SBO October 2012

14 School Band and Orchestra • October 2012

Recently, I overheard a band director tell an incom-

ing band student, “You don’t want to play clarinet,

there are all those reeds to buy, and you have to deal

with ‘crossing the break,’ and it’s really difficult.” I cringed,

waiting for the all-too-typical, “And besides, it’s a girl’s in-

strument.” Fortunately, at least the director stopped short

of that. Obviously, though, teaching clarinet is far from his

favorite part of teaching band.

By Tracy Leenman

Performance: Single Reeds

Teaching Single Reeds Successfully

Especially among young band directors, or ones whose primary ex-pertise is in brass or percussion instruments, teaching clarinet and saxo-phone players can be nerve-racking. But as one who has played clarinet since 1964, and sax since 1966; and has taught both instruments pri-vately as well as in school band programs since the 1970s, I would like to offer a different perspective on teaching single reeds, with the hope that some of these (perhaps controversial) suggestions may make your life easier, and your band sound better.

PromoteEver heard of Eddie Daniels or even Benny Goodman? My dad was

a clarinet player, and he was 6’3” and weighed 265 pounds; no one ever called him a “girl.” To help discourage stereotypes, keep posters of male clarinetists like Eddie Daniels, D. Ray McClellan, Julian Bliss, or Stanley Drucker hanging in your band room – and female tuba players like Deanna Swoboda, too! You can get a good number of these (free!) from your local school music dealer. Play some vintage Benny Goodman recordings for your students, or show them the young clarinet prodigy Julian Bliss on YouTube. Have an area (male) clarinetist come and play some impressive licks to get the students excited about the wide variety of genres the clarinet can play. Of course, it’s best to do this not only for clarinet, but for each instrument you offer beginners, especially those instruments that are harder to “sell.”

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Upfront: Best Communities for Music Education

October 2012 • $5.00

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SB&O School Band and Orchestra® (ISSN 1098-3694) is published monthly by Symphony Publishing, LLC, 21 Highland Circle, Suite 1, Needham, MA 02494 (781) 453-9310, publisher of Musical Merchandise Review, Choral Director, Music Parents America and JAZZed. All titles are federally registered trademarks and/or trade-marks of Symphony Publishing, LLC. Subscription Rates: one year $24; two years $40. Rates outside U.S.A. available upon request. Single issues $5 each. February Resource Guide $15. Periodical-Rate Postage Paid at Boston, MA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER/SUBSCRIBERS: Send address change to School Band and Orchestra, P.O. Box 8548, Lowell, MA 01853. No portion of this issue may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. The publishers of this magazine do not accept responsibility for statements made by their advertisers in business competition. Copyright © 2012 by Symphony Publishing, LLC, all rights reserved. Printed in USA.

ContentsFeatures10 UpFront: BCME

SBO presents the 2012 Best Communities for Music Education.

14 Performance: Single ReedsTracy Leenman shares tips and tricks for getting students started on single reed instruments.

22 Music and the BrainIn this special multi-part feature, SBO examines the latest research and theories about how music making impacts the brain, as well as the implications that this area of study has on music education.

24 Report: An Introduction to Researching Music and the Brain

Leading neurobiologists weigh in on the latest findings in this rapidly expanding field of study.

34 UpClose: Dalouge SmithDalouge Smith of the San Diego Youth Symphony discusses a recent partnership and experiment that has the dual goal of better understanding the impact of music on children’s cognitive development and bolstering music ed efforts in the San Diego area.

38 Music and WellnessSBO takes a look into music making’s impacts on health and wellness.

42 Guest Editorial: Middle School Resources part II

Columns4 Perspective

6 Headlines

48 New Products

53 Playing Tip

54 Classifieds

56 Ad Index


The NAMM Foundation has once again released a list of the

Best Communities for Music Education (BCME), for the

13th consecutive year, acknowledging schools and dis-

tricts across the U.S. for their commitment and support for mu-

sic education as part of the core curriculum. In all, 176 com-

munities out of 237 that submitted surveys were recognized,

including 166 school districts and 10 schools.

The 2012 Best Communities for Music Education

Upfront: BCME

Established in 1999, The BCME survey is a nationwide search for com-munities that provide access to music education as an essential part of a com-plete education and exemplify com-mitment and support for music educa-tion. The BCME survey is designed and implemented in collaboration with The Institute for Educational Research and Public Service (www.ku.edu/~ierps/cgi-bin) of Lawrence, Kansas, an affili-ate of the University of Kansas.

The 2012 Best Communities for Music Education designation is a dis-tinction worthy of pride, but is also a call to action for local music education advocates to help preserve and poten-tially expand access to their current music education programs. Past des-ignees have reported that making the Best Communities list had a positive ef-fect on their ability to advance recogni-tion and support for music programs.

NAMM Foundation executive direc-tor Mary Luehrsen encourages com-munities to use the designation as a

cornerstone of vigor-ous advocacy for mu-sic education pro-grams. “We know that communities are struggling to maintain funding for many education programs and we ap-plaud these communities that remain committed to a complete and qual-ity education that must include music and the arts,” says Luehrsen. “We urge communities to celebrate the designa-tion as a national recognition for their commitment to children and most of all, keep the music playing in their schools for years to come.”

Each school receiving the “Best Communities” designation scored in the 80th percentile or higher in the survey’s grading process. Participants in the survey answered detailed ques-tions about funding, graduation re-quirements, music class participation, instruction time, facilities, support for the music program and other relevant

factors in their commu-nities’ music edu-cation programs. The re-sponses were verified with district officials and advisory organizations reviewed the data.

A copy of the survey can be downloaded for review at www.nammfoundation.org. The com-plete Best Communities for Music Education roster can also be viewed at www.nammfoundation.org.14

October 2012

Cover design by Andrew P. Ross.

34 Dalouge Smith

“Hopefully, [this research] will have a profound impact on the depth of value that individuals and communities place on the teaching of music.

”










By Tracy Leenman






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tuning. The percussion music contains parts for snare drum and bass drum, though they are tacit during the cho-rale and tuning portions.

Refining the March Style Larry Clark; Carl Fischer LLC, 2007Publisher Grade: 2

These warm-up exercises are in-tended to help young bands learn the correct style of playing marches. Through 10 exercises, students have the opportunity to work on key chang-es (as often present in the trio), play-ing and understanding the differences between staccato and accented notes, playing syncopated rhythms, and play-ing chromatic figures that are often found in march melodies. Instructions on how to use the march warm ups are included in the conductor score. Mal-let, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, and cymbal parts are included.

Connections: Chorales and Exercises to Emphasize the Art of Legato Play-ing for the Middle-Level Band Larry Clark and Sean O’Loughlin; Carl Fischer, 2006.

This series, by popular beginning band composers Larry Clark and Sean O’Loughlin, contains exercise sets in

seven major and four minor keys spe-

cifically written for the middle level band. Each key set contains drills and chord progressions (moving through whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes) and leads up to a full chorale setting based on the studied chord pro-gression. There are also instrument-specific daily exercises, working on strength and flexibility in the brass, technical facility in the woodwinds, and rudiments for the percussionists. Contains individual conductor and student books.

Rhythm Builders for Developing Bands James Curnow; Curnow Music Press, 1997. Publisher Grade: 1-2.5

This set contains 14 mini-composi-tions designed to help bands develop basic rhythmic skills. The pieces are in-tended to be enjoyable for students to play, but the composer notes that while they should be studied on a daily basis, they are not to be performed. The com-poser suggests the necessity of teach-ing a specific counting procedure that will encourage consistent mental sub-division of the beat. The studies start with very simple time signatures and rhythms, and progress to more com-plex rhythms and meters. Percussion parts are included for snare drum, bass drum, mallets, timpani, and auxiliary.

Sight-Reading Builders for Develop-ing BandsJames Curnow; Curnow Music Press, 2006.Publisher Grade: 1-2.5

Sight-reading is an important skill for all musicians. Included in this set are 14 short pieces to help students develop this skill. The pieces explore a number of styles, tempos, and dynam-ics, as well as key and meter changes. The pieces are arranged in progressive order of difficulty. Percussion parts are included for snare drum, bass drum, auxiliary, mallets, and timpani.

Band Technique Step By Step Robert Elledge and Donald Haddad: Neil A. Kjos Music Company, 1992.

Publisher Grade: 1Perfect for middle school and junior-

high bands, this book offers a complete technique program ideal for the full band rehearsal setting. The book is bro-ken into 16 units, eight in major keys and eight in their relative minor keys. Each unit contains studies in: intona-tion, scales, tonguing, rhythms (basic and advanced), chords, intervals, me-lodic rhythms (basic and advanced), thirds, and harmonics. In addition, each unit has instrument specific ex-ercises intended to be used in private or like-instrument lesson settings. The book concludes with four chorales, ad-vanced rhythm studies, and chromatic studies. The percussion book includes parts for snare drum, bass drum, and mallets. There is a separate book for timpani. The conductor score gives a detailed explanation about the book it-self as well as rehearsal suggestions and percussion considerations for each les-son type. Contains individual conduc-tor and student books.

Chorale Warm Ups for Young Band Sandy Feldstein and Larry Clark; C.L. Barnhouse Company, 2008.Publisher Grade: 2

This collection of five chorales, ar-ranged from popular hymns or songs, is intended to help young students im-prove their lyrical and legato playing. The chorales are in the major keys of Bb, Eb, Ab, and F and the highest note for trumpet 1 is a written F. There are mallet, snare drum, bass drum, and auxiliary percussion parts for each chorale, as well as a part for piano ac-companiment.

Essential Musicianship for Band: In-termediate Ensemble ConceptsEddie Green, John Benzer, David Bert-man, and Evelio Villarreal; Hal Leonard Corporation, 2005

As part of the Essential Musician-ship series, this book was written for intermediate ensembles to be used as a daily exercises. The concepts are presented in developmental order and


In conducting the annual survey, the NAMM Foundation was joined by advisory organizations in the fields of music and education: Americans for the Arts (www.americansforthearts.org), League of American Orchestras (www.americanorchestras.org), The

Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation (www.mhopus.org), Music for All (www.mu-sicforall.org), Music Teachers National Association (www.mtna.org), National Guild For Community Arts Education (www.nationalguild.org), Yamaha Cor-poration of America (www.yamaha.

com), Young Audiences (www.youn-gaudiences.org/), and VH1 Save The Music Foundation (www.vh1savethe-music.com).

Abington School District, Abington, Pa.Academy School District 20, Colorado Springs, Colo.Albion Central School District, Albion, N.Y.Ann Arbor Public Schools, Ann Arbor, Mich.Arlington Independent School District, Arlington, TexasAvon Lake City School District, Avon Lake, OhioBaldwin School District, Baldwin, N.Y.Baldwinsville Central School District, Baldwinsville, N.Y.Baltimore County Public Schools, Towson, Md.Bay Shore Union Free School District, Bay Shore, N.Y.Bay Village City School District, Bay Village, OhioBeachwood City Schools, Beachwood, OhioBerea City School District, Berea, OhioBergenfield Public Schools, Bergenfield, N.J.Berkley School District, Oak Park, Mich.Bethel Public School, Bethel, Conn.Bloomfield Hills School District, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.Brighton Central School District, Rochester, N.Y.Brooklyn Center Junior/Senior High School, Brooklyn Cen-ter, Minn.Camdenton R-III School District, Camdenton, Mo.Canton Public Schools, Canton, Conn.Central Cambria School District, Ebensburg, Pa.Central York School District, York, Pa.Chesapeake Public Schools, Chesapeake, Va.Cheshire Public Schools, Cheshire, Conn.Chittenango Central School District, Chittenango, N.Y.Clark County School District, Las Vegas, Nev.Cobb County School District, Marietta, Ga.Colonial School District, Plymouth Meeting, Pa.Commack Public Schools, E. Northport, N.Y.Connetquot Central School District, Bohemia, N.Y.Conroe Independent School District, Conroe, TexasCouncil Rock School District, Newtown, Pa.Cumberland Valley School District, Mechanicsburg, Pa.Cuyahoga Heights Local, Cleveland, OhioDavid Douglas School District 40, Portland, Ore.Denton Independent School District, Denton, TexasDover Area School District, Dover, Pa.Duxbury Public Schools, Duxbury, Mass.Edina Public Schools - Independent School District 273, Edina, Minn.Edmonds School District, Lynnwood, Wash.Exeter Township School District, Reading, Pa.Fargo Public Schools, Fargo, N.D.Fayetteville-Manlius Central Schools, Manlius, N.Y.Ferndale Public Schools, Ferndale, Mich.Fishers Island UFSD, Fishers Island, N.Y.Fort Bend Independent School District, Sugar Land, TexasFox Chapel Area School District, Pittsburgh, Pa.Fraser Public Schools, Fraser, Mich.Frontier Central School District, Hamburg, N.Y.Fulton County Schools, Atlanta, Ga.Garland Independent School District, Garland, TexasGrand Forks Public Schools, Grand Forks, N.D.Grand Island Central School District, Grand Island, N.Y.Great Falls Public School District, Great Falls, Mont.Great Neck Public Schools, Great Neck, N.Y.Greenwich Public Schools, Greenwich, Conn.Guilderland Central School District, Guilderland Center, N.Y.Gwinnett County Public Schools, Suwanee, Ga.Half Hollow Hills Central School District, Dix Hills, N.Y.Hamilton Elementary School, Schenectady, N.Y.Hamilton Southeastern School Corporation, Fishers, Ind.

