Going Beyond the B-flat Scale Whole/Half/Quarter/Eighth/Sixteenth Band Warm-Up! Over the past few weeks I have been doing some major soul searching of what makes a great band rehearsal. This semester I passed out "Songs of Earth, Water, Fire, and Sky" by Robert W. Smith. I quickly collected this piece back when I passed it out to my band a few years ago. I gave it a go this semester and found excitement in the piece when my young clarinet section basically mastered a tough sixteenth note ostinato passage from just one day of sectionals. I knew my philosophy on selecting music needed to change along with a new-found focus on creating a very balanced and consistent warm-up routine for my band rehearsal. I did something very unusual this past week as I stopped the learning of all sheet music and instead had section leaders run sectionals going over all 12 major scales and specific tuning tendencies/solutions for their instrument family. The results...
.....musings of a music educator.