Don't Practice the Band Music!

Ed Dumas

“Instead, practice your instrument. Then just come here and play the band music!”

Like all phrases that catch your attention, there is a fair amount of oversimplification going on with the one above. Yet, the general principle is one that I have bought into during my entire teaching career, and recommend to all music teachers. The general idea with home practicing is that the objective is to make a better musician, and not necessarily at that moment to make better music.

Now it could be that making better music at home is needed to make a better musician at school, but the primary objective still stands. That is, the objective of home practice is to become a stronger musician capable of reading better music at first glance. Only then will the musician be capable of learning and performing more complex and demanding concert band music in class.

To reach the above objective, students will need to consider such things as scales, arpeggios, tonguing, slurring, finger studies, range studies, and on and on. Becoming better at the various aspects of playing a musical instrument means that you will be able to more readily play the concert band material that is placed on the music stand.

I once saw a poster in the band room of a friend that said, “Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until it can’t possibly go wrong ever again!” I truly love that saying, as it perfectly sums up how practicing to become a better musician helps you to not play it wrong, or to be more precise, to play it right the first time out.

I believe it was Wynton Marsalis that said doing home practice is kind of like climbing a mountain. He suggested that it is very hard work, and only the bravest of people will do it. This is a fairly good analogy, for good home practice can be like seeing new sudden, fantastic vistas that only the highest of mountains can provide. In a well-organized home practice system, students will reach new highs on their instrument that they never thought possible, but I think that there are plenty of people brave enough to do it if they only knew how.

Yet, practicing the concert band music at home is more akin to walking across Saskatchewan. Flat, dull, boring, with nothing new on the horizon to look at until you reach Ontario!
Okay, okay that analogy is a bit strained, but my point is that the band music cannot be the sole material for students to practice at home. Imagine you are the fifteenth clarinet player in a long line of clarinet players, and you are expected to play the 3rd clarinet part at home every day after school. Not only that, you only get three or four pieces of music each term, and none of them carry the melody for you. I don’t think I would want to do it either!

Yet, when I sit in a concert band, I quite want to have the third or second trumpet parts for myself. I don’t prefer the lead parts because they have mostly melody. I want to add the harmony parts to truly bring out the trumpet section. You see, the concert band music only sounds amazing when everyone is playing together and all of the harmonies and tone qualities are heard. When you are playing concert band music at home alone, it can be kind of like watching paint dry!

Now, I am not saying that students should NEVER play their band music at home. This is where the oversimplification in the title comes in. Sometimes there are some challenging things in the band music that need some careful attention to work out, and that should certainly be done at home in a practice session. But, it should certainly not be the ONLY thing that students do when they practice. It is a matter of focus.

Here is a classic example of what I have seen far too many times. A student is having trouble playing a Gb in a certain passage and so decides that this piece of music needs to be worked on at home. After spending countless hours working out this piece of music and every Gb contained within it, the student is satisfied that he can now play it with the correct flat as marked. But the next time the teacher hands out a piece of music in the key of Db, they must begin this same boring practice routine again of making sure to play all of the Gs as Gbs, which is the last flat in that key! Would it not have been more beneficial to practice the scale of Db until the student’s reflexes default to playing that Gb in every piece of music in the key of Db?!

So, what should students play when they are practicing at home? Here are several good ideas:

Method Books
These are the books that are designed to teach students the method of playing their musical instrument. First-year band books such as Standard of Excellence, and Essential Elements are often called method books. These books, though, teach the method of playing in a concert band, which is different than the method of playing your musical instrument.

No, I am talking about books more like Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet if you are a trumpet player, or Galper Clarinet Method if you are a clarinet player. These books are designed to be used with one instrument only to meet the very specific needs of individual players, and cannot be used in a concert band class. 

True method books are a fantastic way to excite students to the potential of their musical instruments. The trouble comes in acquiring the resources for all of the students in your classes, and this is where strong organizational skills will help. From the students’ perspective, they often do not purchase these books because they do not know what to ask for. If you as the teacher knew what to ask for, it is simply just a matter of taking a list of names of students and books and ordering what students want.

Students that are interested in a true method book for their instrument are welcome to contact a Tapestry Rep to find out which book they should acquire. This process need not involve the band teacher, but an alternative method of payment might have to be arranged.

Technique Books
These are books that provide technical exercises for the band instruments, usually to be used by all musicians in the same band class. My favourite technique book is Foundations for Superior Performance by Richard Williams and Jeff King. I have used this book for decades in concert band classes and still recommend it highly.

The Foundation’s book contains warmup exercises customized to each wind instrument, scale/chord/arpeggio studies for all instruments, rhythm studies, tuning studies, chorales, and on and on. This book is well worth the investment and is unique in providing some materials not found in any other series on the market.

While the Foundations book is not a true method book, there is plenty in this series to challenge students in their home practice routines. Teachers can easily find new material for many years here to assign to students for home practice.

Supplemental Material
Other than method books and technique books, students can also invest in other books to play at home. These are things like etude books, songbooks, pop books, CD play-along books, and so on. The list is endless and beginning a new etude book can be like beginning to read a new novel. There is something new in every one of them, and you never know what exciting or beautiful thing you might find.

I highly recommend two things here. First is just about any kind of book with a play-along CD that provides accompaniment. Young students that are used to playing in a concert band are often looking for that accompaniment and harmony, and the technology for this is now available everywhere.
The second recommendation is the Rubank series for musical instruments. This is an older series, but one of the best bargains available. There are method books for each instrument, as well as technique books, and supplemental studies. While there are no CDs in the series due to its age, the content is all of high quality, and it is a tremendous bargain for the budget-conscious.

