Music rooms sometimes contain tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of percussion equipment. Maintenance can feel overwhelming, but it’s worth it to protect your school’s investment!
The good news: basic care can be outsourced to students. At the end of each semester, your section leader and players can oversee most of these tasks.
First, dust everything with microfiber cloths, but don’t use cleaning chemicals. Keep a supply of cotton swabs on hand for dusty nooks & crannies! After everything is dust-free, go through this checklist.
Keyboard Instruments
Check cord between bars for worn or fraying spots
Play each bar to check for issues
Timpani
Check heads for damage, replace if needed
Check lowest pitch on each drum (32” D, 29” F, 26” Bb, 23” D, 20” F) and adjust if necessary
Store with pedal toe down
Snare Drums
Check top & bottom heads for damage, replace if needed
Check top & bottom heads for even tension, tune if needed
Dust snares with a soft brush (toothbrush or other)
Check cord on snares for wear & replace if needed
Check snare tension in on position & adjust if needed
Store with snares off
Cymbals
There’s some debate among percussionists about if cymbals should be kept as new or allowed to age with patina. If you choose to clean yours, here are some tips:
Wipe down your cymbals regularly with microfiber to keep dust and oils from building up
Fill a shallow tub large enough to fit your cymbal with 50% white vinegar, 50% water.
Allow the cymbal to soak 30-60 minutes
Clean the cymbal with a brush, scrubbing in the direction of the grooves
Rinse and dry with a clean cloth
Store covered (or in a cymbal bag for long-term)
When your equipment has been cleaned and checked, cover everything. Manufacturer covers are great if you have them, but if you don’t, use sheets/lightweight blankets. Cover your drum set too! Covering after daily use makes a big difference in the fight against dust AND covered instruments are much less tempting for visitors to touch.
Don’t forget to check your storage for mallets and auxiliary instruments in need of repair or replacement, and vacuum dirt out of your storage drawers!
Store all percussion instruments away from HVAC vents or radiators. If you have instruments with calfskin or other natural heads, make sure you consult the manufacturer’s care instructions.
If you have questions, consult a nearby percussionist band director, or a percussion faculty member at a local university – they’re usually happy to help, and you can get expert help with specific issues.
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Advocacy can feel like one more thing on an overfilled plate, but communicating with our administrators and communities is key to healthy school music programs.
These easy tips create little or no extra work for you – they capitalize on what you’re already doing.
Delegate tasks that don’t require your expertise
Utilize your parent and student leaders! Youdo not need to be in charge of taking concert photos, writing social media posts, and updating websites.
Cast a net for parents and older students who are into social media or marketing. Tell them what you’d like to see, make sure they’re aware of media permissions with student photos, then turn them loose.
Find someone who likes to write. Ask them to do a monthly or even quarterly email newsletter or press release for your local paper. It can include things you’re already keeping records on, like festival results, honors ensemble participation, and upcoming events. Use a template for consistency!
Invite everybodyto take a look under the hood
Invite your instructional coaches, curriculum directors, and superintendents to your classroom – especially those who don’t have a musical background. These people make district-level decisions, and they all need to know what happens in your class.
For best results, meet with them for 10 minutes before they join your rehearsal to talk about your goals for the day, the standards or learning targets you’ll aim to hit, and the techniques you’ll use to achieve results. Speak their language, and they’ll be amazed at all you accomplish in 40 minutes.
If you’re doing something big (working with a composer on a commission, performing at a state convention) invite your administrators andyour elected officials. The mayor, school board members, state-level legislators. They love being seen in the community, and they can feature your ensemble’s accomplishments on their social channels.
Plant your kids in the community
Your program’s visibility in the community is a crucial asset, but it doesn’t have to be all the kids, all the time. A lunchtime picnic concert downtown is great, but it’s a lot of moving parts. Think higher quantity, but smaller scale.
That crew of 4 friends who love to play together? Have them put together some carols and head to assisted living communities in December. Student council members in class? Ask them if there are some volunteer opportunities where music kids can represent the group.
A few students who attend church together? Ask them to prepare something to play at services. A parent with free time and a van? Ask if they’d spearhead a concert food drive to represent the music program.
Any local project that needs volunteers – send a few band kids.
Then (and don’t forget this part) hand that off to your social media person and make sure it’s blasted all over. Make sure they tag whatever business or organization they’re working with, and watch the ripples grow.
Start now
Take one step today, even if it’s a small one. Don’t wait until there’s a job or entire program on the line to start advocating.
