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Defining and Realizing Your Band’s Ideal Tone

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Defin­ing and Real­iz­ing Your Band’s Ideal Tone
Mark Fonder, Ithaca College

Sev­eral years ago, when the Wil­liam Rev­elli–led Uni­ver­sity of Michigan Band record­ings were col­lec­ted for that now fam­ous Golden Crest record series, Clark Gale­house, pres­id­ent of Golden Crest marveled at the con­sist­ency of the timbre and tex­ture of Revelli’s band over the 14-year span of the record­ings in the midst of con­stant per­son­nel changes from year to year.(1) We are all famil­iar with suc­cess­ful band dir­ect­ors at every level that seem­ingly shrug off “down years” and pro­duce con­sist­ently fine ensembles that “really sound.” What does it take to achieve this?

Many musi­cians believe that achiev­ing a beau­ti­ful band tone heads the list of chal­lenges con­front­ing the school band dir­ector. The issues that con­trib­ute to this chal­lenge are many. Ran­ging from subtle to drastic, there are con­stant changes in group size due to schedul­ing, attri­tion, recruit­ment and gradu­ation. The effects of stu­dent lead­er­ship and vari­ations of abil­ity on key areas of instru­ment­a­tion can affect the band’s tone as well. These con­di­tions occur with every band, from grade school ensembles through col­legi­ate wind bands and even the pro­fes­sional mil­it­ary bands. Why is it that the most suc­cess­ful con­duct­ors can accept these changes and adjust accord­ingly while oth­ers suc­cumb to the vagar­ies of the ensemble and accept the sound it gives them? What does it take to achieve consistency?

Achiev­ing Your Tonal Concept

The answers often lie with the conductor’s concept of the band’s tone pro­duc­tion. A band can­not meet per­form­ance expect­a­tions if its con­ductor can­not artic­u­late, define or oth­er­wise estab­lish his concept of ensemble tone. What are your son­or­ity pref­er­ences? What qual­ity of sound is desir­able; what blend sounds best to your ears? Could you begin to describe your ideal tone in terms like homo­gen­ized, bril­liant or warm?

Pref­er­ence toward a par­tic­u­lar band sound is a com­bin­a­tion of per­sonal taste and con­ven­tion. Per­sonal tastes are estab­lished by past influ­ences and exper­i­ences in ensemble par­ti­cip­a­tion, work­shop or master-class exper­i­ences, listen­ing and read­ing. There are many accept­able band tones in the spec­trum and the act of devel­op­ing your pref­er­ences is the first import­ant step toward the long term goal: achiev­ing con­sist­ency in timbre and tex­ture in your band’s sound. There is admit­tedly a degree of sub­jectiv­ity in the pro­cess. What might be one’s ideal band tone could need refine­ment from another’s viewpoint.

How does a con­ductor get star­ted? There are five basic com­pon­ents that con­trib­ute toward a band’s over­all tone: bal­ance, blend, acous­tics, son­or­ity and chord voicing. These key com­pon­ents can be sup­por­ted by sev­eral basic “prin­ciples” that can be applied to achieve the ideal tone.

Bal­ance prin­ciples (2)

Human ears hear higher fre­quency notes more effi­ciently and clearer than lower fre­quency notes. This implies:

    I. For each instru­ment fam­ily (Brass/Woodwind/Percussion): Bass instru­ments will provide the found­a­tion fol­lowed by tenor, alto and sop­rano fam­il­ies. The ana­logy of the pyr­amid of sound is appropriate.II. For the sec­tion: the inner parts or the third or fourth parts may often­times need to pro­ject more than the upper parts.

    III. For the indi­vidual: A forte pas­sage in the low­est range on the instru­ment often needs more pres­ence of sound than a forte pas­sage in the highest range.

Blend prin­ciples (3)

If you hear your­self above all oth­ers, one of three things is happening:

    I. You are over­power­ing or over­blow­ing. Never louder than lovely.

    II. You are play­ing with poor tone qual­ity. Make the neces­sary adjust­ment to embouchure, breath sup­port, pos­ture, reed, etc.

    III. You are play­ing out of tune. Make the neces­sary adjust­ment by extend­ing or short­en­ing the length of your instrument.

Acous­tic principles

    I. The lar­ger the instru­ment and/or the fur­ther away you are from the front of the stage, the more you will have to anti­cip­ate the beat to avoid sound­ing “behind.”

    II. Dir­ec­tional instru­ments (trum­pet, trom­bone) will sound louder than non-directional instru­ments (bas­soon, clarinet).

    III. Tutti cres­cendi will main­tain bal­ance best if softer instru­ments lead louder instru­ments in the swell. (gen­er­ally wood­winds first, brass next, per­cus­sion last) In diminu­endi, vice versa: louder instru­ments should lead the softer instruments.

Son­or­ity principles

    I. The faster the tempo, the less loud you should play; let the speed carry the intens­ity. Gen­er­ally, a forte at presto is softer than a forte at andante.

    II. The more people shar­ing a rhythm, the less loud you should play.

    III. The more people shar­ing the note, the less loud you should play.

Chord voicing principle

In diatonic/homophonic music, the tones that make up the qual­ity of the chord are gen­er­ally bal­anced under (are softer) than the found­a­tional chords. For example, in a C major chord, the loudest tones are the C and G (the root and fifth) because they com­prise the found­a­tion. Since the 3rd defines the chord’s qual­ity, I often bal­ance it inside the sound of the root and fifth.

ACHIEVING A CONSISTENT TONE

Although the stu­dents’ ages in a school band remain con­sist­ent, dif­fer­ent play­ers often par­ti­cip­ate each year. It will take sev­eral rehears­als to shape the group’s sound to match the band a con­ductor hears in his or her head. Tak­ing the time to define a band’s tone to the stu­dents improves the chances of sat­is­fac­tion with the product. Moreover, at this point it is import­ant to guide stu­dents toward for­mu­lat­ing their own ideal band tone because guid­ing the aural devel­op­ment of stu­dents will help them become more dis­crim­in­at­ing listen­ers. The fol­low­ing seven sug­ges­tions may be helpful.

1) Explain and estab­lish goals for the band’s tone. This point is one of the most cru­cial. Goals should be decided upon as soon as pos­sible. A strong, agreed-upon aural image of what a band should sound like should be estab­lished in the conductor’s mind and com­mu­nic­ated with the stu­dents. Then, when a devi­ation is appro­pri­ate, such as an unusu­ally bright pas­sage, adjust­ments can be made within the con­text of the estab­lished goal.