Hampton City Public Schools, Hampton, Va.Harrison Central School District, Harrison, N.Y.Henrico County Public Schools, Henrico, Va.Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools, Woodmere, N.Y.Hollidaysburg Area School District, Hollidaysburg, Pa.Homewood City Schools, Homewood, Ala.Honeoye Falls-Lima Central School District, Honeoye Falls, N.Y.Hopewell Valley Regional School District, Pennington, N.J.Hortonville Area School District, Hortonville, Wis.Hudson School District, Hudson, Wis.Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District, Bed-ford, TexasIndependent School District 279 - Osseo Area Schools, Maple Grove, Minn.Indian River County School District, Vero Beach, Fla.Jenison Public Schools, Jenison, Mich.Jericho Union Free School District, Jericho, N.Y.Johnson City Central School District, Johnson City, N.Y.Katy Independent School District, Katy, TexasKenmore Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District, Buffalo, N.Y.Klein Independent School District, Spring, TexasLake Local School District, Uniontown, OhioLe Roy Central School District, Le Roy, N.Y.Lebanon School District, Lebanon, Pa.Lewisburg Area School District, Lewisburg, Pa.Lewisville Independent School District, Flower Mound, TexasLincoln Unified School District, Stockton, Calif.Liverpool Central School District, Liverpool, N.Y.Long Beach City School District, Lido Beach, N.Y.Longwood Central School District, Middle Island, NYLoyalsock Township School District, Montoursville, Pa.Lynn Public Schools, Lynn, Mass.Manhasset Union Free School District, Manhasset, N.Y.Massapequa UFSD, Massapequa, N.Y.Mechanicsburg Area School District, Mechanicsburg, Pa.Memphis City Schools, Memphis, Tenn.Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, India-napolis, Ind.Mineola Union Free School District, Mineola, N.Y.Monroe-Woodbury Central School District, Central Valley, N.Y.Montgomery County Public Schools, Christiansburg, Va.Monticello Central School District, Monticello, N.Y.Mt. Lebanon School District, Pittsburgh, Pa.Naperville Community Unit School District 203, Naperville, Ill.Nanuet Union Free School District, Nanuet, N.Y.New Hartford Central School District, New Hartford, N.Y.Newington, Newington, Conn.Newtown Public Schools, Newtown, Conn.North Allegheny School District, Pittsburgh, Pa.North Babylon Union Free School District, North Babylon, N.Y.North Colonie Central School District, Latham, N.Y.Northwest Independent School District, Justin, TexasOberlin City Schools District, Oberlin, OhioOceanside Public Schools, Oceanside, N.Y.Olmsted Falls City Schools, Olmsted Falls, OhioOpen Door Christian Schools, Elyria, OhioOppenheim-Ephratah Central School, St. Johnsville, N.Y.Osage County R-II Schools, Linn, Mo.

Ossining Union Free School District, Ossining, N.Y.Paramus Public School District, Paramus, N.J.Pasadena Independent School District, Pasadena, TexasPenfield Central School District, Penfield, N.Y.Pennsbury School District, Fallsington, Pa.Pequannock Township School District, Pompton Plains, N.J.Perrysburg Exempted Village Schools, Perrysburg, OhioPhoenix Central School District, Phoenix, N.Y.Pine City Public Schools (Independent School District 578), Pine City, Minn.Plano Independent School District, Plano, TexasPort Jefferson School District, Port Jefferson, N.Y.Propel East, Turtle Creek, Pa.Pulaski Community School District, Pulaski, Wis.Putnam Valley Central School District, Putnam Valley, N.Y.Quaker Valley School District, Sewickley, Pa.Randolph Township Schools, Randolph, N.J.Red Lion Area School District, Red Lion, Pa.Ridgefield Public Schools, Ridgefield, N.J.Roanoke County Public Schools, Roanoke, Va.Rush-Henrietta Central School District, Henrietta, N.Y.Santa Monica-Malibu USD, Santa Monica, Calif.Scarsdale Union Free School District, Scarsdale, N.Y.Schenectady City School District, Schenectady, N.Y.School District of Lancaster, Lancaster, Pa.Shaker Heights City School District, Shaker Heights, OhioSkaneateles Central School District, Skaneateles, N.Y.South Huntington UFSD, Huntington Station, N.Y.South Windsor Public Schools, South Windsor, Conn.Spring Grove Area School District, Spring Grove, Pa.Springs Valley Jr./Sr. High School, French Lick, Ind.Stow-Munroe Falls High School, Stow, OhioStrongsville City School District, Strongsville, OhioSyosset Central School District, Syosset, N.Y.The Sycamore Community School District, Cincinnati, OhioTorrington Public Schools, Torrington, Conn.Township of Union Board of Education, Union, N.J.Trinity Area School District, Washington, Pa.Troy School District, Troy, Mich.Upper Sandusky Exempted Village Schools, Upper San-dusky, OhioVirginia Beach City Public Schools, Virginia Beach, Va.Wakefield Public Schools, Wakefield, Mass.Washington County Public Schools, Hagerstown, Md.Washoe county school district, Reno, Nev.Wayland Public Schools, Wayland, Mass.Webster Central School District, Webster, N.Y.West Genesee Central School District, Camillus, N.Y.West Hartford Public Schools, West Hartford, Conn.West Irondequoit Central School District, Rochester, N.Y.West Lafayette Community School Corporation, West La-fayette, Ind.West Milford Township Public Schools, West Milford, N.J.West Seneca Central School District, West Seneca, N.Y.Westborough Public Schools, Westborough, Mass.Westlake Christian Academy, Grayslake, Ill.Weston Public Schools, Weston, Mass.Wicomico County Public Schools, Salisbury, Md.Willard R-II Schools, Willard, Mo.Williamsport Area School District, Williamsport, Pa.Williamsville Central School District, East Amherst, N.Y.Windber Area Middle/High School, Windber, Pa.

n22012 Best Communities for Music Education


Part 2: Musical Resources

Five Progressive Chorales for Developing Bands Brian Balmages; FJH Music Company Inc., 2008. Publisher Grade: 1-2.5

Appropriate for bands playing grade 1-2.5 music, these chorales offer band directors the opportunity to work on ensemble sound, intonation, and phrasing. The chorales include various dynamic and tempo markings, as well as other musical elements that are introduced throughout. There are two mallet parts, one easier and one more advanced, as well as an aux-iliary percussion part. Also included is a piano part, which can be used in many different ways. The cho-rales are of varying difficulty levels and their intend-ed use is with beginning through advanced middle

school students; the first chorale only uses six notes.

Part I of this article, which appeared in SBO’s Septem-

ber 2012 issue, contained a list of books and literature

guides for the middle or junior high school band direc-

tor. The second half of this guide contains musical resources for

use in the band rehearsal, such as warm-ups, chorales, and oth-

er specific technique-building exercises. Most of the resources

contained in this document have been written since the year

2000; however some published prior to that date were includ-

ed if deemed significantly appropriate by the compiler. Musical

resources are identified with publisher-assigned grades when

available.

By Theresa Hoover

Guide for the Middle School Band Director

Guest Editorial

An Annotated Bibliography of Books for the Middle School Band Director, Part II

Five Minutes a Day #1: A Warm-Up and Tuning Routine Andy Clark; C. L. Barnhouse Company, 1991.Publisher Grade: 1.5

Taking up only five minutes of rehears-al time, this routine is divided into three movements intended to easily and quickly begin a rehearsal. The first movement is a short chorale in concert Eb major. The second movement is a key study and tech-nique exercise, moving through six major keys. The third movement is to assist with 42




These warm-up exercises are in-tended to help young bands learn the correct style of playing marches. Through 10 exercises, students have the opportunity to work on key chang-es (as often present in the trio), play-ing and understanding the differences between staccato and accented notes, playing syncopated rhythms, and play-ing chromatic figures that are often found in march melodies. Instructions on how to use the march warm ups are included in the conductor score. Mal-let, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, and cymbal parts are included.



seven major and four minor keys spe-

cifically written for the middle level band. Each key set contains drills and chord progressions (moving through whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes) and leads up to a full chorale setting based on the studied chord pro-gression. There are also instrument-specific daily exercises, working on strength and flexibility in the brass, technical facility in the woodwinds, and rudiments for the percussionists. Contains individual conductor and student books.





Band Technique Step By Step Robert Elledge and Donald Haddad: Neil A. Kjos Music Company, 1992.

Publisher Grade: 1Perfect for middle school and junior-





As part of the Essential Musician-ship series, this book was written for intermediate ensembles to be used as a daily exercises. The concepts are presented in developmental order and

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Perspective

Music and CognitionThe data continues to build support for the idea that students who study music

perform better on a variety of tests and academic pursuits. When you consider all of the brain functions that are utilized to play a musical instrument, performance is quite an astonishing feat. Reading music at the piano may involve four or five notes being played concurrently, multiple rhythms, and dual clefs. Plus, most important, the pianist has to add musical feeling for each phrase. For the eyes to look at the page, transfer the information to the brain, have the brain process the information and send it out to the hands and feet (for the pedals), it no doubt takes a tremen-dous amount of speed and computational power.

Although some neuroscientists suggest that the brain doesn’t actually “multitask” it’s difficult to conceive that performing music is not multitask-ing. According to an article in The Daily Mail on-line from 2/27/12, David Strayer, director of the applied cognition lab at the University of Utah, believes in the existence of “supertaskers”: two percent of the population who actually have differ-ently structured brains from the other 98 percent. Is this something that people are born with or is it developed through training and effort?

Another question would be, “Are musicians su-pertaskers?” “Faced with two almost simultaneous tasks less than 300 milliseconds apart, the brain’s ability to deal with the second one slows down.” It would stand to reason that, rhythmically, if you’re 3/10ths of a second late in your musical perfor-mance, you’re way behind. Drum set players have an uncanny ability to move their hands and feet independently at extremely rapid rates, often play-ing complex meters and rhythms simultaneously

– it would be difficult not to classify this as multitasking. This makes us wonder if people who study music develop brain functions that others don’t have, and if they do, are these functions useful in other aspects of life? We’re lucky to be living in a time when scientists around the world are beginning to investigate how music af-fects the cognitive functioning of the brain and may provide some answers to these complex questions.

As a practical matter, Northwestern University’s Dr. Nina Kraus, who is inter-viewed in this issue of SBO, suggests that, “The work that my lab does, along with the work of others in the field, can hopefully provide some of the evidence that the educators and policy makers can use to get more resources for more music.” You will find a wealth of information in this issue that might answer some of your basic questions and provide you with insight into some of the exciting scientific research that is going on around the world. Although this issue is our first foray into this fascinating world, we plan on continuing to cover this field as it provides more convincing support for a sound musical education.

“This makes us wonder if people who study

music develop brain functions that others

don’t have.

Rick [email protected]

Join the conversation on:

Perspective.indd 4 10/8/12 11:55 AM

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Headlines

Herb Alpert Foundation Gifts $5 Million to Harlem School of the Arts

The Harlem School of the Arts (HSA), the community–based cultural and educa-tional institution serving children and families of all backgrounds for nearly 50 years, recently an-nounced that it will receive a his-toric grant of more than $5 million from the Herb Alpert Foundation.

The grant, totaling $5,050,000, is a gift from legendary musician, artist and philanthropist Herb Alpert to ensure a sustainable fu-ture for the Harlem School of the Arts and the future of its students.

Through this unprecedented grant, the Harlem School of the Arts will create an endowment providing scholar-ships for needy students, retire its inherited debt, and further enhance its programs and facilities that offer cultural enrichment and world–class training in five areas: music, dance, theater, the visual arts and musical theater. www.hsanyc.org

SoundTree Education Expands Through NAfME Alliance

Korg USA’s Education Division, con-sisting of SoundTree, the SoundTree In-stitute, and SoundTree.com, is expand-ing in multiple areas that will provide music educators of all types with a vari-ety of products and services to enhance their curriculum and personal develop-ment.

Founded in 1995, SoundTree is a leading provider of products and turnkey learning systems for music education. They provided advice, sales, installa-tion and support to music educators and learning institutions. Its new initiative, the “NAfME Learning Network powered by SoundTree,” is the result of an alliance with the National Association for Music Education (NAfME, formerly MENC). The NAfME Learning Network is avail-

able to educators via an annual subscrip-tion; NAfME members will be able to subscribe at a discounted rate. With this subscription, educators will receive ac-cess to high-quality, online professional development with the opportunity to receive continuing education credits at a fraction of the cost offered by traditional learning systems.www.institute.soundtree.com/nafme

2012 ‘Music for Your Schools’ Winners

In recognition of what it called ev-er-tightening arts budgets in schools, music publisher Carl Fischer recently held a contest in which winners would be provided with a free year’s worth of band or orchestra music. Winners of the contest, the Music for Your Schools Give-

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Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Reaches Two-Year Deal with Musicians

Musicians and management of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra returned to work late in September after a lengthy contract negotiations. The musicians salaries will reportedly be cut

by deeming a 10-week period in the summer as “off-season,” during which they will receive only partial pay. Average salaries of $1,729 per week will drop to $330 per week. Benefits are to remain in force year-round.

The new contract will also reduce the number of full-time musicians in the orchestra from 93 to 88, but this reduction was already achieved through attrition -- no musicians will be laid off. On other concession includes the musicians now being required to pay $10 a week for health insurance. Under the previous contract, all health benefits were covered 100 percent.

The ASO expects to save $5 million to $5.2 million over the length of this new contract, which will run until Sept. 6, 2014.

High ranking members of the management will also will take six percent pay cuts as part of the deal. The union had reportedly demanded much wider cuts from the orchestra’s ad-ministrative staff. www.atlantasymphony.org �

Headlines.indd 6 10/8/12 11:58 AM

“

SBO_7 7 10/8/12 11:48:48 AM

www.bobrogerstravel.com


Headlinesaway, were announced recently and included the Chopticon High School Orchestra in Morganza, Md., the Palm Springs High School Orchestral Strings Program in Palm Springs, Calif., the Susan E. Wiley Elementary School Band in Copiague, N.Y., the American School of Antananarivo Band in Madagascar, and the Falmouth High School Band in Falmouth, Mass., Pictured below are 2011 winners the Riverside High School Band in El Paso, Texas.www.carlfischer.com

Vancouver, Washington college recently announced that it will soon rededicate its music building in honor of longtime musician and arts advocate, the late Dale Beacock.

