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.