2) Teach the stu­dents the prin­ciples of tone. All of the prin­ciples work inter­de­pend­ently. For example, bands usu­ally need to learn to con­trol the volume in gen­eral, but espe­cially when they play in their upper ranges. Long tone exer­cises in octaves pro­mote a free-flowing sound that allows stu­dents to eval­u­ate their tone qual­ity and inton­a­tion in the upper tes­situra. They adjust to keep their indi­vidual sounds full, yet without undue brightness.

Artic­u­la­tions must be well defined but never to the extent that they dis­tort the tone’s beauty. Accents are nor­mally achieved with a dis­tinct tongue, but with more air behind the tongue on the ini­tial impact.

If a C-major chord is voiced in first inver­sion in wood­winds with the bass cla­ri­nets car­ry­ing the only third of the chord, use the prin­ciples of bal­ance stated above (e.g., pyr­amid) to be sure the qual­ity of the chord is appro­pri­ate. If the com­pos­i­tion calls for a bril­liant uni­son with the trum­pets over the gen­eral band tex­ture, then an adjust­ment can be made.

3) Listen to good examples. The concept of “dark” or “bright” son­or­ity may have to be taught, but verbal explan­a­tions often fall short com­pared to aural images. Record the band and loc­ate examples of pas­sages where the group is approach­ing or has achieved your idea of bright and dark, even if for only a chord. Have your stu­dents com­pare and con­trast the qual­it­ies. Seek out record­ings of pro­fes­sional or col­legi­ate bands that are worthy of emu­la­tion and have the stu­dents in your band listen and imit­ate the qual­ity of last chords or excerp­ted pas­sages. Be sure the stu­dents hear the music on the finest equip­ment afford­able. Con­sid­er­ing the abund­ance of fine band record­ings avail­able, an aural model may provide your stu­dents with a truly valu­able non­verbal learn­ing experience.

4) Prac­tice for tone. Numer­ous warm-up books are avail­able for teach­ing con­sist­ent timbre and beau­ti­ful tone pro­duc­tion. Any chor­ale book, such as Treas­ury of Scales is use­ful to encour­age a full, flow­ing chordal sounds without edgi­ness or lack of con­trol. Typ­ic­ally, these exer­cises can be done at the begin­ning of the rehearsal and then be rein­forced as the lit­er­at­ure is intro­duced. Stu­dents will prac­tice open­ing up their sounds within a tech­nic­ally easy format and then, with coach­ing, can be expec­ted to trans­fer it to the music you intend to perform.

5) Con­trol instru­ment­a­tion. Defin­ing your ideal band tone and then work­ing with your stu­dents to real­ize the concept are two import­ant steps requir­ing a part­ner­ship with band mem­bers. But, there are also sev­eral steps the con­ductor must take to ensure that the desired tone is even feas­ible. The “ideal sound” may be impossible to achieve without sev­eral instru­ment­a­tion require­ments. While the con­ductor may need to be flex­ible with the size of the group from year to year, two bass cla­ri­nets, a bas­soon, two tubas and two euphoni­ums are the min­imum num­bers needed in these sec­tions in order to facil­it­ate the desired tonal bal­ance. If a band aver­ages 70–75 mem­bers there can be no more than 10 flutes and 10 trum­pets and the cla­ri­net sec­tion is stacked with three on the first part, 4 on the second part and five are on the third part. Vari­ations in the middle to lower brass are inev­it­able and easier to deal with than over­pop­u­la­tions in the treble winds.

To some it may appear per­emp­tory to con­trol instru­ment­a­tion, but if the goal is a first class musical exper­i­ence for the stu­dents, the stu­dents as well as par­ents must accept the estab­lished instru­ment­a­tional con­ven­tions. While enfor­cing these con­ven­tions may neces­sit­ate care­ful dip­lomacy, the effort can pay off in a more worth­while exper­i­ence for everyone.

6) The seat­ing of the band has to be ana­lyzed to max­im­ize suc­cess in real­iz­ing the band’s ideal tone. Group­ing the bass voices, irre­spect­ive of whether they are brass or wood­wind can boost con­fid­ence with younger ensembles. Exper­i­ment­a­tion with acous­tic shells and clouds, risers and upstage and back­stage place­ment have a huge effect on the ensemble tone. If there hap­pens to be a large flute sec­tion, exper­i­ment with seat­ing them in twos on the conductor’s right going back to the final row. Start a second tier (a la the orches­tra violin seat­ing) to accom­mod­ate the second flutes. Brass bells straight on or from the side of the group is another vari­ant that affects the ensemble’s sound.

7) Finally, choose pro­gram music that enables the ensemble to per­form under the sten­cil of the agreed-upon tone qual­ity. Not every selec­tion qual­i­fies, although every style of music is even­tu­ally pos­sible. Choose some music at every con­cert stu­dents can breeze through tech­nic­ally so they can con­cen­trate on tone pro­duc­tion, espe­cially at the begin­ning of the con­cert sea­son. Shelve the pop­u­lar “macho-bravura” genre of band pieces until the time when all of the vari­ables to band tone have been scru­tin­ized and demonstrated.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Striv­ing to achieve the ideal con­trol, blend, clar­ity and qual­ity that define the “per­fect sound” begins with devel­op­ing a way to com­mu­nic­ate the concept to the ensemble and prac­ti­cing to attain the goal. When all of these ele­ments are addressed — estab­lish­ing and explain­ing the goals, teach­ing stu­dents the prin­ciples of tone, listen­ing to good examples, prac­ti­cing for tone, con­trolling instru­ment­a­tion, eval­u­at­ing seat­ing arrange­ments, and choos­ing music to optim­ize tone– stu­dents, audi­ences and con­duct­ors will enjoy con­sist­ent timbre — the ideal band sound.

(1) Clark Gale­house. Unpa­gin­ated liner notes for The Rev­elli Years with the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan Sym­phony Band. Golden Crest Records, Inc. CRS-4202D, LP recording.

(2) For a more com­plete dis­cus­sion on this refer to W. Fran­cis McBeth. Effect­ive Per­form­ance of Band Music. San Ant­o­nio: South­ern Music Company.1972. In this book McBeth also states that “good band pitch is a dir­ect res­ult of good balance.”

