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NEWS! Vandoren Announces Call for Auditions for Emerging Artists Vandoren Masters Mouthpiece Launch Wildly Successful Musicians Love Vandoren’s New MO Building a High School Instrumental Program from Scratch By RONALD E. KEARNS Whether you are a new teacher, veteran teacher in a new school or someone trying to build and maintain a school instr ...

Getting the Job Master Class How to Apply for Your First Music Education Job Hear directly from Music Ed. graduate, Anthony Messina, as he explains how he searches, applies, prepares, and interviews for teaching positions around the country in search of a job. » Download the PowerPoint Presentation Here » Download Interview Questions Her ...

Educator's View Point by Donald DeRoche, Ph.D. "Only a few of our students will pursue music as a career, but all of them will be well served if we can help them achieve a feeling of self-confidence." Help your students learn not only music but a sense of accomplishment. “Only a few of our students will pursue music as a career, but all ...

Just Another Day at the Office How to get better results in concerts, auditions and other high-pressure performing situations by Jon Gorrie Introduction "Just another day at the office..." was originally written for classical musicians as an aid in preparing for auditions and other solo performances. However, the information in this article ca ...

Great Teaching: Something We All Should Aspire To by David Branson To be a great teacher is a gift that continues to be received by students for a life time. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~William Arthur Ward The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. ~Ma ...

Recruiting and Retention by Gary Gribble Instrumental music begins in our school system in sixth grade. It seems that more kids are getting "hooked" on multiple activities at earlier ages than ever before. We have summer sports and arts camps for kids as young as four years of age. The potential downside for our music program is that the kids be ...

Band Blast Off DVD Launch Your Band Program » Watch the Band Breakdown Rap Here   Band Blast Off with Hosts Deanna Swoboda and Lance LaDuke is a revolutionary new DVD that will change the way band directors recruit students to join their music programs. This video is a valuable tool that will augment a band director's ability to recruit and wi ...

Taking Private Lessons Norlan Bewley One of the best things you can do as a student is to take private lessons with a qualified teacher. You can receive individual help from someone who plays your instrument well and has experience working with students. Ask your music director to recommend a good teacher for you. School programs often have a list of priva ...

Learn To Practice – Step 7: Learn At Your Own Pace Norlan Bewley No matter how well you practice your instrument and music, some things will always be harder for you and some things will always be easier for you. There will always be someone you know who can easily do what you find hard. There will always be someone else who finds what you do easily ...

Learn To Practice – Step 6: Keep Going! Norlan Bewley Now that you have practiced your music using all of the first 5 Steps, you feel ready to play the music all the way through without stopping. When you do, KEEP GOING no matter what happens! Even though you have used all of the 5 Steps and really practiced well, you will still make some mistakes. D ...

Learn To Practice – Step 5: Intelligent Repetition Norlan Bewley When you practice your music in smaller sections, it is easier to focus your attention in a concentrated way to learn the section. It may take you several times through the section of music to finally play it correctly. Many people stop at this point thinking they have learned it, only ...

Learn To Practice – Step 4: Practice In Bite-Size Pieces Norlan Bewley As you practice your music, divide it into smaller sections or "bite-size pieces". The more difficult the music, the smaller the sections need to be. On one song you might work on each section from rehearsal number or letter to the next. Another might be in 4 measure sec ...

Learn To Practice – Step 3: Rhythm Positions Norlan Bewley Now that you know the rhythm and the positions, you are going to practice putting them together. You are going to teach the rhythm to your positions so you can move them to the right position at the right time. This sounds very simple, but it is harder to do than it looks. To do rhythm positi ...

Learn To Practice – Step 2: Identify The Notes Norlan Bewley Before you play your music, go through and identify each note by the position number and the Low-Middle-High for that position. Low Bb is 1 Low, F is 1 Middle, upper Bb is 1 High, etc. (see Low-Middle-High Warmup). When you identify the notes, you must say them out loud. This musical exampl ...

Learn To Practice – Step 1: Say In Rhythm, Stay In Rhythm Norlan Bewley When you first practice your music, you need to know how the rhythm sounds before you do anything else. In music, everything meets at the rhythm. This means that everything you must do to play music on an instrument you must learn to do in rhythm at a steady tempo. The first step ...

Tips to Choose the Right Instrument for Your Child Ruth BonettiDoes your child resist practice? Before we dismiss them as lazy or unmusical, perhaps there are some legitimate reasons we can blame the instrument? Some students may simply be incompatible with the instrument chosen. Many abandoned instruments cultivate mould and dust under beds because they we ...

The McBeth Inverted Triangle Meets the Stereo Knob By Oliver C. Boone Early in my career as a band director, I learned a valuable lesson in the art of disguising intonation in my concert band. While teaching at a small school in the panhandle of Florida, I invited a veteran clinician to work my concert band. He introduced me to the concept of the McBeth In ...

Selecting the Best Music for a Festival by Oliver Boone and William Hickman Selecting the right music is one of the most difficult aspects of the job of band director. This is obviously where the rubber meets the road when it comes to the front line picture of the job because our music, and how it sounds, is how we are valued in the profession. Selecting t ...

Differing Priorities William Boartfield In my multiple years of teaching band, on an elementary and secondary level, I have determined one of the biggest causes of f r u s t r a t i o n for band directors and students is: different priorities In an effort to solve this problem I have listed the student’s priorities vs. my priorities for your observa ...

Attitude Oliver C. Boone, Ph.D. If anyone were to ask me what I believed to be the greatest single factor that would determine the success of any individual, I would reply without a moment’s hesitation, attitude. To clarify this statement and to give attitude a behavioral definition, we can define attitude: “A predisposition to perform, to perc ...