After graduating from Clark College in 1950, Dale Bea-cock earned a master’s degree in music performance and education from the University of Portland. He started teaching in 1956. In 1970, Beacock brought high school musicians to Clark College for the first time for what is now known as the Clark College Jazz Festival. The competition, which had been established in 1962, had been held at local high schools on a rotating basis before Clark College became its permanent home. In 1998, he was honored as one of the first inductees into the Washington Music Educators Hall of Fame. In 1976, Beacock and his wife Susan established the Beacock Music and Education Center, which his son Russ and daughter Gay-le continue to operate. He died in Aug. 2011.

www.clark.edu

Clark College Names Music Building in Honor of Arts Supporter Dale Beacock

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NAMM Joins AARP in New Orleans to Highlight Music’s Benefits to the Brain

The therapeutic power of music was in deep focus at a recent “Life @50+,” AARP National Event & Expo in New Orleans. Including an opening drum circle and an ongoing music making pavilion, the festival encouraged attendees to give serious con-sideration to the positive effects that music making has on the brain.

An interactive panel’s rhythm and brain health experts aimed to “bang the drum” for additional research on the positive interplay between music and cognitive health. In-troduced by Mary Luehrsen from the NAMM, Saturday’s panel was a must-see. NAMM also supports the ever-popular music-making pavilion, which includes an invigorating rhythm experience to “drum” home the importance of music making to maintain a healthy brain throughout life.www.namm.org �

Visit www.sbomagazine.com and let your voice be heard in the current

online poll – results to be published in the next issue of SBO.

ONLINE SURVEYHow does the size of this year’s marching band compare to last year’s?

We have more students in our school marching band (39%)

We have about the same number of students (28%)

We have fewer students (33%)

39%

28%

33%

Headlines.indd 8 10/8/12 11:58 AM

www.supersensitive.com

SBO_9 9 10/8/12 11:49:01 AM

www.jupitermusic.com


The NAMM Foundation has once again released a list of the

Best Communities for Music Education (BCME), for the

13th consecutive year, acknowledging schools and dis-

tricts across the U.S. for their commitment and support for mu-

sic education as part of the core curriculum. In all, 176 com-

munities out of 237 that submitted surveys were recognized,

including 166 school districts and 10 schools.

The 2012 Best Communities for Music Education

Upfront: BCME

Established in 1999, The BCME survey is a nationwide search for com-munities that provide access to music education as an essential part of a com-plete education and exemplify com-mitment and support for music educa-tion. The BCME survey is designed and implemented in collaboration with The Institute for Educational Research and Public Service (www.ku.edu/~ierps/cgi-bin) of Lawrence, Kansas, an affili-ate of the University of Kansas.

The 2012 Best Communities for Music Education designation is a dis-tinction worthy of pride, but is also a call to action for local music education advocates to help preserve and poten-tially expand access to their current music education programs. Past des-ignees have reported that making the Best Communities list had a positive ef-fect on their ability to advance recogni-tion and support for music programs.

NAMM Foundation executive di-rector Mary Luehrsen encourages

communities to use the designation as a cornerstone of vig-orous advocacy for music educa-tion programs. “We know that communities are struggling to maintain fund-ing for many education programs and we applaud these communities that remain committed to a complete and quality education that must include music and the arts,” says Luehrsen. “We urge communities to celebrate the designation as a national recognition for their commitment to children and most of all, keep the music playing in their schools for years to come.”

Each school receiving the “Best Com-munities” designation scored in the 80th percentile or higher in the survey’s grad-ing process. Participants in the survey answered detailed questions about fund-ing, graduation requirements, music class participation, instruction time, facilities,

s u p p o r t for the music program and other relevant factors in their com-munities’ music education programs. The responses were verified with district officials and advisory organizations re-viewed the data.

A copy of the survey can be downloaded for review at www.nammfoundation.org. The complete Best Communities for Music Educa-tion roster can also be viewed at www.nammfoundation.org.

Upfront.indd 10 10/8/12 11:59 AM

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People ask where I went on summer vacation.

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SBO_11 11 10/8/12 11:49:05 AM

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In conducting the annual survey, the NAMM Foundation was joined by advisory organizations in the fields of music and education: Americans for the Arts (www.americansforthearts.org), League of American Orchestras

(www.americanorchestras.org), The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation (www.mhopus.org), Music for All (www.mu-sicforall.org), Music Teachers National Association (www.mtna.org), National Guild For Community Arts Education

(www.nationalguild.org), Yamaha Cor-poration of America (www.yamaha.com), Young Audiences (www.youn-gaudiences.org/), and VH1 Save The Music Foundation (www.vh1savethe-music.com).

Abington School District, Abington, Pa.Academy School District 20, Colorado Springs, Colo.Albion Central School District, Albion, N.Y.Ann Arbor Public Schools, Ann Arbor, Mich.Arlington Independent School District, Arlington, TexasAvon Lake City School District, Avon Lake, OhioBaldwin School District, Baldwin, N.Y.Baldwinsville Central School District, Baldwinsville, N.Y.Baltimore County Public Schools, Towson, Md.Bay Shore Union Free School District, Bay Shore, N.Y.Bay Village City School District, Bay Village, OhioBeachwood City Schools, Beachwood, OhioBerea City School District, Berea, OhioBergenfield Public Schools, Bergenfield, N.J.Berkley School District, Oak Park, Mich.Bethel Public School, Bethel, Conn.Bloomfield Hills School District, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.Brighton Central School District, Rochester, N.Y.Brooklyn Center Junior/Senior High School, Brooklyn Cen-ter, Minn.Camdenton R-III School District, Camdenton, Mo.Canton Public Schools, Canton, Conn.Central Cambria School District, Ebensburg, Pa.Central York School District, York, Pa.Chesapeake Public Schools, Chesapeake, Va.Cheshire Public Schools, Cheshire, Conn.Chittenango Central School District, Chittenango, N.Y.Clark County School District, Las Vegas, Nev.Cobb County School District, Marietta, Ga.Colonial School District, Plymouth Meeting, Pa.Commack Public Schools, E. Northport, N.Y.Connetquot Central School District, Bohemia, N.Y.Conroe Independent School District, Conroe, TexasCouncil Rock School District, Newtown, Pa.Cumberland Valley School District, Mechanicsburg, Pa.Cuyahoga Heights Local, Cleveland, OhioDavid Douglas School District 40, Portland, Ore.Denton Independent School District, Denton, TexasDover Area School District, Dover, Pa.Duxbury Public Schools, Duxbury, Mass.Edina Public Schools - Independent School District 273, Edina, Minn.Edmonds School District, Lynnwood, Wash.Exeter Township School District, Reading, Pa.Fargo Public Schools, Fargo, N.D.Fayetteville-Manlius Central Schools, Manlius, N.Y.Ferndale Public Schools, Ferndale, Mich.Fishers Island UFSD, Fishers Island, N.Y.Fort Bend Independent School District, Sugar Land, TexasFox Chapel Area School District, Pittsburgh, Pa.Fraser Public Schools, Fraser, Mich.Frontier Central School District, Hamburg, N.Y.Fulton County Schools, Atlanta, Ga.Garland Independent School District, Garland, TexasGrand Forks Public Schools, Grand Forks, N.D.Grand Island Central School District, Grand Island, N.Y.Great Falls Public School District, Great Falls, Mont.Great Neck Public Schools, Great Neck, N.Y.Greenwich Public Schools, Greenwich, Conn.Guilderland Central School District, Guilderland Center, N.Y.Gwinnett County Public Schools, Suwanee, Ga.Half Hollow Hills Central School District, Dix Hills, N.Y.Hamilton Elementary School, Schenectady, N.Y.Hamilton Southeastern School Corporation, Fishers, Ind.

Hampton City Public Schools, Hampton, Va.Harrison Central School District, Harrison, N.Y.Henrico County Public Schools, Henrico, Va.Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools, Woodmere, N.Y.Hollidaysburg Area School District, Hollidaysburg, Pa.Homewood City Schools, Homewood, Ala.Honeoye Falls-Lima Central School District, Honeoye Falls, N.Y.Hopewell Valley Regional School District, Pennington, N.J.Hortonville Area School District, Hortonville, Wis.Hudson School District, Hudson, Wis.Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District, Bed-ford, TexasIndependent School District 279 - Osseo Area Schools, Maple Grove, Minn.Indian River County School District, Vero Beach, Fla.Jenison Public Schools, Jenison, Mich.Jericho Union Free School District, Jericho, N.Y.Johnson City Central School District, Johnson City, N.Y.Katy Independent School District, Katy, TexasKenmore Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District, Buffalo, N.Y.Klein Independent School District, Spring, TexasLake Local School District, Uniontown, OhioLe Roy Central School District, Le Roy, N.Y.Lebanon School District, Lebanon, Pa.Lewisburg Area School District, Lewisburg, Pa.Lewisville Independent School District, Flower Mound, TexasLincoln Unified School District, Stockton, Calif.Liverpool Central School District, Liverpool, N.Y.Long Beach City School District, Lido Beach, N.Y.Longwood Central School District, Middle Island, NYLoyalsock Township School District, Montoursville, Pa.Lynn Public Schools, Lynn, Mass.Manhasset Union Free School District, Manhasset, N.Y.Massapequa UFSD, Massapequa, N.Y.Mechanicsburg Area School District, Mechanicsburg, Pa.Memphis City Schools, Memphis, Tenn.Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, India-napolis, Ind.Mineola Union Free School District, Mineola, N.Y.Monroe-Woodbury Central School District, Central Valley, N.Y.Montgomery County Public Schools, Christiansburg, Va.Monticello Central School District, Monticello, N.Y.Mt. Lebanon School District, Pittsburgh, Pa.Naperville Community Unit School District 203, Naperville, Ill.Nanuet Union Free School District, Nanuet, N.Y.New Hartford Central School District, New Hartford, N.Y.Newington, Newington, Conn.Newtown Public Schools, Newtown, Conn.North Allegheny School District, Pittsburgh, Pa.North Babylon Union Free School District, North Babylon, N.Y.North Colonie Central School District, Latham, N.Y.Northwest Independent School District, Justin, TexasOberlin City Schools District, Oberlin, OhioOceanside Public Schools, Oceanside, N.Y.Olmsted Falls City Schools, Olmsted Falls, OhioOpen Door Christian Schools, Elyria, OhioOppenheim-Ephratah Central School, St. Johnsville, N.Y.Osage County R-II Schools, Linn, Mo.

Ossining Union Free School District, Ossining, N.Y.Paramus Public School District, Paramus, N.J.Pasadena Independent School District, Pasadena, TexasPenfield Central School District, Penfield, N.Y.Pennsbury School District, Fallsington, Pa.Pequannock Township School District, Pompton Plains, N.J.Perrysburg Exempted Village Schools, Perrysburg, OhioPhoenix Central School District, Phoenix, N.Y.Pine City Public Schools (Independent School District 578), Pine City, Minn.Plano Independent School District, Plano, TexasPort Jefferson School District, Port Jefferson, N.Y.Propel East, Turtle Creek, Pa.Pulaski Community School District, Pulaski, Wis.Putnam Valley Central School District, Putnam Valley, N.Y.Quaker Valley School District, Sewickley, Pa.Randolph Township Schools, Randolph, N.J.Red Lion Area School District, Red Lion, Pa.Ridgefield Public Schools, Ridgefield, N.J.Roanoke County Public Schools, Roanoke, Va.Rush-Henrietta Central School District, Henrietta, N.Y.Santa Monica-Malibu USD, Santa Monica, Calif.Scarsdale Union Free School District, Scarsdale, N.Y.Schenectady City School District, Schenectady, N.Y.School District of Lancaster, Lancaster, Pa.Shaker Heights City School District, Shaker Heights, OhioSkaneateles Central School District, Skaneateles, N.Y.South Huntington UFSD, Huntington Station, N.Y.South Windsor Public Schools, South Windsor, Conn.Spring Grove Area School District, Spring Grove, Pa.Springs Valley Jr./Sr. High School, French Lick, Ind.Stow-Munroe Falls High School, Stow, OhioStrongsville City School District, Strongsville, OhioSyosset Central School District, Syosset, N.Y.The Sycamore Community School District, Cincinnati, OhioTorrington Public Schools, Torrington, Conn.Township of Union Board of Education, Union, N.J.Trinity Area School District, Washington, Pa.Troy School District, Troy, Mich.Upper Sandusky Exempted Village Schools, Upper San-dusky, OhioVirginia Beach City Public Schools, Virginia Beach, Va.Wakefield Public Schools, Wakefield, Mass.Washington County Public Schools, Hagerstown, Md.Washoe county school district, Reno, Nev.Wayland Public Schools, Wayland, Mass.Webster Central School District, Webster, N.Y.West Genesee Central School District, Camillus, N.Y.West Hartford Public Schools, West Hartford, Conn.West Irondequoit Central School District, Rochester, N.Y.West Lafayette Community School Corporation, West La-fayette, Ind.West Milford Township Public Schools, West Milford, N.J.West Seneca Central School District, West Seneca, N.Y.Westborough Public Schools, Westborough, Mass.Westlake Christian Academy, Grayslake, Ill.Weston Public Schools, Weston, Mass.Wicomico County Public Schools, Salisbury, Md.Willard R-II Schools, Willard, Mo.Williamsport Area School District, Williamsport, Pa.Williamsville Central School District, East Amherst, N.Y.Windber Area Middle/High School, Windber, Pa.

n22012 Best Communities for Music Education

Upfront.indd 12 10/8/12 11:59 AM

Peter Ponzol has been designing saxophones for more than three decades. Very few people have Peter’s understanding of the design principles of the instrument, and the Antigua Pro-One saxophone is the ultimate expression of his concepts.

“This collaboration finally gets a lifetime of ideas out of my head and into reality.” –Peter Ponzol

Morrie Backun has been on the leading edge of clarinet design for years, and his collaboration with Antigua has resulted in a clarinet that stands up to today’s demands and will meet tomorrow’s expectations.