(3) A most thor­ough dis­cus­sion of this can be found in Edward S. Lisk. The Cre­at­ive Dir­ector: Altern­at­ive Rehearsal Tech­niques. Ft. Laud­er­dale, FL: Meredith Music Pub­lic­a­tions. 1991.

(4)Leonard B. Smith. The Treas­ury of Scales. Melville, NY: Bel­win Mills Pub­lic­a­tions. 1961.

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Mark Fonder QLD visit

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Dr. Mark Fonder will be in Bris­bane dur­ing May and June and will be avail­able for work­shops with school and com­munity ensembles. If you would like to book a ses­sion for your ensemble please con­tact the ABODA QLD sec­ret­ary, Alisa Jones, on 0412 016 509 to secure your place.

Click here to down­load the flyer with details of costs and dates.

Mark Fonder, pro­fessor of music, is the con­ductor of the Ithaca Col­lege Con­cert Band and has been teach­ing con­duct­ing and instru­mental music edu­ca­tion courses at Ithaca Col­lege since 1989. From 1994 to 2003, he was the Chair­man of the Music Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment. He is act­ive as a guest con­ductor, adju­dic­ator, school music con­sult­ant, and clini­cian and has served in these capa­cit­ies through­out the United States. Inter­na­tion­ally, he has guest con­duc­ted, given research present­a­tions or adju­dic­ated bands in Aus­tria, Japan, Canada, China, Singa­pore, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Dr. Fonder, a gradu­ate of and twice a fel­low­ship recip­i­ent at the Uni­ver­sity of Illinois, was dir­ector of bands at Park Falls (Wis­con­sin) High School and was on the fac­ulties of the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Uni­ver­sity of Texas-San Ant­o­nio prior to com­ing to New York. He has also served on the fac­ulties of The Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton, Vander­Cook Col­lege and the East­man School of Music. Dr. Fonder’s research has been pub­lished in vari­ous journ­als includ­ing the Music Edu­cat­ors Journal, Band Dir­ect­ors Guide, Instru­ment­al­ist, Journal of Band Research, Coun­cil for Research in Music Edu­ca­tion and the Journal of Research in Music Edu­ca­tion. He was chair of the Music Edu­cat­ors Journal Edit­or­ial Com­mit­tee from 1998–2002 and is cur­rently the editor of the Journal of His­tor­ical Research in Music Edu­ca­tion.

Dr. Fonder has played prin­cipal trom­bone with the Green Bay (Wis­con­sin) Sym­phony, the Green Bay Packer Band, and the San Ant­o­nio Brass, and for such enter­tain­ers as Robert Goulet, Rich Little, and Rita Moreno. In 1987, Dr. Fonder was awar­ded the National Band Association-Wisconsin Chapter Cita­tion of Excel­lence, in 1998, the Ithaca Col­lege President’s Recog­ni­tion Award and has been the recip­i­ent of a Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin teach­ing fel­low­ship. He has been elec­ted to Phi Delta Kappa, an hon­or­ary edu­ca­tion fra­tern­ity, Phi Kappa Phi, an hon­or­ary schol­ars fra­tern­ity, Pi Kappa Lambda, an hon­or­ary music fra­tern­ity and the pres­ti­gi­ous Amer­ican Band­mas­ters Association.

The Path of the Artist

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Allan McMur­ray
Dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor
Robert and Judy Charles Pro­fessor of Con­duct­ing
Uni­ver­sity of Col­or­ado – Boulder

I have had the oppor­tun­ity to work with instru­mental ensembles through­out the United States.  It has been a joy­ous exper­i­ence meet­ing and mak­ing music with stu­dents who love being together in pur­pose and in per­form­ance, but I have con­stantly been reminded of the dif­fer­ent levels of com­mit­ment that can be found.

The com­mon level of com­mit­ment is that of the par­ti­cipant.  The music par­ti­cipant enjoys the exper­i­ence of get­ting together with friends and enga­ging in the events.  The par­ti­cipant is con­scien­tious about rehearsal times, works to learn the music in rehearsal and is inter­ested in being a good sec­tion mem­ber.  The par­ti­cipant likes music with a good beat.

The next level is that of a player (or singer).  The player/singer is a per­son who loves music because it gives him/her a chance to play.  The player wants to play a lot and prac­tices to achieve range and tech­nique that can rep­res­ent a great sound whenever the player plays.  The player arrives early to prac­tice his “licks” and wants great parts to play.  In fact, the player judges music based on her part.  If it’s a good part, it is a good piece of music, if it’s a bad part, it is a bad piece of music.  The player likes solos, and strives to be heard.  The player loves his instru­ment and enjoys get­ting together with other “play­ers”.  The player will learn his/her part out­side of rehears­als to he/she can sound good in rehearsals.

The third level is that of the musi­cian.  The musi­cian plays his instru­ment well and shows up to rehears­als with his part mastered.  The musi­cian loves cham­ber music and ensemble because of the oppor­tun­ity for musical col­lab­or­a­tion. The musi­cian does not come to rehearsal to learn her/his own part; the musi­cian comes to a rehearsal to learn every­one else’s part.  In that way, the musi­cian I learn­ing how to play together by con­cen­trat­ing on inton­a­tion, artic­u­la­tion, phras­ing, blend, bal­ance and style.  The musi­cian is about listen­ing, learn­ing and col­lab­or­at­ing with other musi­cians.  The musi­cian eval­u­ates whether a piece of music is good or not by the sounds that are cre­ated by every­one and enjoys listen­ing as much as play­ing.  The musi­cian likes being a con­trib­ut­ing part of every rehearsal through collaboration.

The fourth level is that of the artist.  The artist has all the skills of the player and the musi­cian, but the artist is also a cre­ator.  The artist comes to every rehearsal pre­pared in every way, and leaves every rehearsal with new goals.  The artist loves great music mak­ing and loves to bring expres­sion and inspir­a­tion to the per­form­ance.  The artist has ima­gin­a­tion that is fueled by oppor­tun­ity.  That oppor­tun­ity might come in a solo pas­sage or in an approach to style that amp­li­fies the intent of the piece.  The artist is a col­lab­or­ator with the other mem­bers of the ensemble, with the con­ductor, and with the com­poser.  The artist is intu­it­ive and ori­ginal, but only uses those skills in pur­suit of the most beau­ti­ful per­form­ance pos­sible.  The artist eval­u­ates whether a piece of music is good or not by how it is com­posed and what it expresses.  The artist has the poten­tial to elev­ate the listener’s per­cep­tion of an aver­age piece through an extraordin­ary per­form­ance.  The artist loves music because music fuels his/her soul.

