A Ensemble are AD (on the Two Mallet Exercise Page), Chromatic-Up/Major-Down and 77558. We added another hand speed exercise that will go up later.
Below is a video of the A Ensemble at MEPA Finals this past weekend. Huge thank you to the parent that took this video. Enjoy!
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