Picking Music for Contest

Judges have often commented to me that they appreciated my music selection. Perhaps it's just something they say to everyone, but I take it as a sincere compliment when it happens regularly for adjudicated performances for both concert and jazz bands. Here are my basic guidelines and then a couple great sample programs for contest.

Be respectful of the given time and style guidelines

If there is a required music list, choose from it. If a ballad is asked for, play one. These things seem obvious, but listening to other groups at events we have attended tells me that not everyone thinks of this.

Choose music that makes your group sound as good as possible

Sometimes we directors are used to having a certain level of group, but it may not always be possible to sustain playing that level of music. While I agree that it is good to make a group stretch, music selection for a contest needs to be within the reach of the ensemble. The feedback a group receives can be uplifting or devastating based on the difficult of the music, and the students should not be penalized for a director's poor choice of music. [As an aside, if you realize too late that something is too hard, own up to it! Let the students know your own failings.]

Value variety

Your selections should provide as much contrast as possible with each other. Possible areas include: key center and tonality, tempo, style, time signature, time period, cultural influence, weight, length, and more

Sample Programming

Here are two sample programs and my considerations in picking each.

Jazz Band at a Competitive Jazz Festival

Punta del Soul
Together Houses
Better Get Hit In Your Soul

With these three tunes, we fit the requirements of the festival really well. A Latin chart, a ballad, and a 3/4 gospel swing gave us three contrasting styles. All three tunes stretched the band in different ways, but none was out of reach. Punta del Soul required a level of timing and execution (and some woodwind doublings) beyond anything they had previously played, but they really liked it and worked for it. I knew that Punta and Together gave us a strong 1-2 in the program, so I looked specifically for a closer. Better Get Hit was exactly what I wanted--energetic from beginning to end, and the 3/4 swing feel worked great with the straight eighths in 4/4 from the previous tunes.

Concert Band at State-Sponsored Contest

Prospect - Pierre La Plante
Symphony No. 4 - Andrew Boysen

I think it is really important to play a good ballad at contest. Sometimes an inner movement of a longer work will be sufficient, but I didn't think the slow movement of the Boysen Symphony would be enough for this program. Adding Prospect made the program 15 minutes long, though, and so I chose not to include a third piece! [If I had, I it would have been a march--we were working on Sousa's The Gladiator March around that time.] At this particular festival, each group has only 30 minutes to set up, perform, and receive a critique from a judge, so it seemed worthwhile to keep the program shorter to allow for a little more face time in our critique.

The Boysen Symphony was a fun work for students to dig into. Though it was technically not as difficult as some other music we worked on, it happened to fit the instrumentation of the group well and made them sound great at contest. The contrast of Prospect's simple calm and the rage and chaos of the Symphony was a big part of the program's success.

If you have a particularly successful program, send it my way! I'm right in the middle of looking at new repertoire for next year.

High School Musical

One of the highlights of the past school year was our production of Guys and Dolls. It is the second time we have staged a musical with a pit (first was Cinderella two years ago), and I learned a good deal from it. In this post, I'll describe how we put the show together (focusing on the pit) and then give a few of my takeaways.

Personnel

Playing the book for a musical is not an easy task, and therefore many high schools do not make use of students in the pit. At a small high school (around 350 students) and with small music ensembles (band and orchestra in the high school had around 80 students combined last year), we couldn't field a full pit. The scoring called for:

• six strings (four violins, cello, and bass)
• five reeds (playing 2-4 instruments apiece)
• five brass (three trumpets, horn, and trombone)
• one percussion (with octopus arms)

We wound up with:

• four strings (two violins, cello, and bass)
• two reeds
• five brass
• one percussion
• one piano

We ended up having all students in the pit except for me on a trumpet part.

Substitutions and and Subtractions

The biggest hole in our pit was in the reed section. We had a flautist and a saxophonist who covered a book and a half between them, but that left three whole books out. The saxophone player did some clarinet parts on soprano and the flautist read some violin parts to keep occupied. The majority of the missing lines were covered by our fabulous piano player. This meant that the overall sound of the pit wasn't as full and lush, but we had the important bits covered. Our "trombone" player was actually more comfortable on euphonium, so he played most of the show on that. I played mostly Trumpet 1 but had the student on Trumpet 2 cover some parts to give me a break or let me conduct and cue without being distracted by playing.

 

Rehearsals

We were preparing for two weekends of shows (the last week of February and first week of March), so we started rehearsing the first week back from winter break in January. We met once a week for 75 minutes or so and took a week off for a band concert the same night (and a week without me leading rehearsing when my wife went into early labor! but that's another story...). We had our first rehearsal with some singers about 3 weeks before the first show, and the week of the show we did run-throughs with the cast on Monday–Thursday and a brush-up on the Wednesday of the second week.