If it were only about choos­ing a level then all per­formers would be artists.  But it is not about choos­ing it is about grow­ing, listen­ing, and sur­round­ing one­self with great music, great books, great art and great people.  It is about informed intu­ition.  It is about learn­ing the­ory, so the archi­tec­ture and har­monic lan­guage can be heard in every melody.  It is about know­ing per­form­ance prac­tice and style of music of all peri­ods.  It is about listen­ing to chal­len­ging pieces by ima­gin­at­ive and ori­ginal com­posers and push­ing the envel­ope of per­sonal pref­er­ence.  It is about reflec­tion on life, death, pain, cel­eb­ra­tion, pas­sion, grief, and nature to under­stand and exper­i­ence those things that inspire mean­ing in art.  It is about learn­ing to be at home in solitude and seek­ing it out.  It is about beauty and spon­taneity and ima­gin­a­tion and spir­itu­al­ity.  It is attempt­ing to approach every sound and every silence every day as if it mat­ters, because it does.  It is recog­niz­ing that the pur­suit of per­fec­tion is a lifelong goal and that it is unat­tain­able.  It is know­ing that the artist’s life is not about a des­tin­a­tion, it is about the journey.

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Summer Conducting School, part 6

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Mel­bourne: ABODA Vic­toria – Sum­mer Con­duct­ing School

Prin­cipal teacher: Pro­fessor Craig Kirchhoff

Sat­urday 15/01/2011

Rep­er­toire Selec­tion and Programming

Rep­er­toire

  • Rep­er­toire is the found­a­tion of pro­grams. Want to cre­ate beau­ti­ful sounds – then need to find music that allows stu­dents to be inspired to do.
  • Select­ing rep­er­toire is the most dif­fi­cult and the most important.
  • In States, not much ment­or­ing — new teach­ers go to music stores and ask for recom­mend­a­tions — instead of hav­ing a solid grasp of how to identify and find qual­ity music … and hav­ing a net­work of mentors
  • There is lots of good music
  • Never apo­lo­gise to the kids for play­ing music that’s slow and/or tech­nic­ally easy. It’s up to us to model our atti­tude towards great music.
  • Choose music that you’re com­mit­ted to and have a per­sonal res­on­ance with rep­er­toire chosen
  • What’s best for the students
  • Stu­dents should be helped to trust that pieces that they don’t sound good on at the first rehearsal can end up being a piece they will learn to love/appreciate
  • Wean stu­dents away from “funny” music to music that has real substance

Wash­ing­ton Times Article

The Kids Play Great, But That Music

Stephen Budi­ansky (Sunday, Janu­ary 30, 2005; Page B03

Visit: www.budiansky.com/MUSIC.html to down­load this and other articles

Plan­ning

We per­form what we rehearse

What are the musical objectives?

What do we want our cur­riculum to be? e.g. dif­fer­ent sounds, dif­fer­ent ways of cre­at­ing music

Give liv­ing pro­gram notes – speak at concerts

Cur­riculum Con­certs: Get par­ents involved in what the stu­dents are doing e.g. con­duct­ing ensembles, par­ents play­ing some­thing as part of it.

Have to believe that what you’re doing is right for the students

Pro­gram­ming

Is the amount of time to be spent on get­ting a piece ready for per­form­ance worth the musical exper­i­ence for the students.

Develop terms that form an archi­tec­ture  e.g.

Open­ers

Closers

Evoc­a­tion

Brittle

Emo­tional

Fun Music: Play­ers’ piece – just fun to play e.g. Shos­takovich “Fest­ival Over­ture” or “Folk Dances”

The Main Event (the pro­ject piece)

Con­sider:

Theme con­certs

Some­thing Old, some­thing new, some­thing borrowed

Eclectic Con­certs

Pieces that have con­nec­tion with each other

Pieces that have dif­fer­ent ways of read­ing notation

Listen to music and cat­egor­ise as you go.

Cook­ing analogy:

Choose a main meal. How much time will it take to make? How complex?

[this is equi­val­ent to a pro­ject piece that may be a 60 musical/40 tech­nical. There­fore, some­where in the pro­gram will need to be some pieces at 90/10 to bal­ance out to 80/20 over the whole program]

Look at rehearsal time and fig­ure out what you can fit

First con­certs to be more con­ser­vat­ive – some­times set­ting up ele­ments needed for future con­cert program.

When is the most intim­ate, most heroic, most bold etc. moments/sections for the entire concert.

Use index cards with one piece on each,  and then move them (the cards) around until find pro­grams that work.

Clos­ing:

It is import­ant that we love music, people and teach­ing; and have an insa­ti­able need to keep learn­ing and growing.

Spent rest of after­noon with con­duct­ing practicum’s for all 30 participants.

I found this 6 day course to be very inspir­a­tional and def­in­itely some­thing like what that ABODA QLD could con­sider doing  in the future.

Summer Conducting School, part 5

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Mel­bourne: ABODA Vic­toria – Sum­mer Con­duct­ing School

Prin­cipal teacher: Pro­fessor Craig Kirchhoff

Fri­day 14/01/2011

Open­ing Morn­ing Session:

Score Study

1.       Intellectual under­stand­ing – form, har­monic struc­ture, and chaconne theme inver­ted etc.

2.       Internalisation

3.       Emotional under­stand­ing

Record­ing: Col­grass “Urban Requiem”.

  • We listened and wrote down feel­ing words as listening.
  • Most of us won’t be able to play music like that with our ensembles, but it’s import­ant that we listen.
  • Sug­ges­tion: Write in score – what emo­tions are being projected.

Score and record­ing: Shos­takovich “Prelude”.