“This clarinet is what happens when you bring together two of the most sophisticated manufacturing facilities in the world and a mutual desire to make the best product possible.” –Morrie Backun

SBO_13 13 10/8/12 11:49:16 AM

www.antiguawinds.com










By Tracy Leenman






Mythbusting:

Performance.indd 14 10/8/12 12:00 PM

“The President’s Own”United States Marine Band

2 0 1 3 C O N C E R T O C O M P E T I T I O N F O R H I G H S C H O O L M U S I C I A N S

A P P L I C AT I O N D E A D L I N E : N O V. 1 5 , 2 0 1 2

“The President’s Own” United States Marine Band,in conjunction with the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and the National Association for Mu-sic Education (NAfME), is pleased to announce its annual concerto competition for high school musi-cians. The winner will appear as a guest soloist with the U.S. Marine Band and receive a $2,500 cash prize from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.

Who is Eligible?The 2013 competition is open to high school musicians (grades 9-12) enrolled during the 2012-13 academic year. Performers of woodwind, brass, or percussion instruments may apply. Immediate family members of U.S. Marine Band members and previous competition winners are not eligible.

Where Do I Get an Application?Application packets can be obtained by visitingwww.marineband.usmc.mil or by calling (202) 433-5809.

Application GuidelinesApplicants must select one of the works listed for their instrument in the application packet and submit an audio recording of their performance of that selection accompanied by piano, band, or orchestra. A complete list of guidelines is included in the application packet. Applications must be postmarked by Nov. 15, 2012, and mailed to the following address:

NAfMEAttn: The Marine Band Concerto Competition

1806 Robert Fulton DriveReston, VA 20191

Applications mailed directly to the Marine Band cannot be accepted.

Final RoundBased on the application materials, finalists will be selected and invited to Washington, D.C., to compete in a final round that will be open to the public. All finalists will be notified by Jan. 1, 2013. The finals will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, in the John Philip Sousa Band Hall at the Marine Barracks Annex in Washington, D.C. Finalists will perform the same selection submitted with their application materials.

The Marine Band will provide a pianist to accompa-ny each contestant for the final round. Contestants will have the option to be coached by a Marine Band soloist during their rehearsal with the pianist.

What Does the Winner Receive?The winner will be invited to perform their solo selection in concert with the Marine Band in the Washington, D.C. area, during the 2013 concert season and will receive a cash prize of $2,500. Travel will be provided for the winner and one guardian for the final performance in Washington, D.C.

About the Marine BandThe Marine Band is America’s oldest continuously active professional musical organization. Founded in 1798, the band has performed for every U.S. Presi-dent since John Adams. Known as “The President’s Own” since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the Marine Band’s primary mission is to provide music for the President of the United States and the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

www.facebook.com/marinebandwww.twitter.com/marineband

“The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, Marine Chamber Orchestra, Marine Chamber Ensembles Colonel Michael J. Colburn, Director

Marine Barracks 8th & I Streets, SE - Washington, DC 20390 - (202) 433-5809 - www.marineband.usmc.mil

SBO_15 15 10/8/12 2:04:26 PM

www.marineband.usmc.mil


Mouthpiece TestMouthpiece testing should be rou-

tine procedure for every beginning band student you teach, and every stu-dent should be encouraged to try every instrument available to them as begin-ners. Too many band directors ask first, “What would you like to play?” or, “Write down your first three choices,” when the child has never tried (some-times never even seen) all the instru-ments he might be able to play. Nearly 75 percent of the children we test end up with something different from their original preferences – and are happy and successful on that instrument – because their original preferences are based only on looks, what friends are doing, and what they see on television, while their final choices are based more on reality.

A student who will make a good reed player will be able to keep his chin flat fairly easily and will be able to sustain a high-pitched sound on the mouthpiece for four beats after only a few tries. If a child cannot keep his chin flat or if he reacts negatively to the feeling of the mouthpiece in his mouth or on his top teeth, perhaps a single reed instrument is not the best choice for him.

SaxophonesThis may sound strange (or even of-

fensive to our saxophone-playing col-leagues), but I do not start beginners on saxophone. When I first started band in 1964, no one started on saxophone; aspiring sax players were required to

play clarinet for at least two years first. Not until the mid-1970s, when colleg-es began to offer “legit” sax majors, did the idea of starting on saxophone be-come accepted. While I hated this rule at the time, I now see much wisdom in that approach. And many of my sax-playing colleagues wish they had tak-en the same route, because taking up clarinet or flute, or even soprano sax, later on was far more difficult than if they had played clarinet first. Children who start on clarinet can easily switch to sax (or to flute or oboe or bassoon) later on, and will often be stronger sax players than those who started on sax from day one. Your school music dealer should offer full credit for a swap of a purchase or rental in cases like this, so parents will not incur extra costs.

If you do start students on saxo-phone, be sure to have the student hold the entire sax, to be sure they can reach around the palm keys and fin-ger 4th-line D (the first note in many method books). Many young sax play-ers get discouraged and quit band because of the size and weight of the instrument, when they could have eas-ily started on clarinet and moved suc-cessfully to sax when their hands were a little larger. While some directors start tenor and even baritone saxes, I would recommend starting only altos, as moving from a smaller mouthpiece to a larger is always easier than the re-verse (think about a bodybuilder trying to run a marathon or a tuba player try-ing to play high notes successfully on a trumpet).

SpecsThe bore sizes on student clarinets

vary widely, from .573” to .590”. Rath-er than simply recommending to your students certain brand names that are familiar to you, study the specs of their student instruments as well, so you can choose the specific brands and models that will give your students the best tone quality. The classic symphonic clarinet will usually have a .576”-.577” bore, so student clarinets with bores in that range will more easily produce the classic symphonic tone we desire from our clarinets. A bore of .580” or larger can be hard for a beginner to control. Also, look for a polycylindrical bore, a

feature standard on most professional clarinets, but harder to find on student clarinets.

The clarinet is built on twelfths, not octaves like the flute, oboe, or sax. Therefore, hitting the register key rais-es the note not by an octave, but skips to the second partial, up a twelfth. That second partial is naturally sharp, meaning that the chalumeau (lowest) and clarion (middle) registers are often not in tune with each other. The al-tissimo (highest) register again skips a partial, and is a sixth above the clarion. A polycylindrical bore is designed to bring the various registers of the instru-ment in tune.

Three registers of the same funda-mental (B♭), showing the “skipped” partials:

For saxophones, one of the most important features to look for is full rib construction. This added reinforcement of the posts helps keep the instrument in adjustment and makes it substan-tially more durable.

Reeds and MouthpiecesThere are as many “setup” (com-

bination of mouthpiece, ligature, and reed) combinations as there are stars in the sky, or as there are #2 reeds on the planet. Ask 100 reed players and you will get 100 different opinions. I have three friends who are fine pro-fessional clarinetists, who all play the same model clarinet – but one plays on a B-40 mouthpiece (very large facing), one plays on a 5RV (very small facing), and one on an M15/13 (in-between, but on the smaller side). The mouth-piece must suit the instrument, and the reed must suit the mouthpiece; no one setup is right for every student, or for every instrument (especially when stu-dent bore sizes vary so greatly).

Generally, the larger the facing of the mouthpiece, the softer the reed that fits it best; the smaller the facing,


School Band and Orchestra • October 2012 17

the harder the reed that is meant to be used with it. Most student mouthpiec-es have fairly large facings, as most stu-dents begin on fairly soft reeds. While some directors start their students on professional level mouthpieces such as the C* or B-45, I start mine on plas-tic mouthpieces, largely because of the cost factor. Another reason to do this is because beginners tend to drop mouth-pieces. Putting an expensive mouth-piece on a poor-quality student clarinet is akin to putting Pirelli tires on a VW beetle – it still won’t make it a race car. Better to spend the money on a qual-ity student clarinet first. A requirement for a better quality mouthpiece makes a great “reward” for finishing the first year, or for making the local honor band.

I also start my reed players on #2 inexpensive reeds, at least for the first few weeks. No sense paying for better reeds until they master the skill of get-ting the mouthpiece, reed, and ligature together without shredding the reed. The one accessory I do require from the beginning is a Rovner-style or Bon-ade-style (“upside down”) ligature… but more on that later.

Starting Reed PlayersOur first three pass-offs are: 1. Assembling the mouthpiece, reed,

and ligature correctly.2. Playing a whole note on the mouth-

piece alone, starting with the tongue and maintaining the correct pitch (high C above the treble clef for clarinet, high A for saxophone), keeping the chin flat and “corners” firm.

3. Dividing that correctly-played whole note into four quarter notes, played on one breath with only the tongue moving to separate the sound from the whole note into four quarter-notes.Only when these three skills are

learned do they earn the right to as-semble the instrument completely (pass-off #4). And their desire to get to play the whole instrument is great mo-tivation for practice on the mouthpiece each night, in the mirror, until these skills are mastered. While this might sound time-consuming, it does prevent a multitude of even-more-time-con-

suming problems later on, throughout the students’ musical careers.

In recent years, the “soft-cushion” or “drawstring” embouchure has be-come popular for both clarinet and saxophone; some even teach a “dou-ble-lip” embouchure, where both lips are turned in. For heterogeneous band classes, especially for non-reed playing directors, I find the traditional “hard-cushion” embouchure works best. I recommend other embouchures be ad-dressed only in private or small-group settings, as they usually require more consistent, individual follow-up.

If a student cannot play on the mouthpiece alone, on the correct pitch, with quality tone, the rest of the instrument merely serves as a “mega-phone” for a poor, off-pitch sound. The student cannot possibly play in tune. The cure for a flat, flabby sound is not a harder reed, but often a softer one – along with the building of stronger embouchure muscles through mouth-piece work (which using a harder reed actually hinders). Just as you would not recommend your beginning trum-pet players start on 12C mouthpieces to “help” them reach higher notes, I do not recommend beginners start on any-thing harder than a #2 reed. Remember that different brands of reed use differ-ent standards. For example, a #2 Van-Doren is roughly equivalent to a #2½ Rico reed. Some directors start clari-net and sax players on VanDoren #2½ reeds (roughly equivalent to a Rico #3!) because they believe it makes a better sound; but in reality, their embouchure muscles are not yet developed suf-ficiently to stay firm against the force of breath required to make any sound at all, so the result is counterproduc-tive as far as developing embouchure strength. And while the sound may be acceptable at first, without the muscle development, tone in the upper regis-ters will suffer. Of course, some direc-tors merely move to harder and harder reeds, but this only fixes the “symp-toms,” not the root problem.

Especially for the lower clarinets and saxes, a harder reed will hinder good tone production on piano and pianissimo dynamic levels. While some directors recommend #4 and even #5 reeds for high school tenor and bari sax

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and for bass clarinet players, I recom-mend a maximum strength of #3 or #3½ (only for very good players). Low sounds are made up of long, slow vi-brations, and a hard reed cannot pos-sibly produce long, slow sound waves. The beautiful undertones characteristic to those instruments’ sounds are lost.

Mouthpiece facing charts are avail-able on line; some mouthpieces such as VanDoren state right on the box the

recommended reed strength that is best suited for that particular facing. Using a reed harder than recommended for that facing is as nonsensical as putting a trumpet mouthpiece on a trombone – it just doesn’t work well. For those students who think using a harder reed automatically means they are a better player, I tell them that Michael Jordan did not use a trampoline to learn to slam dunk; he built up his leg muscles

by hard work. Jordan would consider a shortcut an insult. Students get it.

The “Break” If the mouthpiece work is done, and

the foundation for a correct embouchure is laid, going from the chalumeau (low-est E to “thumb F”) to the clarion register (same fingerings, but with register key) is as simple as rocking the thumb forward and opening the register key. Nothing else changes. And to take this a step further, going from the clarion to the altissimo reg-ister is as easy as lifting the left hand first finger (and adding the right pinky on the E♭ key). I do move my clarinet beginners to a #2½ reed when they start using the register key, and #3 when they begin the altissimo register; but at that point, this improves their tone without shortcutting their muscle development.

Going up the scale through the throat tones “over the break” is facili-tated by putting the right hand down as soon as the student passes above “thumb f.” While I don’t teach students to use their right hands every time they play “open g,” I do teach them to use it on all ascending passages that go over the break. This not only stabilizes the instrument and prevents a break in the air flow, but it also keeps the student from having to place six to nine fingers down correctly, simultaneously. From day one, we mark in our music where the right hand must go down – or where it should stay down when play-ing back and forth across the break.

An exercise that will help your clari-net students learn proper finger place-ment is descending the F scale, from “thumb F” down the octave and back up. We start this the very day the students first put their instruments together. Mak-ing proper finger placement a habit will also make crossing the break easier when the time comes. Unlike a piano, we do not use the tips of the fingers to cover the holes, but the “pads,” the puffy parts of the finger. A rounded hand (a “C” shape)

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with the wrists level and proper place-ment of the right thumb will help keep hands relaxed and fingers flexible. If the right thumb is placed properly under the thumb rest, a cushion is rarely necessary; most often, when students have discom-fort in the thumb or wrist, poor hand po-sition is the cause, not the “weight” of the instrument.

Other Tips• Emphasize fundamentals. Check

your students’ setup every day un-til you see they can set up correctly, 100 percent of the time. When I do clinics for high school or even college students, I still find many who have never understood proper placement of the reed and ligature. I recommend a hair of the black of the mouthpiece show at the tip of the reed; certainly the reed should never be higher than the tip of the mouthpiece. And I recommend the ligature sit approximately ¼” below the top of the slanted part of the mouthpiece. This alone will correct

many tone problems students may be experiencing. And of course, check for unplayable reeds – and insist they are replaced immediately.

Another minor correction that can make a huge difference is strap height for saxophones (or bass clari-nets). Allowing the reed to vibrate freely, as it must do for low notes, is impossible if the sax is resting on the lower lip, instead of against the upper teeth. A student sitting (or standing) “straight up like a Marine” should have the strap set so the instrument comes right to his mouth, without raising or lowering the head, without slouching. This, too, is something I have to address in nearly every clinic I do. I use a strap rather than a peg for bass clarinets, to encourage this better “like a Marine” posture.