With these measures in place, your community and your leaders will already see the positive impact your program has on the kids and the community. They’ll value it not just for what students learn, but for the people they’re becoming. They’ll be ready to fight for it.
Guest post by Chad Johnson – guitarist, author, & Hal Leonard digital content specialist
For many guitarists who start out as rock, country, or blues players, learning jazz can be a bit intimidating. At first glance, there seems to be very little in common between jazz and popular music. The scales have weird names like “Lydian Dominant,” there are lots of key changes, and what’s up with all those crazy chord names with “#9” and “13” and all that? However, it’s not nearly as daunting as it may seem. For these players interested in learning jazz, there are a few hurdles to get over, but it’s very doable with a structured approach. And the musical reward is well worth it!
The journey to jazz fluency relies on a few key elements. We’ll take a look at each here and provide suggestions for helpful relevant instructional materials.
Sightreading and Music Theory
Although it’s not required to read music as a jazz musician, it will certainly help in many ways and expedite the process. For one, it’s fairly common practice on a jazz gig to play from a chart and “sightread” music you’ve never seen before.
It’s also incredibly helpful when communicating with other jazz musicians, as is some musical theory knowledge. Guitarist’s Guide to Music Reading is an excellent resource for the guitarist who wants to learn to read, and Music Theory for Guitaristsprovides an effective, guitar-based approach to learning music theory.
Guitarist’s Guide to Music Reading by Chris Buono
Music Theory for Guitarists By Tom Kolb
Chord Vocabulary and Rhythm Guitar
It’s true that jazz makes use of many chords not found in your typical rock or pop song, so you’ll need to get familiar with a new set of chord shapes.
A nice systematic approach is provided in the Berklee Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary and Jazz Guitar Chords, both of which present a wealth of usable chord voicings along with many exercises to help put them to use in a musical context.
Berklee Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary by Rick Peckham
Jazz Guitar Chords by Chad Johnson
Scales and Improvisation
Although the minor pentatonic and blues scale do see a good deal of action in jazz, you’ll still need to know a few more scales to be able to comfortably improvise over a typical jazz standard.
Both books will arm you with the melodic tools necessary to play over common jazz changes with confidence.
Hal Leonard Guitar Method – Jazz Guitar by Jeff Schroedl
Introduction to Jazz Guitar Soloing by Joe Elliott
Repertoire
Finally, we have repertoire. In jazz, this generally means learning as many “standards” as you can.
On a jazz gig, it’s common for musicians to show up without a setlist at all, instead calling on well-known songs (standards) in the moment. Today, we have access to many different versions of “real books,” which contain many well-known jazz standards in lead sheet format (melody and chords only).
You should certainly start with The Real Book – Volume 1 (Sixth Edition), though, as it will get consistent use throughout your music career. Another great guitar-specific resource is First 50 Jazz Standards You Should Play on Guitar, which contains arrangements for 50 must-know jazz tunes in “chord melody” format, in which you’re playing both the melody and the chords of a song at the same time. This is an indispensable skill to have when playing in a guitar/bass/drums trio, for example.
The Real Book – Volume I (Sixth Edition)
First 50 Jazz Standards You Should Play on Guitar
Conclusion
While each of these topics is important to jazz guitar, you’ll likely want to start with reading music if you don’t already. Being able to read well will undoubtedly make mastery of the other three topics much easier. Be sure to also learn the melodies to any standard you look at, as opposed to just the chord changes. Not only does this prepare you for when you may actually have to play “the head” (jazz slang for a song’s melody) on a gig, but it’s a great way to add to your melodic library of phrases.
Regarding chords, the books suggested above will help you get the essential voicings under your fingers, but developing a strong chord vocabulary is an ongoing pursuit. You can never know too many chords! And finally, in order to play jazz well, remember that you need to listen to jazz! It’s nearly impossible to convincingly play in a style with which you’re not intimately familiar. Besides, the simple act of listening to a jazz song (or solo) can sometimes help crystalize a musical concept more easily than 10 pages of explanatory text!
Learning jazz guitar is fun and enlightening, so enjoy the journey! A whole new musical world awaits!
Make your own virtual choir performance in just 8 steps. This guide includes tips for planning the project, recording participant tracks, and editing the submissions into a final performance ready to post and send. For related technology and tools, visit Sheet Music Plus.