  • Writ­ten at time of duress in USSR. Had to write music for the state.
  • While listen­ing and we wrote emo­tions on score.
  • Some responses: Dark, fore­bod­ing, impend­ing doom then doom, sup­pres­sion, des­pair, suf­fer­ing, resig­na­tion, exhaus­tion, apathy
  • Score study ques­tion … what’s dif­fer­ent and why is it dif­fer­ent? E.g. Only two major chords – why are they there (b.14)?
  • Listened to it again – and observed what was brought to the score by the musi­cians bey­ond the nota­tion. After dis­cus­sion found that dynamics/tempo/note weight e.g. use of heavy note weight in b.1 to give pens­ive­ness, dark­ness. Use of silence to increase the drama.

Silence sets up drama [side com­ment: that’s why you wait for a small silence before conducting]

“Cre­ate oppor­tun­it­ies for stu­dents to really con­nect with music through feel­ings which can be life transforming.”

“Make the smal­lest note in the phrase the most expressive”

Need to have a point of view when rehears­ing, so that going bey­ond inton­a­tion etc. How do I manip­u­late the musical ele­ments to express?

Score and record­ing: Schu­man “Chester”

  • Revolu­tion­ary War.
  • Observed what was brought to the score by the musi­cians bey­ond the notation.
  • Phrasal ana­lysis is good but also exam­ine inside each phrase to go to the rela­tion­ship of notes with each other.
  • Explore the emo­tional con­tent and then fig­ure out a way to manip­u­late the musical ele­ments on the page to make it come alive.
  • Do any­thing it takes to make the music more vivid – have to take over ownership.
  • Rolling log tempo – estab­lish a tempo then let go on own momentum and only push along as needed (res­ult will be less conducting)

Score and Record­ing: McGinty “The Red Balloon”

  • Listened – feel­ing words.
  • Listened again. This time with view point on how would have done it dif­fer­ently. Could reflect on own use of: Bal­ance, Rubato, Tempo, and Dynam­ics. Note weights, Tempo and timbre (e.g. using dif­fer­ent mal­lets on percussion)
  • Pub­lish­ers’ record­ing … point of departure

Music is the mas­ter / tech­nique the servant

Rather than “Trum­pets too loud” say “Trum­pets need to play less so it’s more dreamlike”

Say “Flutes need to make the begin­ning less com­plic­ated – more simple and childlike”

Rehearsal tech­niques. Use reseat­ing to help stu­dents hear bet­ter or differently.

Encour­age stu­dents to have inter­pret­ive initiatives

Engage stu­dents’ ima­gin­a­tion: Can do this with music that fits 80/20 rule.

Con­duct­ing Session

Some quotes:

“Be less when mon­it­or­ing so you can be more when there’s some­thing to “say””

“Your intent is more import­ant than the gesture”

“Art of con­duct­ing is know­ing when to beat time and when to release the beat to bet­ter describe the music more”

“When to mon­itor the music and just let them play”

“Soften mar­cato with circles”

“Dif­fi­cult to con­duct marches – really have to release con­duct­ing the beat.”

“Be con­fid­ent, be wil­ful, be the music”

“Use grav­ity to show fz – use down­ward energy”

“If you get the sound you want who cares what it looks like”

“Chan­ging con­duct­ing plane changes meaning”

“Beat­ing time is not conducting”

“Make ges­tures wil­fully so they have intent”

“Got to get exactly what you’re after”

“Scream from the inside with intent”

“Be ridicu­lous gives per­mis­sion to just get out and do it”

“Non-verbal con­duct­ing and mime is all interconnected”

“It’s all about communication”

“It’s risky not beat­ing time – so that whatever you say you really have to mean it”

“Musi­cians will remem­ber what you want if you give them pos­it­ive rein­force­ment when they get it right (or bet­ter) – then they’ll do it each time”

“When you’re mon­it­or­ing stay in the middle of it”

“All have cer­tain amount of energy – when mon­it­or­ing have to put the energy some­where else i.e., torso, eyes, and face”

After­noon Ses­sion: In Action Rehearsal…

  • Where are you living?

1.       Harmony: how the music flows

2.       Pitch and intonation

3.       Dynamics

4.       Timbre

5.       Rhythm and articulation

6.       Balance and orchestration

7.       Line and continuity

8.       Challenge is to oper­ate across all

  • Loop­ing tech­nical pas­sages – repeat­ing. Slow­ing down so con­ductor and stu­dent can hear what’s going on. Form a loop and gradu­ally take it faster and faster until what’s wanted is achieved.
  • Announce­ments etc. not from the podium. Podium is for mak­ing music.
  • Slow pieces esp. with rubato, are dif­fi­cult to bring together – half ensemble sizzle other half plays, then swap. Have sizzles not too loud and have people who are play­ing to “listen louder than they’re playing”
  • Instead of sizz­ling have entire ensemble play pas­sages in sub­divided quavers. Write note shapes on a white board to illus­trate … a lot of stu­dents are visual learners.  Change the dia­grams. If not together “lower voice” listen up for style.
  • If can’t hear what’s not quite right, a tech­nique is to walk into the ensemble – brass only … fine, cla­ri­nets only etc.
  • Bop tech­nique – just play the begin­ning of notes using “res­on­ant” quavers. With and without conducting.
  • Use com­bin­a­tions of sizzle, sub­divided quavers, Bop, illus­tra­tions on the board.
  • The more you keep people involved in rehears­als the better.
  • Keep a sense of beat con­tinu­ing in the back­ground (for the con­ductor) when ensemble has been stopped, this keeps ensemble pace mov­ing along and a sense of music con­tinu­ing even when things are stopped.
  • Have wood­wind facing the brass with the per­cus­sion in the centre. Brass fit your sounds inside the woodwinds.
  • Sit any­place except next to per­son already beside.
  • All ensemble mem­bers form quar­tets. Goal is for mem­bers to hear each other. Play a par­tic­u­lar phrase/section – from memory if pos­sible. One per­son from each quar­tet moves to another. Maybe even assign who sits where.
  • In rehearsal con­ductor only has two ears – do what can be done to have all stu­dents’ ears work­ing at same level as conductor.
  • Con­cent­ric circles
  • Part of play­ing together is watch­ing each other … but more so it’s listening.
  • Inton­a­tion gets bet­ter with listening.

Fol­lowed by about 3 hours of work­ing with par­ti­cipant con­duct­ors with the Sum­mer School Band. 10 Minutes each par­ti­cipant fol­lowed by 20 minute indi­vidual les­son which reviewed DVD of per­form­ance and set goals for final con­duct­ing ses­sion on Saturday.