• Insist students come to class prepared. If you want your class to be considered an academic subject, you must treat it like one. Students who do not have their five extra reeds, pencil. and textbook (method book) every day should be penal-ized just as they are in math class when they forget their math book. We began each day in beginning band with “hold up your pencil” … “hold up your extra reeds” … and so on, until compliance with this requirement becomes basically 100 percent, for all instruments (and intermittently throughout the year thereafter).

• Insist on proper fingerings. An incorrectly fingered note should be considered a wrong note. Just as syn-tax determines whether we say “is”

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or “were,” context determines which fingerings are correct. Alternating pinkies on clarinet, b/c side key, the various Bb fingerings on saxophone, and chromatic F/F# for both clarinets and saxes are just a few examples:

We mark any alternate fingerings with an asterisk (*) so that students don’t play them wrong over and over. The new Technique Tabs are a great help in teaching young clari-netists which pinky keys are which; we mark R and L on passages where alternating pinkies are required:

Never pass off a scale or exercise that sounds correct, but includes in-correct fingerings. Bad habits learned are much harder to break than good habits are to learn. And as music in-creases in difficulty, facility with al-ternate fingerings is more and more necessary for a smooth performance.

• Teach Instrument-Specific Warm Ups. Too many band students equate “warm ups” with scales. Each student should have warm ups specific to his instrument to work on before you get

on the podium and begin rehearsal. This also prevents “noodling”. Some examples might include octaves for the flutists, chromatic work for the single reeds, lip slurs for the brass players.

• Stepping up. When moving from a plastic to a wooden clarinet for the first time, back off ½-strength on the reed. Otherwise, the wood clari-net may feel “stuffy” to the student – and few parents will want to spend money on a better quality instru-ment if the student does not like the way it feels when he first plays it. After a few minutes, the student can usually return to his normal reed strength, after he learns to vibrate the wood with a fuller air stream.

While there are many different ap-proaches to teaching single reeds, the

bottom line is that teaching clarinet and sax players successfully is not as complicated as it may seem. With proper fundamentals, your single reed players can be strong contributors to your band.

Tracy E. Leenman cur-rently teaches and performs actively on bassoon, clari-net, saxophone and flute. Currently the owner of Mu-sical Innovations, a school music dealer in Greenville, SC, she is internationally recognized as an author, clinician and educator. She has served on the executive boards of SCMEA and NASMD, and is a member of the Support Music.com Coalition. In 2006, she was named the winner of Phi Beta Mu (Theta Chapter) Outstanding Contributor Award; in 2009, she was given the KEYS Program National Music Advocacy Award and the SCMEA Friend of Music Business Award.

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Everyone knows

that learning and play-

ing music has innumerable educa-

tional and developmental benefits.

The many skills it takes to become

proficient at playing an instrument will

also serve people in a variety of other

ways throughout their lives: from fine

motor skills to auditory skills, social

skills of working in an ensemble to

the focus and discipline needed to

practice effectively, and so on. While

this may be common knowledge for

music educators, there isn’t actu-

ally much scientific evidence of the

concrete and specific ways in which

music helps cognitive or social devel-

opment of music learners.

People have been theorizing

about the many benefits of music

making for thousands of years. In

fact, the word “music” comes from

the “Muses” of ancient Greece, the

deities who represented creative

and intellectual endeavors. And

for just as long, people have been

observing these benefits in musicians

and those who study music, not-

ing that it must not be coincidence

that so many high school band and

orchestra members excel at aca-

demic achievement and bolster their

schools’ honor rolls.

Dr. James Catterall, a professor at

UCLA and a leading researcher in the

field of Arts Education, has performed

studies concluding that students who

reported a high level of involvement

with learning a musical instrument

had “significantly higher levels of

mathematics proficiency by grade

12” than those who

did not study music.

Another study of Dr. Catterall’s

looked at 25,000 students and found

that students involved in music also

score higher at standardized tests, as

well as reading proficiency exams.

And while this is certainly welcome

news – affirming what may be obvi-

ous to music educators – those stud-

ies still only determine a vague link

between achievement and music,

failing to explain the specifics of why

and how music is so beneficial.

While certainly helpful for making

the case that music is a great learn-

ing tool, these types of observational

studies still leave many questions

unanswered. For example, scientists

might wonder, “Maybe it’s not that

music makes kids smarter; maybe the

smart kids are all simply drawn to mu-

Report: Music and the Brain


Brain Intro.indd 22 10/8/12 12:02 PM


sic?” Although there may be such an

overwhelming body of correlational

evidence of the benefits of music

that some might call it both obvious

and indisputable, the real questions

of “why” and “how” music impacts

learning and cognitive development

persist. Even though philosophers,

poets, scientists, researchers, and

other thinkers have pondered this

topic for millennia, technological

advances of the last few decades

have finally enabled the research to

go beyond correlational inference

and into the brain itself.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

(MRI) machines allow researchers

to look at brain shape and activity,

seeing which areas of the nervous

system activate as the brain pro-

cesses information in real time.

Electroencephalography (EEG)

machines allow researchers to read

and record the electrical impulses

emitted by the brain. These relatively

recent technological innovations

have spawned a veritable explosion

in the field of neurological research,

because, for the first time in the histo-

ry of humanity, the brain itself can be

observed and measured – without

splitting open the cranium.

SBO’s coverage of this fascinating

topic is divided into three sections: a

look at some of the research being

done in the field via two leading

scientists, Dr. Ani Patel and Dr. Nina

Kraus; a discussion with Dalouge

Smith, the President and CEO of

the San Diego Youth Symphony,

which is involved in a potentially

groundbreaking study on how music

impacts the cognitive develop-

ment of young learners; and a look

into the burgeoning field of Music

Wellness, which examines some of

the medical, social, and psychologi-

cal benefits associated with music

making.

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Report: Music and the Brain

An Introduction to Researching

Two pioneers in the field of researching how music impacts

the brain are Dr. Nina Kraus and Dr. Aniruddh Patel. SBO re-

cently spoke with these two scientists to discuss their work and

its broad implications on music education.

Nina Kraus plays the electric guitar, some bass, and a bit of

drums. She is also a professor of neurobiology at Northwestern Uni-

versity, where she heads the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory.

By Eliahu Sussman

“There’s so much work to be done,” says Kraus. “I don’t need to tell mu-sic educators how important music is, not only for the sake of music but also for helping kids become better learners. However, there aren’t a lot of visible scientific outcomes in educa-tion in general, and there aren’t a lot of ironclad results that show the effect that the musical experience has on the nervous system. The work that my lab does, along with the work of others in the field, can hopefully provide some of the evidence that the educators and policy makers can use to get more re-sources for more music.”

Kraus’s studies of the impact that music has on various cognitive abili-ties have been published in some of the world’s leading scientific journals. This summer, Kraus published a study in the Journal of Neuroscience titled “A Lit-tle Goes A Long Way,” touting the last-ing brain benefits of even a relatively small amount of musical study. In that experiment, which received signifi-cantf media attention, Kraus measured the brain’s response to sound among 45 students at Northwestern Univer-sity and determined that people with even a small amount of musical train-ing were “better at processing sound” than those with no musical training.

“Historically, the work that has been done in this field is with people who have continued to play music throughout their lives,” says Kraus. “And they don’t have to be profes-

REPORT.indd 24 10/8/12 12:03 PM


sional musicians, they can be hacks like me, but they have continuously played music. What that study asked was, ‘What about the more com-mon scenario, which is that kids play music for a while, take lessons for a couple of years, and then stop?’ The bottom line of that study is that if people have had up to about five years of musical experience, their nervous systems respond and show some of the benefits that you see in people who have continued to play music. There is every indication – just like with many subjects we study in school, where we take classes in them and learn about them and then we may not do those particular tasks and problems again in our life – that we’ve been taught things that will still be helpful to us in some way or another throughout our lives.”

One of the keys to following this research is the idea that the brain is malleable and develops based on how it is used. “What really interests me are the kind of basic fundamental changes that happen in the nervous system because of how we spend a lot of our time,” Kraus affirms. “I’m interested in long-term and life-long real pervasive changes in the nervous system. So if you spend a lot of time speaking another language or study-ing a musical instrument, you are go-

ing to change your nervous system in measurable ways. When we put our scalp electrodes on people and measure the electrical responses that happen to sound, I can look at the re-sponses to a speech sound and basi-

cally tell whether or not they’ve had musical training.”

These measurable differences hold the key to determining exactly what the impact is that music has on the brain.

Dr. Nina Kraus

REPORT.indd 25 10/8/12 12:03 PM

www.legere.com


Elements of Sound

One of the reasons that this field of study so complex is that music is made up of many different elements that all activate unique areas within the brain. Musical sounds and speech sounds can be broken into three distinct segments:

the fundamental frequency, which is important for what note you’re play-ing or the various pitches of a person’s voice; the harmonics, which is impor-tant for timbre; and then the timing in-formation or rhythm. Timing “is where it gets really cool for the nerdy signal people like me,” says Kraus. “We’re talking about timing on the order of not fractions of seconds, but fractions of milliseconds. It is timing on frac-tions of milliseconds that is absolutely essential to what a drummer does. It is also timing on fractions of a millisec-ond that distinguishes a B from a D. You can see how if the nervous system is really good at picking up on these timing elements that are just inher-ently a part of sound, that’s going to be one of the dimensions that we would expect – and in fact do see – that are enhanced in people that have musical training.”

Scientifically speaking, this re-search is incredibly useful because neural responses are completely ob-jective. “There is nothing that you can be doing or thinking that can change the way your nervous system is going to respond to a sound, at least in the context in which we often measure it,” says Kraus. “What is particular about our approach is that in the same way that a sound wave consists of pitch,

timing, and timbre – the elements of sound – the brain response can also be analyzed. The reason that demon-stration is powerful is that it shows that the responses we pick up actually resemble the sounds that were deliv-ered to the person in order to elicit

the responses. There’s a kind of transparency between the sound and the nervous system’s response to it.”

By reading these characteristics of how those elements are rep-resented in the brain-wave, Dr. Kraus asserts that she can actually tell with a reasonable degree of accuracy whether or not a per-son has had musical training. “If I just look at timing, I can expect a person of a certain

age to have timing in a certain range for certain aspects in the response,” she clarifies. “I can say that someone might be faster, for example, especial-ly if their representation of the timbre of the harmonics is enhanced. Those are telltale signs that the person has musical experience.”

To elaborate on how the responses might be read, when the brain receives auditory information, it creates an electrical impulse that’s similar to the pattern one might see in the visual repre-sentation of sound in programs like Garage Band and ProTools. The researchers measure the electrical response from the nervous system and record that pattern of voltages, which can be played back and trans-lated into audio just like the electrical signal of amplified or elec-tronic music. [For a detailed slideshow of how music impacts the brain, visit the Auditory Neuroscience Lab online at www.soc.northwestern.edu/brain-volts/ and click on the “Music” tab and then “Slideshow.”]

Music and Language

One of the first discoveries that Dr. Kraus’s team made involves the con-nection between music and language. “You might expect that the response to a musical sound would be enhanced to a person who plays music, but what about speech?” asks Kraus. “So given that speech also consists of the same elements, would a person who has ex-perience with music also demonstrate the same enhanced responses to speech sounds? Well, they do.”

Much of the research of music’s impact on the brain relates to the do-main of how music processes language. Kraus and her team have researched the ways in which auditory develop-ment through music study can benefit things like selective auditory skills, that is, distinguishing and hearing a par-ticular sound in a noisy situation, an important skill for conversing in a busy restaurant, for example.

“Any time you present speech sounds to people, if you now embed those sounds in a bunch of background noise – whether that’s water running or a bunch of people yammering in the background – obviously the fidelity of the neural response to the target sound is going to be affected – degraded by the noise – which is why we have dif-ficulty hearing in noisy situations,” says

Dr. Kraus. “If you have musical training, the deleterious effects that noise has are reduced. If you look at a non-musician’s response in noise, it’s just shredded, whereas a musician’s response in the same background noise, you can hardly tell that there’s background noise there.”

REPORT.indd 26 10/8/12 12:04 PM


This is a communications skill that is essential for hearing in a noisy class-room, which might have a ventilation system, traffic outside the window, chairs scraping, people turning pages of a book, and so on. “As a musician, you’re always picking out relevant sounds from a complicated sound-scape. Musicians get very good at that,” says Kraus.

While this sounds like a learned skill, it’s important to keep in mind that this is an objective look at biolog-ical function. “Playing an instrument really does have a profound effect on how the nervous system processes sounds,” Kraus continues. “This is going to then impact communication skills like hearing in noise, learning to read, or even reading in general. You think of reading as a visual task, but in fact the brain matches sounds of letters to their images on a page, so you have to have a pretty good audi-tory representation of those sounds in order to read effectively. We find that people with musical experience have advantages in those kinds of skills. The other area that is really important is in auditory working memory and auditory attention.”

Auditory working memory is the skill of remembering something that you’ve just heard long enough to perform a brain function on it (un-derstand it, wonder about it, react to it, and so on). To test this type of memory, Dr. Kraus will tell someone a bunch of numbers and then ask the subject to then, say, repeat them back backwards. Or she’ll give the person a bunch of nouns and then ask the sub-ject to repeat only the nouns that are, for example, animal names that begin with the letter “t.” This requires that the person take something that he or she has heard, and then work with it, which is why it’s called “auditory work-ing memory.”

“Musical study really strengthens your working memory,” she says. “That working memory is really important for any kind of learning – even just for remembering what the teacher said.”

Auditory attention, meanwhile, is more intuitive. In order to learn some-thing, you have to know what to pay attention to. “It’s important not only

for playing music, but also for making a better learner in general,” says Kraus.