You’ve seen them everywhere online: grids of iPhone videos of people singing together in chorus. From Broadway stars and professional choral groups to church and community choirs and even ad hoc regional and global networks of singers, the defining group music making moment of the decade so far is…
VIRTUAL CHOIR
Here we’ll walk you through what a virtual choir is and give you a step-by-step guide to creating your own, whether for the choir you regularly sing with or direct, or for a new group of singers you’ve brought together for a specific project.
Playing guitar solos is one of the highest aspirations a guitar player can have. We’ve all heard amazing guitar solos that are so inspiring that they make us want to do whatever it takes to be able to play them, right?
You may be in a situation where you don’t know where to start or how to have a better understanding of how guitar solos work. Keep reading and you will find really cool concepts that will make a difference in how you approach them!
1. What are guitar solos anyway?
To begin with, we can say that guitar solos are instrumental parts, and as such they provide a great opportunity for the guitar to abandon the accompaniment role and be more of a leader.
Guitar solos fulfill a really important role in the song. (No… not to show off, man!) In any song with vocals, the song gets to certain points where a vocal break is needed, noot only from the singer/vocalist’s perspective (to rest), but also for the sake of song construction.
Imagine if you hear a song with no instrumental gaps: it would be terrible! But guitar solos can give those breaks, and keep the song interesting at the same time. That’s why we need to make sure they are well crafted.
There are a great number of different possibilities in solos, but something we know for sure is that guitar solos always need to be aligned with the style of the song.
What kinds of solos are there?
Melodies – Some solos are basically melodies: a melody already used in the song, or a new one, is presented in a highly expressive and embellished way.
Improvisation – There are cases where guitar solo sections are basically left to the interpretation of the player at a specific time. (This mostly happens in live situations.)
I picked up the guitar at 14, played in a band for 14 years, then quit.
Years later I picked it up again and have been going strong ever since. But the road to guitar greatness is littered with those who gave up.
Hopefully, my experience helps you avoid becoming a casualty on the guitar “battlefield.”
Let’s look at a four-pronged strategy to defeat the biggest causes of quitting — pain, boredom, and discouragement. We will exploit “beginner’s blush,” focus on the mission, explode plateaus, and “learn how to learn.”
How to Exploit “Beginner’s Blush”
The idea here is to harness the almost irrational, dopamine-induced optimism to push through the painful process of earning your “guitar fingers.”
There is nothing like music to lift our spirits, create bonds between us, bring back old memories, or deliver catharsis. But what is it about certain songs that can conjure up these different feelings?
If we can learn to listen to music like musicians, we can not only begin to answer this question, but also develop a deeper connection to our favorite songs, learn to recognize and appreciate musical genius on its own terms, and relate to genres that might be less familiar or even entirely new to us.
Doug Hanvey studied piano and music composition at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University Bloomington and jazz piano with keyboard guru John Novello in Los Angeles. In addition to his musical training, Doug holds a master’s degree in adult education. He is the author of The Creative Keyboardist course and specializes in online piano lessons for creative adult beginners.
Music teachers are not obliged to be good writers, though it certainly comes in helpful when trying to communicate one’s services to potential students or parents. Fortunately, a few principles of clear, effective and persuasive writing can make all the difference to the success of your studio’s website.
This article will focus on how to write an effective headline for your studio website’s home page. Headlines are crucial because their major purpose is to get your website visitor’s attention. If you don’t get your visitor’s attention, you’ve already lost them.
Every headline for a web page should follow at least two (and possibly three) principles:
1. Get attention by grabbing the reader’s interest
2. Give them a reason to keep reading
If you are trying to get your website higher in the search engine rankings, your headline should also:
Guest post by Dan Leeman, a music educator and software consultant from Fargo, North Dakota. He taught middle school band and went on to found the Davies High School band program in 2011. Dan’s new site, notestem.com, combines his love of music, education, and technology. While the site is in its infancy, it will be home to music tools and resources that will be released in the coming months.
The impacts of Coronavirus and social distancing are being felt all around the world. Music teachers and students alike are wrestling with the effects on the music-making process, both logistically and emotionally.
So much of what makes music fun for us is sharing it with others: playing in ensembles, performing concerts, worshipping with our congregations, and teaching our craft. Unfortunately, many of us have found the usual ways we gather together to share music abruptly curtailed recently. With the help of technology, though, teachers and students alike can access a plethora of opportunities for distance learning through online lessons and rehearsals, practice aids, self-instruction and advancement, and sheer repertoire exploration.
Here’s our guide to navigating distance music learning and instruction. Let us know if you have any tips or pointers, and we’ll be happy to share them with our community! Continue reading ‘Guide to Remote Music Education’
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