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Summer Conducting School, part 4

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Mel­bourne: ABODA Vic­toria – Sum­mer Con­duct­ing School

Prin­cipal teacher: Pro­fessor Craig Kirchhoff

Thursday 13/01/2011

[Many par­ti­cipants very con­cerned about Queens­land flood­ing and let­ting me know that they’ve been think­ing about us often]

After much thought and con­sulta­tion with my fam­ily, I’ve decided to stay in Mel­bourne through to the end of the course before com­ing home on Sat­urday night. I’ll keep tak­ing notes and hav­ing them pos­ted on the ABODA QLD web­site for everyone’s future reference.

Morn­ing session

Watched: Fire­bird being con­duc­ted by Strav­in­sky (1956)

Obser­va­tions:

Want to remem­ber from the phys­ical aspect

1.       Torso: smile vs. Frown. Makes a dif­fer­ence in how people breathe and there­fore in sound pro­duc­tion through bet­ter support

2.       Breath: related to torso – Fre­d­er­ick Fen­nell: “the breath is everything to come”, breath empath­et­ic­ally even with String and Per­cus­sion – to take into account delay in wind instru­ments. Remem­ber: Yo-Yo-Ma and his breath­ing while performing.

3.       Face: lips slightly open – allows the face to relax, shows that breath­ing with play­ers, allows face to open up and show how feel­ing. Lips open allows breathing

4.       Way you move arms is way push air through instru­ment, bow across strings, mal­lets on percussion

5.       Speed of the ges­ture: allows nuance. Abil­ity to change speed (while not chan­ging the tempo). Don’t think about how big or small, just how fast/slow mov­ing the gesture

6.       Score study: inter­n­al­ise the music. Then can study music any­where. Best study is away from the score. Have a point of view.

Calis­then­ics

1.       Work on hori­zontal swimming

2.       Vertical up and down

Must work on get­ting a flex­ible wrist

Work­ing in con­duct­ing school is as much about watch­ing oth­ers as it is learn­ing by being on the box yourself

It’s all about listening

Worked with Danny Boy:

“Erase the tune” and focus on the words: Think about how you would recite. Reach into life experience/s to render a recit­a­tion. When con­nec­ted with this, whatever comes out will be authentic/valid. Recit­ing without rhythmic con­text to setting.

Dis­cussed what reciters used

  • Inflec­tion, emphasis on words both through louder and softer
  • Space/Silence
  • Speed
  • Shap­ing of end of phrases through pitch\dynamics
  • Rubato

Express­ive con­duct­ing: “Informed Intuition”

What’s essen­tial for con­nect­ing with an ensemble is to reveal how you feel and also to trust these feel­ings. The more we think — the more we push away feel­ing. Why did we get into this profession/music.

Pieces without words need to have a nar­rat­ive of some sort created

What tools do we have to cre­ate feeling?

  • Rubato
  • Dynam­ics
  • Silence
  • Note weights e.g. accents
  • Note shape
  • Note length
  • Note group­ing, sub-phrasing etc.

Watched: Car­los Kleiber – Sym­phony No.7, last movement

What learned?

  • He was listen­ing – over every note e.g. tim­pani issue
  • Used to con­duct very clear – but went through an evolution
  • A lot to be learned about free­dom of expression

Volun­teer par­ti­cipants con­duc­ted through Danny Boy

Obser­va­tions

  • Bring a point of view
  • How do you want the last sound to feel?
  • Be gentle with torso
  • Be the music with the ensemble
  • “Impulse of will” – keep to what you’re after and the ensemble will follow
  • “Simple gifts are best” – keep intent easy to read
  • Breathe with ensemble
  • Keep eyes with ensemble
  • The music starts before the first sound is heard
  • Watch tip of baton is quiet not hitch­ing or sub­divid­ing (when not needed)
  • Col­lab­or­ate with ensemble, avoid presiding

Dur­ing diminu­endo ask ensemble to sit taller at ends of phrases – good inton­a­tion is a physiological.

[Break­out ses­sions work­ing on conducting …]

After­noon session

  • Choos­ing rep­er­toire 80% music/20% tech­nical challenge
  • We give con­certs because we rehearse. All rehears­als need to be pro­cess ori­ented. Are we teach­ing stu­dent how to learn? So that not every new piece is star­ted from scratch? Rehears­als are the main event when we’re rehearsing?
  • “Always find a musical reason to make the tech­nique better”
  • Use “repair” not “fix” e.g. flutes need to repair the rhythm so that we can all arrive together at …
  • Avoid “Much bet­ter” by itself … fol­low with “now if we could only do this … e.g. those two eighth notes are much bet­ter now just let’s make them lead more. Up the anti – always chal­len­ging with more to do.
  • Start rehears­als with singing e.g. well known folk songs
  • Amaz­ing what can be accom­plished with a smile.
  • Crash a burn – keep calm – just let’s do that again …
  • Hon­esty, and show­ing that we’re also vul­ner­able sets an atmo­sphere we’re every­one has per­mis­sion to fail.
  • Warm-up is for ears and brains. Tun­ing is over­rated – con­stantly adjust through­out the rehearsal. Don’t have a “tun­ing” ses­sion which then gives feel­ing that all is over – it has to be an all rehearsal priority.
  • “Listen down” not “tune up”
  • Ask instru­ment (e.g. oboe, trom­bone, euphonium) to give tun­ing note – start small and warm into it. “Leave no note unstirred”. Everything in nature has shape.
  • “Listen to the room” – quietens down the classroom and adjusts focus.
  • Single player note 4 beats, silence for 4 beats, ensemble plays (using same shape/s rhythms as what was played [mod­el­ling is power­ful). Then play 4, rest 7, play 4.
  • In rehearsal find someone who can model what you’re after.