A Mechanistic Approach to Measuring Impact

Dr. Ani Patel played bass clarinet in his high school band program. He went on to learn some guitar, and later studied classical guitar while in grad school. Meanwhile, he was also study-ing biology, and has since become one

of the leading researchers in the field of neurobiology, as well as the author of Music, Language, and the Brain, a comprehensive exploration of the neu-rological processes of music and lan-guage cognition.

“There’s this growing evidence that when you study a musical instrument, it changes the way your brain processes sound, including the sound of speech, in ways that are good for you: better hearing in noise, better vocal emo-

REPORT.indd 27 10/8/12 12:04 PM

www.legere.com


tion recognition, and so on,” says Pa-tel. “Understanding how and why that happens at the mechanistic level of the brain is an open question, and a very important question for basic brain sci-ence and, ultimately, for application of this knowledge. That’s the information we need to convince people that these effects have a reasonable brain mecha-nism behind them so people who are interested in advocating for music can say not only that music has effects, but

also understand how and why for con-vincing the larger community.

“Even though music seems like this highly specialized activity that is un-like anything else that we do, I think it has deep and important connections to many other brain functions, and language is an example of that. We use some of the similar brain process-ing mechanisms to process sounds of musical instruments and the sounds of speech, and there are interactions be-

tween these domains.”Because music is so complex, it

presents an extraordinary area of pos-sible avenues for scientific study. Even something as simple as keeping a beat and moving in time with it activates a very broad network of brain func-tions involving hearing, motor plan-ning, auditory memory, and imagery. “In terms of an activity that seems to integrate across many different regions of the brain, music is really powerful,” says Patel. “It also connects with strong emotions and to social interactions, if you’re pursuing music with other people. We’re just beginning to under-stand the significance of music from a neuroscientific perspective, and I think in the next 10 years it’s really going to become much clearer to us that this thing that we do has remarkable im-pact on many different brain functions. By understanding how that works, it’s going to transform our appreciation for this phenomenon, from a neuroscien-tific perspective.”

Challenges of Performing Studies

There are a number of challenges to performing scientific experiments in the area of brain development and mu-sic, including weeding out other pos-sible influences and coming up with unassailable conclusions.

“A lot of the studies in this field are correlational,” Patel admits. “That is, you look at a bunch of musicians and

Dr. Ani Patel

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compare them to non-musicians and then say, ‘Musicians are better at x, y, and z,’ but of course there’s the nag-ging question that maybe they started off that way, that they were born bet-ter at x, y, and z, and maybe that’s why they became musical in the first place. You really need to do random-ized, controlled studies where you take people who are no different cognitively at the beginning and then train them, observing effects of music training as

compared to other extracurricular ac-tivities, like painting or sports. Those activities can be valuable, too, but if you want to talk about the specific ef-fects of music on the brain, you need to be able to show it by comparing it to other things that people could be do-ing.”

The other area of difficulty is simply finding a reliable and stable test group. It is really challenging to do anything longitudinal, where a single study fol-

lows the same people over a long span of time. It’s even hard to do them lon-ger than the course of a single school year, because kids change schools and circumstances change. There are many logistical hurdles that make this field of research challenging.

The other real danger facing scien-tists is the lure of drawing conclusions based on premature claims or incom-plete research. Inevitably, those will be overturned or will fizzle out, like what happened with the so-called Mozart Effect. “We’re at a stage now where we have the tools and we have the people to do the right kind of experiments to sift fantasy from reality and figure out what the real mechanisms are,” Patel says. “Ultimately we have to build a solid foundation that people can really stand on and say, ‘This is high qual-ity scientific research. This is what we know and this is what we don’t know.’”

Optimal Age for Music Training

One key question for educators and policy makers about creating lasting benefits through music education is determining the optimal age to begin music study. Again, while there are a number of correlational studies that suggest that earlier is better, this is still an area that is yet to be determined by hard scientific evidence.

“From a basic neuroscience stand-point, the brain is definitely more malleable in early childhood, in terms

REPORT.indd 30 10/8/12 12:04 PM

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of how experience impacts the brain,” muses Patel. “Generally, the rule of thumb is ‘the earlier, the better’ if you want to have a lasting impact on the brain. It appears to be one of those things where we used to think that the brain was formed by a certain age and then all we did was lose neurons, but more recently we’ve learned that the brain is really malleable throughout life. Music seems to be one of those activities that, no matter at what age you pick it up, there are effects and impacts on the brain that are probably beneficial. Those impacts just may be stronger, the earlier you start. I can’t point to a specific age range that would be strongest, but at the mo-ment I’d say that the younger people start, the more impactful it’s going to be.

“Not everyone is going to go on to be a musician, so if you’re thinking about policy, if you can get these kids in the first few years early in school, it might have a significant impact on their brain function,” Patel continues. “From a neurobiological standpoint, I don’t see why it wouldn’t. If you can structure the brain while it’s still devel-oping rapidly in ways about processing sound, it could leave a lasting impact but then again, we really do need more studies to show that. It’s also possible that it’s like exercise: if you exercise as a child or play sports, but then later on give it up, you might still become really unfit. There’s no guarantee that just a little bit of exercise in childhood is go-ing to make you a fit person forever. Is the brain like that? Or is the brain more likely to retain an imprint of that early experience?”

In any case, whether or not early exposure to music training has last-ing residual effects is something that will be extremely hard to prove sci-entifically. “Think about it: what can you do, measure people’s brains and then wait 30 years and measure them again?” asks Patel. “Those may always be correlational studies, but that hap-pens in epidemiology [the study of patterns of health and disease among a certain population] all the time. As long as you have a huge sample size and you can control for many other factors, you can sometimes start to

sift out certain things and maybe we’ll get a chance to do that in the future.”

Determining Results

In order to make determinations about the impact of music, it takes a combination of behavioral and brain studies. Researchers like Dr. Patel and Dr. Kraus need to take people and administer training in musical skills versus other activities – doing noth-ing, other art forms, sports, and so on – and then measure their brain processing before and after. Measur-ing the brain can be done in terms of either the structure of the brain or the way that their brain responds to, say, sound and speech, before and after, as well as the subjects’ actual perceptual ability before and after. From there, relationships between the training can be tied to changes in the brain or the brain’s abilities.

“It’s sort of like detective work,” says Patel. “You’re establishing a chain of causality between something that’s been done through experience, to a measurable impact on the brain, to a measurable impact on behavior and ability. To go to the next level, we need to start doing these experimental studies treating music like a variable, just like you would with any other sci-entific study. If you think it’s having an impact, you do experiments where you either give it, withhold it, or com-pare it to something else in a measur-able way.”

The Impact of Scientific Research

The end result of all this work could well be scientific proof of what so many people in music education already know: that music has demonstrable and provable beneficial impacts on a number of areas of cognitive and social development.

Dr. Patel notes that while he hopes that is the case, his scientific objec-tivity requires a degree of skepticism: “In 20 years, I really hope that we’ll have done a lot of these controlled experiments that I’m talking about and that there will be a strong case

to be made by music educators and by others that music is having a mea-surable impact on cognition, and whatever other functions people are interested in – emotional regulation, attention – and that there are prin-cipled reasons why so many hours of music instruction per week or per day would be beneficial to the mental and cognitive health of the popula-tion. But as a scientist, you have to be constantly skeptical. You have to be aware that things that you wish to be true may not always be true, and you have to be willing to follow the data wherever it takes you. My hunch is that we’re going to find that music does have long lasting and beneficial impacts, and we’re going to under-stand how and why that works, but there may be things that we thought music helps but it doesn’t, or that it doesn’t seem to make that big a dif-ference, or that you could get that benefit another way.”

Patel also stresses that society in general should pay attention to more than just the cognitive benefits of mu-sic, but also the social and emotional developmental impact of music on young people. There are many aspects of the benefits of music that might well be impossible to measure scientifically, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable. “Doing something positive in a group setting with others, playing a part in making a connection to the rich mental lives of composers by play-ing their music, those are all wonderful things – they’re just hard to measure empirically,” he says. “It’s tough to say, ‘Because my child plays music, he or she is a better team player’ or ‘knows how to work with others,’ or ‘is more sensitive to art and beauty.’ These are things that are hard to measure, but they’re also very important. I do wish we could figure out a way to measure them, too.”

How Educators Can Help

Because this field of study is so new, scientifically speaking, and so many different precise areas of inquiry and study are being developed, both Dr. Kraus and Dr. Patel implore music edu-cators to become involved.

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“We spend a lot of time researching the effects of musical experience on the nervous system,” says Kraus. “Ed-ucators spend a lot of time thinking about how to best teach music. I try to learn what I can about some of the challenges that music educators face,

and my hope is that the people read-ing this article will find our website [www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu]. The best case scenario is that people will read this, be hungry for more, and try to inform themselves. I hope they look at the resources we have made available, as well as the biological ap-proach we use to get a sense of what it is that we’re measuring. And know that these publications in which our studies appear are really the world’s

best scientific journals – highly scru-tinized and peer reviewed. Everything else is just talk, but if people are look-ing for outcomes, and they’re looking for ways to build an argument, use these publications!”

Ani Patel takes educator involve-

ment even further, citing observa-tions from music educators as a source of inspiration for further sci-entific study. “Stories and anecdotes about how musical training has had an impact on other things that the child was doing in his or her school performance are very interesting to me,” he says. “In some sense, a lot of what I research are things that music educators believe anyway. The idea that music training has an impact

outside of music – that music train-ing doesn’t just make you a better musician but also impacts your other abilities – I think that resonates with a lot of people in the music commu-nity. But what they’re lacking is the mechanistic knowledge of how that actually works in the brain. Figuring that out is something that I’d love to do. There are also going to be things that don’t pan out.

“One of the lessons from basic sciences is that, yes, there are these really important connections to be made between music and other cog-nitive skills, but now we’re at the point where we need to say exactly what those skills are that are impact-ed, and how they’re impacted in the brain. For educators, if you see an interesting connection out there be-tween music and something else, let a researcher know because it could lead to something quite new and in-teresting – especially if it’s a connec-tion that might be less obvious.”

“In terms of an activity that seems to integrate across many different regions of the brain, music is really powerful.”

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By Eliahu Sussman

Dalouge Smith is an arts advocate and the San Di-ego Youth Symphony’s president and CEO, a role he has served since 2005. SBO recently spoke with Dalouge about this potentially revolutionary scientific endeavor with the goal of better understanding the project’s gen-esis, methodology, and some of the hypotheses that the people involved are hoping to prove.

School Band &Orchestra: Hi Dalouge! So, tell me about this fascinating study your young orchestra members are going to be participating in.

Dalouge Smith: Okay, but let me back up, first. When we started our El Sistema-inspired program, we

Upclose: Dalouge Smith

A Three-way PartnershipThe San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory is the home of an El

Sistema-inspired youth orchestra program.

Recently, the organization partnered with

researchers at the Neurosciences Institute

(NSI) and the University of California San

Diego (UCSD) Center for Human Devel-

opment to begin a landmark study with a

goal of measuring and understanding the

effects of music education on childhood

cognitive development. The study, which

goes under the acronym “SIMPHONY”

(Studying the Influence Music Performance

Has On Neurodevelopment in Youth) joins

the expertise of UCSD child cognitive de-

velopment experts, the NSI’s experts on the

brain and music, and the SDYS’s experi-

ence teaching young people music.

Dalouge Smith

UpCloseQ&A.indd 34 10/8/12 12:13 PM


actually had a bigger purpose in mind than just the one program we were start-ing. This is all a part of the larger effort and vision that the San Diego Youth Sym-phony and Conservatory has for rebuild-ing community support and investment in music education in the school system. Our decision was that we needed to be participating in five different activity ar-eas in order to achieve that goal.

The program is the first and most ob-vious. But we never wanted to say, “Okay, we’ve got some kids playing music,” and then stop with that. We never expected to scale the way a public school system could scale in terms of delivering music educa-tion system. Our efforts were to be a sort of catalyst and a demonstration of what can be achieved for students. We started our program, but then we’ve got these four other areas that are aimed at highlighting the benefits of music education, and ulti-mately, hopefully, culminating in commu-nity investment in music education.

The second aspect of the work was re-search and measurement. We knew that making the case to the community need-ed to be more than, “Aren’t these kids cute?” or, “Don’t these kids sound won-derful?” We needed to have academically aligned information, so we’re working with the school system to track the dif-ferences in the test scores and the atten-dance of the students in the music pro-gram, as compared to other students in the same grades and in the same schools. The cognitive research is another layer of that case-making work. We came to understand that there’s a limited body of research out there. Once we realized that we wanted to be involved in that, then it was a matter of finding partners and getting started.

The third activity area is partnership. We’re focused on compounding and aligning resources, not competing for re-sources. We’re looking at partnering with the schools themselves, but also social service partners, community partners, other arts organization partners, and so on. We’re looking to get as many differ-

ent resources aligned toward the same ef-forts as possible, so that we’re leading to-ward the last two activity areas, which are building community awareness of all of these outcomes, and then culminating in community action, whether that’s school board investment, corporate investment, large federal government grants, or what-ever other form that might take.

Once we knew we wanted to do some research, the first conversations that we

had were with people at the Neurosci-ences Institute. We were introduced to Dr. Ani Patel, who was working with the NSI at the time, and he was interested in what we were doing because he hadn’t ever worked specifically with kids and music. He had done a lot of work with music and the brain, of course. He made a connection with the UCSD Center for Human Development, which has a lot of research focused on childhood cogni-tive development. So basically, what we managed to do was bring three partners together, each of whom was bringing two pieces of a three-piece puzzle. We had the kids and music; the NSI had a history

of studying music and the brain; and the UCSD center had a history of studying children and the brain. By combining our three assets, expertise, and resources, we felt like we had a great partnership.

SBO: Could you tell me about some of the details of the study?

