Why have these these students enrolled in our training band?  What are their expectations and dreams? What is their future potential?  And, what do you wish to both share and achieve with them? What do you wish for them to learn and experience today?  How can we know for sure that our targets have been achieved? Do they understand our learning strategies, and can they demonstrate the skills, which we are introducing and reinforcing?  What hopes and dreams do we hold for them? What musical knowledge and technical skill base will we need to share and foster, required for consistent, rewarding and recognisable growth? How will the mastery of knowledge and skills aid in maintaining their continued growth, commitment and engagement until we have transferred the motivation and learning into their hands?  "All learning under compulsion has no hold on the mind" Plato. 

In fact, the above questions should assist in focusing our thinking, preparation and forward planning, which, in turn should provide the rationale validating the educational purpose for instrumental music education. 

One needs to have a clear understanding of how people learn, what motivates learning and personal engagement within the learning environment.  Remember: human beings generally acquire most of their knowledge and skill bases through the process of mindful repetition, and because they become convinced that they want a particular knowledge and 'skill base' in direct relation to the ‘rewards’ to be gained from their on-going ‘investment’.  I suggest that we will need to provide our students with personal, observable and recognisable aural and visible measurements for the targets we, and ultimately they, learn to choose.  We will have to demonstrate how to set the targets and how to determine whether or not they have been achieved.

However... There is more to good teaching than academic philosophy, rhetorical questions and lofty ideals.  What are the specific teaching skills and knowledge we will need that will empower these beginners to succeed? "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you." John Lennon

"Teachers are the mediators who provide or fail to provide the essential experiences that permit students to release their awesome potential..." Acaro 

Rehearsals must move forward or they will stall.  To keep the pace of a rehearsal moving forward one needs to know what they wish to accomplish today, including at least two or three goals to successfully achieve. The rehearsal formula is often accompanied by stories, analogies and metaphors, which assist in clarifying, explaining and reinforcing the process of skill development, self motivated learning and music making.  Each and every rehearsal needs to promote/use successful models in how to employ personal problem identification and problem solving, ultimately leading to rewarding home practice.  The rehearsal needs to demonstrate how one can successfully use rewarding learning strategies, and experience successful outcomes in every rehearsal!  This then promotes the kind of transferable learning, which can be used to solve tomorrow’s problem!

We need to project and plan for the correct responses we wish to fashion and form in our students, both musically and socially.  Therefore regularly model the correct response you wish to introduce, or reinforce.  Rehearsals should be more than exercises in 'director led' error detection and correction.  They must lead to the personal recognition of both successful response and error, along with the application of effective problem-solving strategies, as demonstrated within each rehearsal.

Avoid the use of ‘mindless rote repetition’ in rehearsing study material and/or concert repertoire.  Instead, consider the 'mindful repetition' strategy.  ‘Mindful repetition’, or the 'process approach'  to human learning works in this way.  One begins with a model of the appropriate response you wish to introduce, or reinforce. The student then tries to reproduce the correct model. They then compare their attempt to reproduce the model, making adjustments and trying again. The process is repeated until they arrive at a satisfactory reproduction of the original model. The successful reproduction is then repeated at least three times to lock in the correct response, gradually increasing the speed to the correct tempo. There is no substitute in human learning for 'time on task'.  Patience with the principle of focused attention and delayed gratification holds the key in obtaining effective, lasting results.  In effect, each rehearsal becomes a lesson in demonstrating rewarding and successful individual practice routines.

However, it is important to recognise when we have pushed our students ‘over the edge’, or when have we followed a wrong lead. Learn to read your ensemble's ‘body and sound' feedback for the visible and aural cues, without becoming fixated with our preloaded agenda of perfection at too early a stage.  Keep your initial goals achievable, and learn to use the 5-minute goal. 

More on this in the next installment!    

What do we know about the challenges of teaching beginning band?  What are the issues, obstacles and challenges we face?  What will we need to get started?

“We don’t often know what we don’t know.” anon

I suggest that we need tools, such as reputable method books, additional teaching materials and comprehensive pedagogical training, which includes an in-depth understanding of the instrument families and their specific and unique details such as proper hand position, posture and embouchure/mouthpiece/reed placement; basic instrument mechanics, along with sound production and breathing considerations.  

We will also need people skills, organisational skills, consistency, curiosity, patience/impatience, confidence in our knowledge and methodology, and finally passion for our students, music, and teaching.

Vision/Purpose:

We may have to re-calibrate our thinking with regards to how we were taught (for we will teach as we were taught), and how we have taught, or seen beginning band taught in the past. If we haven't already, we must realise that our beginning band programme/ensemble is an investment in 'futures': both theirs and ours.  We cannot afford to sacrifice the scope and sequence of the weekly systematic rehearsal-training programme for short term, questionable feel-good performance targets.  A piece-meal, performance oriented approach to rehearsals will generally leave our students with an incomplete understanding of music performance, as well as a limited skill base. These students in fact, constitute our future advanced ensemble members... or someone else's.  How we train them will affect their musical future enjoyment and relative success for years to come! It is therefore our responsibility to introduce and reinforce effective rewarding generic learning strategies, skill-development and personal discipline, leading to personal ownership and engagement with their personal learning.