Note that in the Rubank series, the method books are often labelled as Elementary Method, Intermediate Method, and Advanced Method. Students should know that the “Elementary Method” is not about elementary school, and is not intended for beginners. It will challenge most secondary school students who should only go on to the Intermediate level books once the Elementary level has been completed!

If students and parents planned on budgeting a mere $20 every month or two on some new material to learn, there will be plenty of things for them to find inspiration from. Smart students will understand that the band director cannot find all of these things for them, and will go ahead and order some on their own. For direction, any Tapestry Music rep would be happy to help a student choose from among the millions of possibilities available. With the advent of the internet, this is now so much easier than the days of me spending a day on a bus to get to downtown Vancouver to find some new material!

Combos & Instrumental Choirs
These two groups are related by the fact that there is usually no doubling of parts in their performance. Combos can be as small as two players to as large as usually 5 or 6 players, and sometimes even larger. Each player plays a separate part, and the instrumentation can vary. Instrumental choirs often also have no doubling of parts but are usually limited to one instrument or family of instruments.

For example, a duet can be a flute and a clarinet player, but a clarinet choir will consist of only clarinet players. But, the clarinet choir can consist of the entire clarinet family including Eb soprano clarinet, several Bb clarinet parts, Eb alto clarinet, Bb bass clarinet, Eb Contra-Alto clarinet, and Bb Contra-bass clarinet. It is a gorgeous sound, and a group of clarinet players can get very excited about performing in a group such as this!

My recommendation for beginning combos with your students is to purchase a class set of various combo books. These sets usually come with all of the parts available for each instrument, but they are intended to be played by a small group of players with no doubling. In this way, students have access to the same combo music regardless of the instrument they play, and the books will be useful to any future students as well. Small groups who begin playing material such as this will need to get together outside of class time to do it.

There are also more dedicated materials available for very specified instrumentation, such as brass quintets, woodwind quartets, or percussion combos. Instrumental choir repertoire is also specific in instrumentation which needs to be considered carefully. While so much fun to play, a brass quintet is not manageable if you do not have a tuba or French horn player available. This is why I recommend beginning with class sets of interchangeable instruments for combos, and leaving the more advanced combos to the older students.

A Note About Inspiration
I have often found that students that are unmotivated to practice at home regularly are just bored with what they are doing. Sometimes they are bored because the vision they have of music in school is far too limited. Most of these students would never consider attending a neighbouring school concert, and when I have inquired about why that is, the response is usually something like, “Well it’s boring! They sound just like us.” My usual response to that would be something like, “Then don’t play it that way!”

The other response to those kinds of statements of non-inspiration is to take action. I have often taken students to various places and shown them what a live concert can do. It could be a university concert nearby, a music festival, a visiting high-level band, or even your local adult community band. Anything like this that expands their imagination is worth the trip. If you plan ahead and ask the hosting group, you can even probably get discounted group rates to help offset the costs of getting the students there.
Today you can even present all sorts of wonderful musical examples from the internet in class via a good stereo, a projector and a laptop. You don’t even need to make it a whole concert, even just a five-minute piece at the beginning of the class to fire up the students’ imagination. It is time well spent.

You can also inspire your students by bringing in a guest conductor for one class. Sometimes just having another face in front of the group who provides a different perspective is enough to wake students up from their ho-hums. If you cannot afford to bring one in, you can even just create an exchange day with another nearby teacher that you get along with. 

You can also bring in an instrumental clinician for a day or a class. This is someone who excels on their instrument and can run a session just to help those same instrumental players with some secrets to improve. This could happen during your band block as long as you have another place where they could meet. Instrumental specialists can be a great help in inspiring students for they are more able to open up the imagination to thoughts of progress and HOW to get there, and therefore create a desire to practice.

Finally, private teachers are an excellent resource to provide some inspiration to your students. Oftentimes students are uninspired simply because they do not know WHAT to do. Having a private teacher to show them HOW to practice often opens the imagination to ideas of improvement, and therefore desire to practice at home. 

Create a list of private teachers in your area and the instruments that they provide instruction on. This is a list that may take some time to gather and is constantly in development. If you find that you need to inspire a certain group of players, such as the trumpet section, you could invite a local trumpet teacher in to run a sectional to inspire the students for you. A private teacher like this might even do it for free for the chance to drum up more private students. 

Finally, I have found that students who play in more groups seem to get more inspiration from this as well. Suggest to your students to play in a local community or cadet band, or join the jazz band, even if on a different instrument. Offer credit to your students for every regular group that they join in addition to their regular concert band class. Do you care where they are playing if they are playing an additional 5 times each week outside of your class?

Some Obstacles
I have found over the years that some students do not practice at home due to too many obstacles placed in front of them. These can be things like having to carry home a large instrument such as a tuba, over-commitment to other outside-of-school activities, an unsupportive family, a completely disruptive home life, or just a lack of space at home.

There are often some solutions that you can provide, but first, you will need to ask the student why there is little practice happening. To help overcome some of these obstacles, I have often worked out arrangements such as providing an instrument for home practice so that the student only carried the mouthpiece back and forth. Another arrangement could be providing the student with a space at school to do their practice in their off-time and have this space assigned to the student regularly. This is often a solution to many of the problems listed above.

Your job as a band teacher is limitless in the possibilities of directions that you may go. But more importantly, there are limitless ways that you can expand the imagination of your students to help them see themselves as more talented. Once they can see the direction that you are providing for them, they are far more likely to take that first step, and then the next. Any inspiration you can provide for a better way to practice their instrument will come back to you ten-fold with better musicians that inspire each other!

Ed Dumas, B.Ed., M.A.Ed.