DS: There have now been two grants. The first grant that UCSD received was

a one-time, one-year grant to just gather data. It was a national grant, so they were the hub of a national effort to get kids to take a battery of cognitive tests and have the MRI brain scans in order to create a big data set. We actually got involved at the tail end of that project, so some of our kids were also tested under that. What UCSD and the NSI did was essentially piggyback some of the NSI testing mod-ules onto this already-funded effort. If a child came in and took all of the tests that were a part of the UCSD regimen, they might also take a few extra tests that were related to the NSI’s music regimen. That was the first effort.

“My instincts tell me that all of the lessons that we’re going to get [as a result of this study] are simply going to reinforce what we already know are good practices.”

Smith with members of the SDYS.



As that was winding down, the univer-sity also received a five-year longitudinal grant that is exclusive to our own commu-nity. They have approximately 100 slots, so the effort is to have several test groups: some of them will be music students; some of them will be martial arts stu-dents; and then there’s the control group, who don’t do either of those activities. That study is for kids from five to eight

years old. The bulk of the kids that we’re identifying for the music component at the moment are kindergarteners who are all receiving general music instruction in their kindergarten class, as a part of a school district, youth symphony, and fed-eral Promise Neighborhood grant project that’s part of our El Sistema-inspired effort.

SBO: Approximately how much mu-sic instruction will those students receive?

DS: They’re getting two hours per week. The last grant is one that the NSI received to add more testing batteries to this whole process. Part of what we’re hoping to be able to do, and we’re work-ing with the principal on that, is actually have some of the testing that’s done over a laptop occur at the school site, so that the only reason that the kids would need to go to the UCSD is for the MRI tests.

SBO: So the idea is to test them an-nually, track progress, and then mea-sure the impact with some degree of certainty?

DS: That’s right. There’s actually a fed-eral grant submitted by the school district and the social service partner, through the federal Promise Neighborhood pro-gram, and, hopefully, one of the elements of the grant is for comprehensive music instruction at this school site. So actu-ally every grade beginning in the middle of this school year would begin to have music instruction. The kids who enroll in the study would then continue to par-ticipate in music instruction throughout the course of the study. That’s part of our aim, as well.

SBO: That’s one way to keep kids in the music education program!

DS: It’s what I said early on, about finding all of the potential assets and resources that can be invested into the

same space for the same ends. We would never be a good candidate for this Promise Neighbor-hood grant, but having a social service partner and the school district create that partnership, we then are a resource to add this musical layer to it. We basically helped the school district de-sign what this school music program would look like, because they haven’t had any teachers in the district for almost 10 years.

SBO: No music in the schools for 10 years? That’s terrible!

DS: Oh, yeah. This is a standalone elemen-tary district. As the mu-sic instruction began to be cut, those few music educators who did re-

“Hopefully it will have a profound impact on the depth of value that individuals and com-munities place on the teaching of music.”

Dr. John Iversen of The Neurosciences Institute works with music students.


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main were pretty much on their own. There weren’t any centralized music co-ordinators or resources for them, so they dwindled away.

SBO: What do you expect to see in the results of this study, and what do you think the most practical imple-mentation of the results could be?

DS: There are a couple of things. There’s certainly advocacy. But as with all advocacy, you want to talk about whatev-er it is that is most important to the audi-ence that you’re addressing. So for some people, and let’s just say a random policy maker who happens to be a school board member, his priority might not be cogni-tive development. His priority would be educational results. So it may not be of use to try to sway him by saying, “Hey, look, you’re going to have children with better brains for having participated in this program if you get more music in the school.” Maybe that would work, maybe not. However, if we start talking about the implications of having kids with those types of brains – more creative or better language acquisition skills, more empathetic, having better social skills, or whatever findings that may come out of this – it may be that there’s going to be a business community member who’s going to say, “You know what? That’s ex-actly what I’m looking for. That’s exactly what I need in my workforce. You’ve got to put music in there because the kids will then be better suited for me and other employers.”

It really depends on what’s going to be important to the audience that we’re talk-ing to and aligning these results in con-versations in such a way that it resonates with the people we’re talking to.

SBO: Do you expect this research to impact pedagogy and how music in-struction is delivered?

DS: I don’t expect anything that dra-matic by any means. One of the things that is so important to realize about the cognitive research is that it’s a brand new frontier. I’m a layman, but as the layman sitting at the table with these researchers and hearing them talk about what ques-tions to ask and what not to ask – because that’s equally important, you can’t try to find everything – I believe that in the

Karl T. Bruhn was born in central Oregon in 1930. As a child, Bruhn went to see a doctor about an asthmatic condition. The doctor recom-mended that he take up a wind instrument, as this was widely accepted as a suc-cessful method for treating asthmatic children at the time. So Karl took up the clarinet and went on to become a virtuoso clarinet player. Bruhn had an extraordinarily successful career as a performer and band leader, and later as an executive in the music products industry. Along the way, his asthma was cured. Bruhn served as a senior vice president with Yamaha from around 1973 to 1989, and in the early ‘90s, laid the ground work for what would become, in 2005, the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute (www.yamahainstitute.org), one of the organizations that has been at the forefront of funding and encouraging research into music’s impact on overall health and happiness. Although Bruhn passed away in 2010, he is remembered as the “father of the music making and wellness movement.”

“The recreational music making (RMM) objective is what we love to talk about,” says Terry Lewis, a former executive vice president and senior vice presi-dent with Yamaha, and currently the chairman of the Yamaha Music and Well-ness Institute. “The mission is described formally as an ‘effective enjoyable stress reduction strategy within every person’s reach regardless of personal challenge. RMM ultimately affords unparalleled creative expression that unites our bodies, minds, and spirits.’ Our Institute is convinced that playing a musical instrument is an exceptionally healthy lifestyle strategy with measurable biological impact. However, to change social perception, research is needed.”

Music has been positively associated with a host of medical

benefits for thousands of years, from stress relief to asthma. An-

cient philosophers touted the benefits of listening to and per-

forming music on the mind, body, and the soul, and findings

in Western medicine have both verified and clarified many of

those claims. While the most directly relevant area of research

into the medical impact of music for K-12 music educators fo-

cuses on cognitive development (how music affects the skills

and capabilities of developing minds in relation to learning

and scholastic aptitude), this neurobiological focus is just one

of many avenues of the impacts of music being explored by

the scientific community.


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short term the data that is developed and the learning that can be achieved from the data is going to be very biologically based, initially. It’s going to be even challenging to correlate “one thing happened and so x, y, and z was the direct result in the brain.” Right now, my impression is that they’re looking for patterns and they’re looking for indicators. And as that process gets refined over multiple studies and multiple years of studies, then maybe there will begin to be some identifiers where they say, “Ah, maybe these kinds of results will accrue and occur.”

My instincts tell me that all of the lessons that we’re going to get are simply going to reinforce what we already know are good practices. We already know that music as a social experi-ence has powerful benefits that go beyond just the learning of an instrument. We know that anecdotally. All of us who have been working in this area have known this for years, and now there’s this data set that says, “Hey look – it’s true!” Well, we al-ready knew it was true, but it’s good to know that other people now have a reference point because they aren’t working with it as closely as we are. So I think that it’s very possible that we’re going to get the same affirmations.

Pedagogy, meanwhile, is such a unique thing. There are so many different approaches classroom to classroom. You can give 10 music teachers the same method book and they’re all going to be using it differently. So I tend to think that, certainly at least in the short term, it’s not going to have a profound im-pact on the way that music is taught. Hopefully, though, it will have a profound impact on the depth of value that individuals and communities place on the teaching of music.

SBO: It seems that many researchers in this field tend to be extraordinarily cautious about drawing any firm conclusions before all of the data is in.

DS: Right, and I think it’ll be a long time until they do con-firm what music educators are hoping to hear. That’s why I say that I think the scientists are still figuring out how to read the data. They’re hesitant to even make any proclamations because it’s a new frontier. Brain science is so contemporary that it’s be-ing invented as we speak – the way they do the work, what the protocols for the research are – all of it. And when I say contem-porary, physics has a tradition that goes back hundreds of years; brain science is a couple decades.

SBO: Sure, the technology that allows scientists to scan and measure brain activity is quite new. At the same time, these connections that are being investigated with these new tools are some of the same questions that have been asked for centuries or even thousands of years.

DS: That’s why I’m not expecting any revolutionary data. What I’m expecting is affirmation, but I think it’ll be a long time in coming. The data will be of meaning to some people, but not other people. Hopefully, to the people for whom the data has meaning, ideally, it will reinforce the value for music and music education. We may get to the end of all of this, look at the data and say, “Oh, bummer! There doesn’t seem to be any real benefit to all of this.” In which case, we won’t use that in our story telling and our advocacy efforts! But that’s why we’re involved in this project.

In addition to the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute, or-ganizations like NAfME, Supportmusic.com, and the NAMM Foun-dation continue to be powerful players in this field, both as resources for anyone interested in learning more about

the positive impacts that music can have on health and well-being, as well as entities that encourage and fund ongoing research. Each has online newsrooms where advocates can learn about the latest developments and findings.

In one example of the extraordinary power of music, a recent documentary titled “Alive Inside” looks into the impact that music can have on the elderly. In this film, music is seen aiding memory, sharpening minds, and even, as one article on ABC News purports, “bringing patients with Alzheimer’s dis-ease back to life.” Featuring renowned author, neurologist, and music researcher Oliver Sacks, whose 2008 publication Musicophilia is widely regarded as one of the preeminent ex-plorations of music and the brain, “Alive Inside” follows Sacks and social worker Dan Cohen as they work with patients in a nursing home, demonstrating the “Music and Memory” the-ory, that personalized music can re-kindle dormant thoughts, memories, and feelings in the brain. Several studies on mu-sic’s impact on Alzeimer’s disease are ongoing at premier research laboratories such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Cleveland Clinic.

Music Therapy is another avenue through which music has been directly applied to health and wellness. Music Therapy is a field that gained footing in the first half of the 20th century, as medical professionals noted the impact that music could have on soldiers coping with war-related trauma. Per music-therapy.org, “Community musicians of all types, both ama-teur and professional, went to Veterans hospitals around the country to play for the thousands of veterans suffering both physical and emotional trauma from the wars. The patients’ notable physical and emotional responses to music led the doctors and nurses to request the hiring of musicians by the hospitals. It was soon evident that the hospital musicians needed some prior training before entering the facility and so the demand grew for a college curriculum.” Michigan State founded the first Music Therapy major in the world in 1944. To-day, more than 60 four-year colleges and universities around the U.S. offer that area of focus.

Those involved with music are fully aware of the plethora of impacts that music making can have on health, the brain, the body, and overall well being. Finally, after centuries of theorizing and observation, modern medical research is vali-dating and expanding on this broad, intuitive understanding.



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Part 2: Musical Resources

Five Progressive Chorales for Developing Bands Brian Balmages; FJH Music Company Inc., 2008. Publisher Grade: 1-2.5

Appropriate for bands playing grade 1-2.5 music, these chorales offer band directors the opportunity to work on ensemble sound, intonation, and phrasing. The chorales include various dynamic and tempo markings, as well as other musical elements that are introduced throughout. There are two mallet parts, one easier and one more advanced, as well as an aux-iliary percussion part. Also included is a piano part, which can be used in many different ways. The cho-rales are of varying difficulty levels and their intend-ed use is with beginning through advanced middle

school students; the first chorale only uses six notes.

Part I of this article, which appeared in SBO’s Septem-

ber 2012 issue, contained a list of books and literature

guides for the middle or junior high school band direc-

tor. The second half of this guide contains musical resources for

use in the band rehearsal, such as warm-ups, chorales, and oth-

er specific technique-building exercises. Most of the resources

contained in this document have been written since the year

2000; however some published prior to that date were includ-

ed if deemed significantly appropriate by the compiler. Musical

resources are identified with publisher-assigned grades when

available.

By Theresa Hoover

Guide for the Middle School Band Director

Guest Editorial

An Annotated Bibliography of Books for the Middle School Band Director, Part II

Five Minutes a Day #1: A Warm-Up and Tuning Routine Andy Clark; C. L. Barnhouse Company, 1991.Publisher Grade: 1.5

Taking up only five minutes of rehears-al time, this routine is divided into three movements intended to easily and quickly begin a rehearsal. The first movement is a short chorale in concert Eb major. The second movement is a key study and tech-nique exercise, moving through six major keys. The third movement is to assist with

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These warm-up exercises are in-tended to help young bands learn the correct style of playing marches.

Through 10 exercises, students have the opportunity to work on key chang-es (as often present in the trio), play-ing and understanding the differences between staccato and accented notes, playing syncopated rhythms, and play-ing chromatic figures that are often found in march melodies. Instructions on how to use the march warm ups are included in the conductor score. Mal-let, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, and cymbal parts are included.



seven major and four minor keys spe-cifically written for the middle level band. Each key set contains drills and chord progressions (moving through whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes) and leads up to a full chorale setting based on the studied chord pro-gression. There are also instrument-specific daily exercises, working on strength and flexibility in the brass, technical facility in the woodwinds, and rudiments for the percussionists. Contains individual conductor and student books.





Band Technique Step By Step Robert Elledge and Donald Haddad: Neil A. Kjos Music Company, 1992.Publisher Grade: 1

Perfect for middle school and junior-





As part of the Essential Musician-ship series, this book was written for intermediate ensembles to be used as a daily exercises. The concepts are presented in developmental order and are first introduced individually be-fore combined into more challenging exercises. Each exercise includes both goals for the students and goals for the director. The book is divided into



ten units including: Ensemble Sound, Rhythm and Tonguing Exercises, In-tervals Moving Up and Down, Pick-Up Exercises, Learning a Major Scale, Ma-jor Scale Exercises, Learning a Chro-matic Scale, Chromatic Scale Exercises in Fifths, Rhythm and Tonguing Ex-ercises with Triplets, and Combining Eighth and Sixteenth Notes. There is also additional information in the back of the conductor’s score regarding pos-ture, breathing, articulation, and vari-ous playing concepts. The percussion book includes parts for mallets, snare drum, bass drum, and auxiliary. There are alternate parts written for horn and clarinet to be used when range is an issue. Contains individual conductor and student books.