We must be committed to igniting a passion for music through sharing the intrinsic joy and pleasure of successful music-making. When Leonard Bernstein asked the great maestro Serge Koussevitzky to teach him how to conduct, Maestro Koussevitzky replied, "First, prove to me that you love music!"  We need to be able to convey to our students the musical passion that originally inspired us.

My personal teaching experience over the past 40 years convinces me of the importance of following the sequential learning process found in ours, or our department's choice of a beginning band method book along with the conviction and perseverance to finish the book.  Of the many available, I have found the “Traditions of Excellence”, “Essential Elements”, Accent on Achievement or “Sound Innovations” to be the most widely accepted methods available. Ed List's research, teaching strategies and writings, including "The Musical Mind of the Creative Conductor" from the “Creative Director” series continues to be effective in affirming and validating of my personal teaching style.  Other authors and texts I have found relevant and supportive are as follows:

     Daniel Kohut - "Instrumental Music Pedagogy", "Musical Performance" 
     Robert Duke – “Intelligent Music Teaching”
     James Jordan - "Evoking Sound" and "The Musician's Soul"
     Elsa Findlay - "Rhythm and Movement: Applications of Dalcroze Eurhythmics and Dalcroze"
     Virginia Hoge Mead - "Eurhythmics in Today's Music Classroom"
     Rudolf Laban "Movement Studies"
     Timothy Galway - "Inner Game of Tennis"
     Neil Postman - "Teaching as a Subversive Activity".

For meaningful and rewarding musical experiences to take place, students will first need to be provided opportunity to pursue personal ownership of their learning from day one.   "When a man finds out what he wants to know, well, that's the beginning of education" Duke Ellington.  Transferring learning ownership, means preparing each rehearsal as a lesson on ‘how to practice at home’ with the accompanying rewards experienced in rehearsal.

Stay tuned in for the next installment…! 

Practice Strategies

Monte Mumford

These practice points have been put together to assist in sharing the importance of developing an effective  personal practice routine. This focus will aid in acquiring improved technical and rhythmic skill vocabulary, along with the musical development necessary for successful and rewarding musical growth, as well as improved participation in your ensemble performance.  

This process should also lead to a better personal engagement and preparation with solo and ensemble repertoire, which will serve several ends. It can prevent the loss of precious rehearsal time in addressing individual parts during rehearsal, allowing for more time to develop ensemble unity skills necessary for music interpretation and stylistic expression. It can release time for exploring additional repertoire for exams and preparing for ensemble concerts more quickly.  More importantly, it can assist in obtaining more effective generic, transferable learning skills providing for more personal ownership and accountability for learning in general. 

Acquiring an effective practice routine does not lead to an educational dead end, as one may suppose.  On the contrary, it is a generic learning process/strategy which can be applied universally to both skill and knowledge acquisition of any field or activity in which we are involved.  Trust me in this; the system works, and the lifelong learning implications are enormous!

7 Point Practice Technique – Remember: Before we can perfect a passage we need to learn it first!  Learning is about becoming familiar with the target: Practice is about perfecting; consistently achieving the target.  This requires patient, mindful, purposeful and reflective repetition.  

·       Scan:  Check both ‘key’ and ‘time’ signatures, also taking note of tempo and expressive markings, unfamiliar, pitches, rhythms and unfamiliar finger/slide/stick/bow patterns.

·       Research:  Check out unfamiliar rhythms applying the counting and sub-division strategies for clear understanding.  Check out unfamiliar pitches with reference to a fingering chart. Look up for alternative fingerings/slide positions/sticking/bowing patterns.

·       Play:  Play through the section-excerpt in question slowly until you stumble, or as slowly as you can play the entire passage accurately.  Never play a passage any faster than you can play the most difficult portion of the passage correctly.  Slow practice is always the key to mastery!

·       Stop:  Stop and identify the problem/s - challenges.

·       Breakdown:  Use strategies given in your rehearsal or private lesson to simplify the section.  Don’t forget to ask your section leader, private teacher or your musical director if you lack a strategy for solving the problem.

·       Perfect:  Address the passage by playing it slowly and correctly at least 3, or more times in a row.  Then gradually increase the speed until it is at the correct performance tempo.

·       Context:  Now put the passage under question back in the musical context, now starting at the beginning of the larger section, playing past the passage under consideration.  Repeat the process another three or more times, and now you have mastery!

Key Point:  When practicing we must learn to listen in three ways.

•  Critically - What am I doing correctly – What do I need to improve?

•  Analytically – What strategy can I employ to improve the passage?

•  Patiently – Take time to master the passage: mindful repetition; your effort measured against the model demonstrated in rehearsal– Slow Practice is the key – Be both patient, and persistent!

I have a model of what is to be recreated either from my teacher/musical director or another source, such as a professional recording or live performance.  I try to emulate, re-create the model.  Following my attempt, I compare my performance against the model; I make adjustments and try again.  I repeat this process until I achieve a close approximation of the model.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.

Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?

The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.

The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.

