Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
It’s that time of year! Contest season is approaching rapidly. Many of us are shifting out of the sight reading, technique month of January and February and have begun to focus on contest season. In some previous articles, I have talked about the “last 10% of music/rehearsals”. We seem to get to 90% in our music and then stop (we’ve run out of time, we’ve over programmed, etc.) The last ten percent seems to be the most difficult material to get through.
What is the “last 10%”?
I think this is different for every band director. My 10% seems to be the small details, or the consistency of those details. Articulations not matching from one staccato to the next, every crescendo and decrescendo, every accent.
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
Many of us know how cakes are made. Each layer is baked individually and placed together with layers of frosting or filling. The layers are then beautifully decorated with frosting, icing, etc. When we eat cake, have you thought about how we do this? Most of us take a slice of cake and consume it one bite at a time and a single bite, most likely, is a combination of all layers, frosting and or filling. (Although, my 6 year old consumes frosting first, then complains that her stomach hurts and she can’t finish the actual cake part of the cake, but that’s for another article.) So, why am I talking about cake? What does this have to do with being a band director? The process of making a cake is much like how we teach band and specifically, how we teach our performance literature.
One Layer At A Time
Let’s equate layers of a cake to the ways we teach music. One layer is tonality or key signatures and pitch. Another layer is time signatures and rhythms. Articulations, dynamics and style can be considered another layer. Frosting, to bring the whole cake together, is everything that is performance practice; like watching the conductor, transitioning from one section to another, and keeping the layers together.
I often teach in layers. All warm ups have something to do with a layer in their band music, whether that’s key signatures, specific rhythms or time signatures, or a type of articulation. Then each layer is taught separately from one another. Once time signatures and rhythms and pitch are solid, I add articulations, style, dynamics. (Sometimes articulation is a crucial part of rhythm, and is taught simultaneously, but much of the time, I try to keep things isolated.) I’ve just recently started teaching in a block schedule. I see the students every other day, for 80 minutes. While the 80 minutes is fantastic, it’s really difficult to only see the students every other day. I have noticed that my way of rehearsing (layer by layer) doesn’t always leave me feeling the best around concert time. Consistency is so important for students. Even with just a day off the instruments, and more often than not it ends up being more than a day with assemblies, snow days, field trips, sports, etc., the students don’t retain the information that they need to perform at a high level. My way of layered teaching is not necessarily the best way to rehearse in a block schedule.
Take A Bite
Since I am starting a new “concert cycle” of music, I am changing my rehearsal approach for 1 of the pieces. I am going to try the “Bite Approach”. When you take a bite of cake, you get everything in that one bite; all layers, frosting, and filling. Most likely the bite is small, not an entire cake or slice at once. And, unless you’re two years old, you don’t grab a fistfull bite from the center of the cake. Bites are consumed in small quantities, from a slice, neatly cut away from the main cake. One slice of cake is consumed before cutting another piece to start the whole process over again. That one bite is everything; rhythms, key signature, dynamics, articulations, phrasing, melody and harmony, etc. The bite is in essence, what the whole cake is like, sized down to manageable size. Teaching becomes measures at a time, but everything contained in those measures. Time is spent perfecting everything in those measures down to every detail before moving on to the next bite.
Layers Or Bites?
One way is not better than the other, and both ways get results. To keep things interesting, I’m taking bites this concert cycle to mix things up. I may love it and never go back, or I may hate it and teach in layers next time. The only thing that is crucial is that you do what works for you and your ensemble. Happy contest season prep! May the odds be ever in your favor.
Steph Williamson
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