Directional Warm-Ups for BandBrian Harris; Bandroom.com Publica-tions, 2009.

This warm-up book focuses on the development of three types of skills: Horizontal Playing Skills – intonation, tone quality, and melodic nuance; Ver-

tical Playing Skills – precise ensemble playing; and Depth of Playing Skills – fundamentals using long tones, scales, and concept targets. Written for ad-

vanced middle school bands, the first part of the book contains 16 units, each dedicated to a major or minor key, with both scale studies and etudes to work on the horizontal skills.

The second part of the book con-tains 20 traditional four-part chorales to focus on the vertical skills. The book also includes rhythm patterns, a piano

keyboard diagram, and a glossary. The percussion book includes parts for snare drum and bass drum; there are separate books for timpani and mallet percussion. More information about this book can be found at www.ban-droom.com/BcP/Music/DWU/DWU.html. Contains individual conductor and student books.

Twelve Chorales for Developing BandsQuincy Hilliard; FJH Music Company, Inc., 2001. Publisher Grade: 3

These 12 short chorales are intend-ed to help students improve balance, intonation, and tone quality. Rated “medium-easy” by one source and Grade 3 by the publisher, the chorales are playable for middle school ensem-bles. The chorales feature four major (F, B♭, E♭, A♭) and three minor keys (D, C, F) as well as one that has a C center. Percussion parts are included for mal-lets, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, and auxiliary, though not all parts are utilized on all chorales.

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Syncopation Builders for Developing Bands. Timothy Johnson; Curnow Music Press, 2007.Publisher Grade: 1-2

These exercises are a great way to introduce and reinforce syncopated rhythms to students. Within each ex-ercise there is a unison syncopated se-quence, a unison melodic sequence, and then a short composition to help rein-force those elements. Snare drum, bass drum, mallet, and auxiliary percussion parts are included. Assigned to grade 1-2, these exercises are appropriate for middle and junior high school bands.

Warm-Ups and BeyondTimothy Loest and Kevin Lepper; FJH Music Company Inc., 2003.

Warm-Ups and Beyond is a compre-hensive rehearsal book written spe-cifically for developing bands. Part 1 contains basic warm-ups in ten keys (five major and their relative minors)

that are ideal for younger players, as they use a very limited range. Part 2 contains advanced warm-ups, in the same major and minor keys that in-clude scales and arpeggios, chord/balance exercises, chromatics, cho-rales, and more. Part 3 is intended to help students practice key changes. Scale exercises and familiar melo-dies are written with modulations a perfect fourth away from the original key. Part 4 begins with an explana-tion of articulations and has ten ar-ticulation etudes, using the same ma-jor and minor keys. Part 5 contains flexibility exercises to help students improve tone, range, and endurance. The book concludes with a glossary of terms, symbols, and techniques

and then scales for individual study. The percussion section is integrated throughout with exercises focusing on sticking, rudiments, and acces-sory techniques. Contains individual conductor and student books.

Fourteen Weeks to a Better Band: Book 1.Roger Maxwell; C. L. Barnhouse Co., 1974.

This book is a “unison approach for reading improvement.” Geared towards junior high students (grades 7-9), the book takes a methodical ap-proach to reinforcing the understand-ing of 14 basic rhythmic figures. It is intended for the bands to study one rhythm per week, starting with eighth notes and progressing through cut time and compound meter rhythms. Within each week’s rhythmic figure there is an example of the rhythm, an exercise devoted to the rhythm, and then a related study that also utilizes the rhythm in a “fun” way. Week 14 includes major, minor, and chromatic scales, as well as a warm-up chorale. The percussion book contains parts for snare drum and bass drum; the snare drum typically plays rhythms in unison with the winds (with added flams and rolls) while the bass drum plays more traditional bass drum parts. Contains individual conductor and student books.

Great Warm-Ups for Young BandBruce Pearson; Neil A. Kjos Music Com-pany, 2000.Publisher Grade: 1-2

Called a “variety pack of warm-ups,” this set of exercises contains a number of different studies to im-prove a band’s musicianship. The exercises included are: Chop Build-ers, Technique Builders, Articulation Builders, Ear Trainers, Tuning Exer-cises, Concert Scales, Chorales, and more. Though they are rated “easy” by one source, and assigned grade 1-2 by the publisher, the authors claim the exercises are playable for bands playing “very easy,” through “medium easy” music. Snare drum, bass drum, auxiliary, mallet, and tim-pani parts are included, as well as a piano part for rehearsal use.

Technicises for Band: Putting the Pieces Together. Jim Probasco and Dan Meeks; Heritage Music Press, 2000. Publisher Grade: 3

The introduction says it all: “an inno-vated, comprehensive ensemble-based tuning, warm-up and technique book.” The book is organized by key: eight ma-jor keys and their relative minors. There are 12 scale-based exercises written for each key, beginning with a half-note scale and progressing to more complex rhythms and intervals. Exercises are writ-ten in score-form and easily combinable to allow for many options. Several cho-rales are included, all based on Bach cho-rales, as well as chromatic scales and ma-jor key arpeggios. The percussion book includes parts for snare drum (tacet dur-ing most chorales) and there is a separate mallet percussion book. The conductor score gives brief suggestions on how to utilize the method. The publisher has as-signed these exercises grade 3, but they are ideal for bands playing music rated “easy” through “medium-easy.” Contains individual conductor and student books.

First Band Clinic: A Warm-Up and Fun-damental Sequence for Concert BandRobert W. Smith; Belwin- Mills Pub-lishing Corp., 2005Publisher Grade: 1

Written by well-known band com-poser Robert W. Smith, the First Band Clinic consists of four warm-up exercise sets to be used during the concert band rehearsal. The exercises are divided into four categories, the first being Tone, which contains a long tone exercise. The second section is dedicated to Technique Development. It contains lip flexibility exercises for the brass, finger dexterity exercises for the woodwinds, and stick-ing exercises for percussion. The third section, Theory and Composition, con-tains pentascales, chord progressions, and compositions opportunities. The fi-nal section is a Chorale. The introduction to the conductor score has several notes and suggestions on utilizing the warm-ups, as well as a sample lesson plan. The warm-ups were assigned grade 1 by the publisher and are playable by young middle school bands. Percussion parts are included for mallets, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, and auxiliary.



Developing Band Clinic: A Warm-Up and Fundamental Sequence for Concert BandRobert W. Smith; Belwin-Mills Publish-ing Corp., 2005. Publisher Grade: 2

This set of warm-ups is a continuation of Robert W. Smith’s First Band Clinic. The exercises are broken into four sections: Tone, Technique, Theory and Composi-tion, and Chorale. Intended to help stu-dents develop a solid fundamental base, the author suggests these warm-ups should be used regularly in the concert band rehearsal. The introduction to the conductor score has several notes and instructions on utilizing the warm-ups, as well as a sample lesson plan. The warm-ups were assigned grade 2 by the publisher and are playable by advanced middle school bands. Percussion parts are included for mallets, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, and auxiliary.

Three Chorales for Young BandKeith Terrett; Jalen Publishing, 2008. Publisher Grade: Easy

This collection of three chorales was written for young bands to work on phrasing, balance, and intonation. “Eter-nal Father, Strong to Save,” “Morning Has Broken,” and “Nearer My God, to Thee” all have parts written for percus-sion, including mallets, snare drum, bass drum, and auxiliary.

Three Welsh Chorales for Young BandKeith Terrett; Jalen Publishing, 2009. Publisher Grade: Easy

“All Through the Night,” “Hyfrydole,” and “Cwm Rhondda” are the three cho-rales included in this set. The chorales were arranged for young to intermediate

level band. Parts are included for mallets, snare drum, bass drum, and auxiliary percussion.

In its entirety, this guide equips mid-dle and junior-high school band direc-tors with resources for all aspects of their concert band programs. The warm-ups, chorales, rhythm exercises, tuning ex-ercises, and various other technique-building drills listed here will help build and maintain successful middle school bands.

Theresa Hoover is an active conductor, performer, and educator. Currently Ms. Hoover is the band di-rector at St. Joseph School and The Holy Child Acad-emy, both in Southeastern PA. Ms. Hoover directs the Chester County Youth Wind Ensemble and in 2012 was the guest conductor for the Archdiocesan Elementary Honor Band.

Ms. Hoover holds a B.S. in Music Education from the Pennsylvania State University and a M.M. in In-strumental Wind Conducting from West Chester Uni-versity, studying with Dr. Andrew Yozviak and Dr. Gregory Martin.


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This collection contains 32 trios ar-ranged or composed by Larry Clark in a variety of styles from classical to folk and includes some new original works as well. Each piece is playable by any

combination of three wind instruments. Trios are a great way to learn how to play in a chamber music setting, and this unique collection gives players the opportunity to do it with anyone else that plays a wind instrument, making for a wide variety of combinations of instruments. Compatible Trios for Winds is especially useful in a school setting where students are eager to play mu-sic with friends. Includes tunes such as “The Irish Washerwoman,” Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 5,” Larry Clark’s original “Harvest Moon,” and more.www.carlfishcer.com

Trumpet Hanon from Hal Leonard

The 75 exercises in Trumpet Hanon will help players build their endurance and flexibility, challenging them in fun, interesting, and methodical ways. Au-thor Scott Barnard thoroughly covers

topics including articulation, dynamics, range, breath management, finger and lip flexibility, double and triple tongu-ing, scales and arpeggios, harmonic progressions, transposition, ornamen-tation, glissandos and falls, 5/4 and 7/4 time signatures, and more.www.halleonard.com �

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Because the panels also work to scatter sound waves, they enable the creation of a space with clear, pleasant sound and minimal acoustic interference. This remarkably slim design also means that creating a dedicated music room no longer requires major in-stallation work; simply attach the Acoustic Condition-ing Panels to the walls with the fittings provided.www.yamaha.com �

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Con-ducting Music from Alpha

This guidebook gives readers tips on leading any type of ensemble in any mu-sical genre and offers a be-hind-the-scenes look at what a conductor does both on and off the podium. Author Michael Miller, a composer and arranger and graduate of the Jazz Studies Program at Indiana University, offers simple suggestions for read-ing, researching and marking up a score and gives advice on leading effective rehears-als so everyone gets and stays on the same page.

The book offers essential information on working a baton and assuming the proper stance on the podium as well as lessons for learning all the beat patterns, from the basics to advanced meters and subdivided beats. Miller gives advice on interpreting a piece and mastering tempo, dynamics, phrasing, cues, accents, and even unmetered music. The book serves as a primer on differ-ent types of conducting, from jazz bands to operas to video game soundtracks and also features insightful interviews with today’s professional conductors.www.idiotsguides.com �

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Several new models have been add-ed to expand the Nady’s MGT system’s numerous applications and instru-mentation. In addition to the MGT-16 plug-in system for guitar and bass, the new Micro Wireless (MW) Series now includes the MHT-16 (for brass and woodwinds), the WHM-16 headset system, and the Link-16 for micro-phones. All models are available with either the compact, portable “pedal style” MGT-16 receiver (powered by DC adapter or AA batteries), or the “pocket size” MRX-16 receiver (AA battery operated only). All systems feature 16 user selectable PLL frequen-cies for interference-free operation, up to 250’ operating range, and ASC™ (Auto-Sync Channel) infrared wire-less download that pairs transmitter to selected receiver frequency for quick,


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mitter clips directly onto the bell of the horn, the compact and comfort-able WH-16 headset transmitter fits snugly on the back of the head, and the LK-16 plug-in transmitter easily converts wired dynamic microphones to wireless. With a built-in audio con-nector, no cable or bodypack transmit-ter is required for any of the models. The MW Series’ selectable channels fall within the TV channels-free UHF 902-928MHz band and the systems are available with any combination of transmitter/receiver. www.nady.com

Dixon Inventor Series Drop Clutch

Dixon Drums & Hardware recently announced the debut of the Dixon In-ventor Series, starting with the Mag-netic Drop Clutch and the Ultimate Clutch Combo.

This two piece clutch is joined by magnets and attaches to the top hi-hat cymbal and pull rod like any conven-tional clutch. With little effort, the

player gently strikes the disk causing the clutch to pivot causing the top hi-hat to drop closed without missing a beat. This frees up the player’s left foot for double bass or auxiliary percussion. To return to normal play, simply step on the hi-hat pedal to re-engage. In addition, each clutch includes an op-tional “wash control” devise to control the spacing between the cymbals in the closed position for greater versatility.

The Inventor Ultimate Clutch Com-bo includes all of the above plus a trip arm to trigger the release of the clutch without committing a single stroke. www.stlouismusic.com

Marimba Master Class on ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’ from Meredith Music

“Reflection on the Nature of Water” has become one of the standard 4-mal-let marimba solos in the contemporary marimba literature. This Master Class, written by the person it was composed for, Dan Druckman (the composer’s son), provides a unique insight into the complexities of this monumental work. Druckman, the associate prin-cipal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic, presents an analysis that includes exploration of expres-sive possibilities of the marimba in a unique way, a hands-on and “nuts-and-bolts” approach to understanding and performing the piece, applica-

tions of mallet choices and technique (strokes, articulation, and phrasing) to have as wide a sonic palette as pos-sible, and correction of mistakes in the score (mostly accidentals or rhythmic errors). www.meredithmusic.com

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Hands-On Advice for the Clarinet

“For beginning clarinet player hand position: relax your hands and drop them to your side. The fingers will naturally be curved, maintain this as you hold the clarinet. Place the right thumb under the thumb rest and center it where the base of the thumbnail and skin meet. The left thumb can face in the ‘one o’clock’ position, ready to press the register key and hold the thumb key down at the same time. Any fingers that are not being used should be floating, not flying above the keys/tone holes. Pinkies should stay in front of the clarinet and be prepared to play, just like the other fingers.”

Noel Esquivel Jr.Kelly Lane Middle School

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