Will your school music program turn your kid into a Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft (guitar)? Or a Woody Allen (clarinet)? Probably not. These are singular achievers. But the way these and other visionaries I spoke to process music is intriguing. As is the way many of them apply music’s lessons of focus and discipline into new ways of thinking and communicating — even problem solving.

Look carefully and you’ll find musicians at the top of almost any industry. Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band. The television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on music scholarships; NBC’s Andrea Mitchell trained to become a professional violinist. Both Microsoft’s Mr. Allen and the venture capitalist Roger McNamee have rock bands. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school. Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist. The former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie Hall.

“It’s not a coincidence,” says Mr. Greenspan, who gave up jazz clarinet but still dabbles at the baby grand in his living room. “I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is mere chance is extremely small.” The cautious former Fed chief adds, “That’s all that you can judge about the facts. The crucial question is: why does that connection exist?”

Paul Allen offers an answer. He says music “reinforces your confidence in the ability to create.” Mr. Allen began playing the violin at age 7 and switched to the guitar as a teenager. Even in the early days of Microsoft, he would pick up his guitar at the end of marathon days of programming. The music was the emotional analog to his day job, with each channeling a different type of creative impulse. In both, he says, “something is pushing you to look beyond what currently exists and express yourself in a new way.”

Mr. Todd says there is a connection between years of practice and competition and what he calls the “drive for perfection.” The veteran advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background as a cellist for his most famous work, the Apple “1984” commercial depicting rebellion against a dictator. “I was thinking of Stravinsky when I came up with that idea,” he says. He adds that his cello performance background helps him work collaboratively: “Ensemble playing trains you, quite literally, to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to follow.”

For many of the high achievers I spoke with, music functions as a “hidden language,” as Mr. Wolfensohn calls it, one that enhances the ability to connect disparate or even contradictory ideas. When he ran the World Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn traveled to more than 100 countries, often taking in local performances (and occasionally joining in on a borrowed cello), which helped him understand “the culture of people, as distinct from their balance sheet.”

It’s in that context that the much-discussed connection between math and music resonates most. Both are at heart modes of expression. Bruce Kovner, the founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates and chairman of the board of Juilliard, says he sees similarities between his piano playing and investing strategy; as he says, both “relate to pattern recognition, and some people extend these paradigms across different senses.”

Mr. Kovner and the concert pianist Robert Taub both describe a sort of synesthesia — they perceive patterns in a three-dimensional way. Mr. Taub, who gained fame for his Beethoven recordings and has since founded a music software company, MuseAmi, says that when he performs, he can “visualize all of the notes and their interrelationships,” a skill that translates intellectually into making “multiple connections in multiple spheres.”

For others I spoke to, their passion for music is more notable than their talent. Woody Allen told me bluntly, “I’m not an accomplished musician. I get total traction from the fact that I’m in movies.”

Mr. Allen sees music as a diversion, unconnected to his day job. He likens himself to “a weekend tennis player who comes in once a week to play. I don’t have a particularly good ear at all or a particularly good sense of timing. In comedy, I’ve got a good instinct for rhythm. In music, I don’t, really.”

Still, he practices the clarinet at least half an hour every day, because wind players will lose their embouchure (mouth position) if they don’t: “If you want to play at all you have to practice. I have to practice every single day to be as bad as I am.” He performs regularly, even touring internationally with his New Orleans jazz band. “I never thought I would be playing in concert halls of the world to 5,000, 6,000 people,” he says. “I will say, quite unexpectedly, it enriched my life tremendously.”

Music provides balance, explains Mr. Wolfensohn, who began cello lessons as an adult. “You aren’t trying to win any races or be the leader of this or the leader of that. You’re enjoying it because of the satisfaction and joy you get out of music, which is totally unrelated to your professional status.”

For Roger McNamee, whose Elevation Partners is perhaps best known for its early investment in Facebook, “music and technology have converged,” he says. He became expert on Facebook by using it to promote his band, Moonalice, and now is focusing on video by live-streaming its concerts. He says musicians and top professionals share “the almost desperate need to dive deep.” This capacity to obsess seems to unite top performers in music and other fields.

Ms. Zahn remembers spending up to four hours a day “holed up in cramped practice rooms trying to master a phrase” on her cello. Mr. Todd, now 41, recounted in detail the solo audition at age 17 when he got the second-highest mark rather than the highest mark — though he still was principal horn in Florida’s All-State Orchestra.

“I’ve always believed the reason I’ve gotten ahead is by outworking other people,” he says. It’s a skill learned by “playing that solo one more time, working on that one little section one more time,” and it translates into “working on something over and over again, or double-checking or triple-checking.” He adds, “There’s nothing like music to teach you that eventually if you work hard enough, it does get better. You see the results.”

That’s an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a serious pursuit — and music education — is in decline in this country.

Consider the qualities these high achievers say music has sharpened: collaboration, creativity, discipline and the capacity to reconcile conflicting ideas. All are qualities notably absent from public life. Music may not make you a genius, or rich, or even a better person. But it helps train you to think differently, to process different points of view — and most important, to take pleasure in listening.

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Joanne Lipman is a co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of the book “Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations.”