Air for Band — from A

  • Let band start them­selves now and then
  • To bring greater clar­ity, ask that all sec­ond­ary mater­ial be less; also add plus and minus
  • Get ensemble to start together – breathe deeper, take initiative
  • Just say­ing listen is empty, bet­ter “sax­o­phones listen to the flute sec­tion and blend your­self in with them”, “trom­bones match the flute sec­tion in dynam­ics”. Ask­ing play­ers to fit their sounds within oth­ers. Give an aural tar­get. Stu­dents mark in their parts who they should be listen­ing to e.g. cla­ri­net have pulse (2nd MVT Holst beginning)

Con­cepts of balance

  • Gen­eral concept = Pyramid
  • Start tun­ing with Tuba (if they’re solid). Rein­forces listen­ing down.
  • Scales in 3rds
  • Have stu­dents determ­ine what’s melodic and sec­ond­ary mater­i­als. Ask questions.
  • When every­one plays a writ­ten dynamic the same it becomes aural static.
  • Ask: who is sec­ond­ary, who is primary. Add pluses and minuses.
  • Hier­archy is import­ant. Never have the audi­ence search for the melodic line.
  • Need to teach stu­dents what melody looks like, and sec­ond­ary – keep ask­ing them.
  • Find any reason to play less. Doesn’t need to be full volume.
  • Watch listen­ing to music that’s too loud. Pro­gram pieces that are also quiet.
  • Build a pro­gram so that know where is the loudest point in a pro­gram (not just pieces)

Eng­lish Folk­song Suite

  • Avoid count­ing off – waste of time, stops them from start­ing by themselves.
  • Avoid clap­ping or tap­ping on stand – we’re not the met­ro­nome … every­one is respons­ible for it.
  • Instead use snare drum with snares off to keep the pulse. Or use cla­ri­nets to play quaver F’s brass play what’s written
  • Sizz­ling – sizzle parts and/or sub­di­vi­sions. Sizz­ling engages the breath.
  • Ago­gic accent – notes which are given more due to longer length … sizzle and bring out ago­gic accents.

[Rest of after­noon spent in con­duct­ing ses­sions – with each con­ductor hav­ing 10 minutes podium time, fol­lowed by 20 minute les­son with one of the assist­ant teach­ers and I’m one – so I’m off]

More tomor­row.

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Summer Conducting School, part 3

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Mel­bourne: ABODA Vic­toria – Sum­mer Con­duct­ing School

Prin­cipal teacher: Pro­fessor Craig Kirchhoff

Tues­day 11 Janu­ary 2011

My thoughts are con­stantly with Queens­land …

Morn­ing ses­sion con­duct­ing calis­then­ics aimed at devel­op­ing fluid­ity of motion for legato, abil­ity to be fluid while show­ing ictus,  motiv­at­ing all move­ments with the breath, stac­cato and mar­cato, and vary­ing the “speed of the baton” as a means to be express­ive, tech­niques for sens­it­iz­ing stu­dents to respond­ing to con­duct­ing and psy­cho­lo­gical conducting.

From the open­ing after­noon session

  • Singing in band is magic e.g. singing chords
  • Keep torso inflated to sup­port ensemble sound
  • Don’t spend too much time tuning
  • Tun­ing from bot­tom up–when you think it’s in tune come in. Tuba to use a tuner.
  • Use chro­matic scale and chart flat and sharp–with a stand part­ner. This makes stu­dents aware that issues exist.
  • Avoid “tune up” rather “take time to adjust instru­ment length”
  • “Max­imum sup­port and fit your sound into everything that’s below you.” Tubas to play with best and broad­est sound.
  • “Listen louder than you’re playing”
  • “Listen down”
  • Decres­cendo “stay stronger, longer” esp. to lower instruments.
  • Rem­ing­ton exer­cises e.g. F-E-F-Eb-F-D etc. Have sing and then play. Also have one group of instru­ments hold the F oth­ers move against it then switch.
  • Dis­son­ant chords then to uni­son vari­ous ways–play dis­son­ance then sing unison
  • Eyes closed play F major chord that cres­cendos for 2 bars then diminu­endo 2 bars, then is released by the ensemble without con­ductor. Ask ensemble to eval­u­ate e.g. who made too much crescendo.
  • Play­ing in ‘trios’–listening to people either side of you and blend­ing “play less than the two people either side of you.” “Fit your sound into people either side of you.” Find another trio from people around you. Makes musi­cians aware of listening.
  • Keep ask­ing ques­tions. How was that? Was it better?
  • Cheque book ana­logy. By end of week bal­ance neg­at­ive and pos­it­ive com­ments. Much bet­ter is a pos­it­ive. Phrase rehearsal talk in the pos­it­ive as much as possible.
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Summer Conducting School, part 2

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Mel­bourne: ABODA Vic­toria – Sum­mer Con­duct­ing School

Prin­cipal teacher: Pro­fessor Craig Kirchhoff

Monday 10/01/2010

Fol­low­ing are notes from the two morn­ing ses­sions. The after­noon was spent with podium time for about 15 con­duct­ors. All con­duct­ors had 10 minutes on the podium fol­lowed by a 20-minute one-on-one ses­sion with assist­ant con­duct­ing teach­ers reflect­ing and build­ing on obser­va­tions made.

My notes in point form …

Score Study

Home­work: Form, Key struc­tures, Themes etc.

Inter­n­al­ising the piece: Work­ing on hear­ing the piece in your mind, then without the score. Advant­age of memory is that this can be done any­time and anyplace.

Abil­ity to hear the piece intern­ally gives you …

  • the sound pic­ture to com­pare with what your hear­ing in rehearsal
  • Gives you a point of view
  • Makes your con­duct­ing not superficial

Do whatever it takes to build the aural image. Listen­ing to record­ings is fine … but when learn­ing the score put the record­ings away.

Select­ing Repertoire

80/20 Rule: Choose the level of dif­fi­culty so that no more than 20% of energy dur­ing rehearsal is spent on learn­ing the notes, which leaves 80% on mak­ing music. Can have a piece which pushes these lim­its but not by much

Rehearsal Con­duct­ing

Have to teach stu­dents your vocab­u­lary. Never give a ges­ture that you don’t expect to be fol­lowed. Only give it once. If it doesn’t hap­pen, stop and remind them by showing–also self-reflect on whether the ges­ture is work­ing or not

Con­duct­ors’ Philosophy

  • Con­duct­ing is a listen­ing art
  • Com­pel our stu­dents to listen
  • Good con­duct­ing = good teach­ing. Good con­duct­ing means less stopping–every time you stop think that the air is being sucked out of the room. Know how to use ges­ture, torso and breath. Don’t ever say watch me rather let’s all connect