Lessons Learned

drums/piano/bass are the key

I don't think we could have put the show together without a rock-solid rhythm section. Even if everything else seemed to be wrong, they were tight and focused. 

get with the singers early

Even with a great rhythm section, I was doubtful through most of the rehearsals of being able to put on a quality show. The rehearsal that changed my mind was when some of the cast came in to sing a couple numbers with us. The immediate lift in energy from the vocalists and pit together are what took us from meandering through the music to playing well and having a good time. If I were doing another show, I would want to get this feeling a little earlier in the process.

conducting while playing is hard!

Conducting while playing is not something I recommend, but I have some advice if you have to do it for a show.

• Use both the score and your part book in rehearsal, but try to memorize enough of the score and write cues in your part book that you don't have to keep looking back and forth.
• Don't worry about conducting most of the time; if you have a good rhythm section, let them control the time.
• Be willing to not play when you absolutely have to give cues. It is better to do one thing well than fail at doing both.
• More than usual, the singers need to be confident and lead the ensemble (and you and the ensemble need to have good monitors to hear what the singers are doing).

it is worth it to use students

There are so many benefits to using students in the pit!

• Playing in a pit builds listening skills like few other high school ensembles.
• Key signatures will never be a problem for those students again (but wow, it's painful when they play their first show).
• Everyone learns the value of the pencil.
• There is a huge sense of accomplishment in getting through so much music. For most students, it will be the longest they ever play in one stretch.
• Musicals bind students together, getting more than just one ensemble to work together and feel like a team.
• And many more...

Doing a musical every other year is a pretty good plan for our school. It's tiring, and I don't think I could handle it every year. Part of me does look forward to the next one, though, and to taking the few underclassmen who played Guys and Dolls for another fun ride on Broadway.

How Playing an Instrument is Like Clash Royale

I like to check out what students are doing on their phones, and a couple months ago I decided to try out Clash Royale for myself. For those unfamiliar with the game, I'll mention that Clash Royale is "a fast paced, card based PvP brawler." Players construct a deck of cards and then fight in real time, using the units created by the cards to attack the opposing player's towers and defend their own. So what is so similar about band and this mobile game?

Competition (often) fosters a desire to get better

Some people don't care about winning games, but I do. It doesn't even matter what the game is--silly lawn games, Settlers of Catan, Dominion--if I am playing, I want to be better than the competition. Part of the appeal of Clash Royale is that your progress is measured by the number of points (trophies) you have, and the more you have, the better you feel. In band, when you can play higher, faster, or louder than everyone else, you feel confident. When you can't, you want to improve--or give up, which brings us to the next comparison.

People keep on playing as long as they make progress

Many people have tried playing--instruments and games--and have already quit, and one of the big reasons is they feel they can't make progress. The people you are playing with seem too good; you lose as much or more often than you win; and no matter what you try, there's no hope for improvement. Students (and gamers) who don't see a path forward will quit. If, however, students keep making progress and always see the next milestone ahead of them, they will keep playing.

Clash Royale does a terrific job of this at the start of the game. It seems like all of your first activities lead to accumulating treasure chests, acquiring new cards, increasing your gold, and advancing your rank. Perhaps this is how students feel when they open up their case on the first days of playing.

Still, it doesn't take long for the feeling of grinding away to set in, and that's why it's important to remember that...

Progress is mostly incremental and certain to have setbacks

While there are times that I have advanced several hundred trophies in a day in Clash Royale or memorized a whole sonata in a couple weeks, most progress is imperceptible on a day to day basis. I can look back on weeks, months, or years at a time and recognize the improvement in my double-tonguing or ear training.

We improve by watching others

Music teachers say this all the time, but I think a lot of us have trouble living it out. We want students to listen to the best players, but how much time do we devote to listening in rehearsal? I watched some replays in Clash Royale early on and realized some ways to improve my game just by how I place units. The same thing happens (though perhaps at a slower pace) when we listen to great musicians; we hear how they shape a phrase or the way they handle a tempo change. Another benefit of listening/watching is getting inspired to be like the best!

Strategy is key

Most growth in music is the result of applying the same strategies with patience. Slow down. Practice small parts. Repeat. These practice strategies never go out of style, yet some new music, demands a fresh approach. Remember the first time a teacher had you practice fingering and blowing without playing and the freedom you felt in your sound after that? Or how about the first time you were told the story behind the music and felt your emotions fuel your playing in a way you had never experienced? I've watched others (and myself!) make some of the same mistakes over and over again, and whether the failures come with my trumpet or a game, there are times I have to develop a new way to look at the problems I face.

One important difference

It may be years from now, but eventually, everyone who now plays Clash Royale will move on to something else. New games come out, old games get old--and our fickle, thrill-seeking brains are drawn to a new diversion. I suspect, however, that many people will still be playing instruments--including a great number who have already played for years. A video game does not provide the same sort of life-long satisfaction that is so obvious in older musicians--with music, there's always room to improve and grow. Jimmy Heath still sounds great at 89, and I hope to keep playing that long.