When Con­duct­ing

  • Still­ness cre­ates power: Be well groun­ded when con­duct­ing, elim­in­ate all move­ment that is not needed
  • Relax­a­tion cre­ates confidence
  • Res­ist­ance cre­ates drama
  • Less is almost always bet­ter: Move less so that when you need to bring emphasis lar­ger move­ments stand out.
  • Invest energy in change.
  • Sens­it­ize your ensemble to your conducting.
  • Breathe with the ensemble–different breaths for dif­fer­ent instru­ments e.g. oboe vs. Tuba. This con­nects you with musi­cians and music. Breath makes ges­tures real.
  • Con­duct people not players–conduct with their eyes
  • Use eyes and torso while con­duct­ing to dir­ect ensemble listen­ing by cre­at­ing a priority
  • Less con­duct­ing beat–more con­duct­ing the music
  • Con­tract of time–same time for up and down and from and to the same plane for entrances and releases. Most bad music is bad attacks and bad release
  • Cre­ate a com­mu­nic­a­tion tri­angle with hands and face–see through tip of batons.
  • Con­ductor torso pos­ture affects all e.g. intonation

Rehearsal Tech­niques

  • Speak as little as possible
  • Ideal world–every rehearsal always to have … moments of beauty, rev­el­a­tions and fun.
  • Rehears­als are for learn­ing every­one else’s parts.
  • Rehears­als are about how to teach stu­dents to listen. How to listen–what to listen for.
  • Choice between instru­ment and pen­cil … bring your pencil.
  • Get off podium and walk among the ensemble mem­bers as they’re playing
  • Every rehearsal starts with sound, not announce­ments or talk­ing. Do these in middle of rehearsal. Have a few pieces they can sing or have mem­or­ised so that rehears­als can start without look­ing at music. Groups that sing play bet­ter in tune.
  • Monk rehearsals–nobody talks–everything non-verbal. Just for a piece. Also, has the effect of height­en­ing need for bet­ter non-verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion.
  • Student-centred rehearsals–ask ques­tions, get stu­dents involved in the pro­cess. Another idea … when you hear an issue put your hands up. Can we go on?
  • Rehears­als in the round
  • Find musical reas­ons to make tech­nique bet­ter. Flutes you’re just wound­ing the music. Trum­pets if you don’t play together on that cres­cendo that moment at M will never arrive.
  • It’s also how you say it.

Rehearsal room

Have rehearsal room setup before rehearsal. Have it just right before stu­dents arrive. Find a way to make this happen–delegate jobs. Aim to do the things only you can do–give away as much as pos­sible. Do any­thing pos­sible to have the room orderly, clean and neat. Have a rehearsal sched­ule on the board. Have board also avail­able to write on. Write rehearsal order using com­poser names.

Mod­el­ling

Very power­ful way to teach .… e.g. arrive early for rehearsals.

Frank Bat­tisti used sign: “Do not dis­turb I’m study­ing my score”–students would have to walk past and see

Enemies of rehearsals

  • Approval errors. Stop and try to stop something–then say that’s great (when it’s not)–this breaks rehearsal con­fid­ence … bet­ter to say: thank you that’s bet­ter but we still will need fix …
  • Dis­ap­proval errors. Rehears­als when everything seems to be wrong

Pacing

If stu­dents are not attentive–probably because rehearsal speed too slow–or spend­ing too much time with one sec­tion. Bal­an­cing Tutti sec­tions with solo/sectionals

Invoke Ima­gin­a­tion

Develop a more expressive/creative vocab­u­lary i.e., ways to describe (or give solu­tions) to com­mon terms (or issues)

Examples:

Forte becomes strong, power­ful, ener­getic etc.

Piano becomes gentle, quiet, sens­it­ive etc.

Rush­ing becomes racing, be patient, let every note have its place, play like old men and women, be deliberate

Drag­ging becomes lead more, push

Use ana­lo­gies e.g. 63 like a whisper.

Another great day in Melbourne …

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A Concise History of the Wind Band

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Whether used for per­sonal ref­er­ence or as a text for a class in the his­tory of the wind band this book is the most com­pre­hens­ive single-volume his­tory of the wind band ever writ­ten. This volume draws on the author’s multi-volume His­tory and Lit­er­at­ure of the Wind Band and fol­lows the devel­op­ment of the wind band through the civic, court, church and mil­it­ary per­form­ances of the Ancient World through the nine­teenth cen­tury. Writ­ten by Dr. David Whit­well and edited by Craig Dabelstein.

Dr. David Whit­well is a gradu­ate (‘with dis­tinc­tion’) of the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan and the Cath­olic Uni­ver­sity of Amer­ica, Wash­ing­ton DC (PhD, Musi­co­logy, Dis­tin­guished Alumni Award, 2000) and has done post-graduate study at the Uni­ver­sity of Vienna and has stud­ied con­duct­ing with Eugene Ormandy and at the Akademie fur Musik, Vienna. Prior to com­ing to North­ridge, Dr. Whit­well par­ti­cip­ated in con­certs through­out the United States and Asia as Asso­ci­ate First Horn in the USAF Band and Orches­tra in Wash­ing­ton DC, and in recit­als through­out South Amer­ica in cooper­a­tion with the United States State Depart­ment. David Whit­well stud­ied con­duct­ing at the Akademie für Musik, Vienna, with Hans Swarowsky, and with Eugene Ormandy. He has con­duc­ted res­id­ent ensembles in Aus­tria, Switzer­land, Israel, Japan, Wales, Eng­land, Ger­many, The Neth­er­lands, Bolivia, Peru, Korea, Taiwan, Rus­sia and the United States, among them the Phil­adelphia Orches­tra, Seattle Sym­phony Orches­tra, the Czech Radio Orches­tras of Brno and Brat­is­lava, and The National Youth Orches­tra of Israel.

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Funding for Hubs

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The ABODA QLD Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee has set aside a $1500.00 allow­ance to sup­port activ­it­ies in each of the ABODA QLD Hubs.

To access this fund­ing exist­ing Hubs just need to sub­mit a pro­posed PD ses­sion to the Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee  – as per the Hub guidelines – and stip­u­late the use of some or all of the allow­ance in the budget. We envis­age that this fund­ing will sup­port events that lead to an increase in ABODA QLD mem­ber­ship in the hub area.

Don’t have a hub in your region – then start one! Click here for Hub Guidelines. This fund­ing can also be used to fund PD events that serve to launch new hubs.

We’re look­ing for­ward to your receiv­ing your proposals.

Lewes Ped­dell

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