Music Ed Majors

[Jperry1466]

(snip) That having been said, 75 years ago a typical 16-year-old would have been plenty grown-up enough to handle either of those things.

One of the things that I loved about my work at the local library was digitizing old yearbooks. When you read the ones from the turn of the last century it becomes very clear that kids today are nowhere near as accomplished as they were then. Sometimes as we get older it's easy to think this way but then wonder if it's just our point of view that has shifted, but but when you see it in print it's undeniable.

And when you listen to high school band recordings from 40-50 years ago it's clear that (imho) hs bands played harder music and sounded better at it. It's sad.

Bloke and LibraryMark are both right. Looking at yearbooks of the students before me, including my parents' generation, the way I put it is, "kids were older then". Remember my parents and their contemporaries grew up during the Great Depression and had to go out and fight World War 2. It only took 2 generations to mess up the standard they created. Yes, there are a lot of very high quality bands out there, especially here in Texas, but we need to also consider the band repertoire of past generations, mostly symphony and classical transcriptions with tons of technique and trying to make symphonic sounds, as well as the old war-horse marches, which are another story for this generation that questions why a march needs to be part of a contest program.

[Jperry1466]

What a great thread this is. Wade, you are exactly on target.

You don't know a damned thing about teaching yet, so listen up and learn something:

Many of us (like me) had to learn this the hard way. Later in my 33 year band director career, when I would talk to young new assistants, I would tell them that we are all good musicians and players (or should be) when we get out of college but none of us knows ANYTHING about teaching kids how to do this. I got to see an arrogant young student teacher "get it" when he struggled trying to teach a jr high band in front of his supervising prof. I took the baton and showed him how to correct what he was doing. After class, he followed me into my office, locked the door, leaned over my desk and yelled "I don't know a damn thing, do I?" I told him that realization was the first step to becoming a teacher. He now successfuly heads up a large 6A high program with 9 assistant directors, and that arrogance is long gone.

If you do not take your private lessons (on whatever your major instrument might be) more seriously than ANY OTHER CLASS YOU TAKE IN SCHOOL you will never amount to much as a teacher. Period. There is no room for debate in this.

Your major instrument and those hour-long weekly attempts to improve ARE the foundation of your experience as a teacher. This is true now. It will be true the day you retire.

Yes, yes, yes. I was privileged to study with two of the great teachers, David Kuehn and Rex Conner. When I went to Kentucky to get my masters in performance, it was never with the intent of becoming a performer but to become a better teacher. I knew there would come a time when I would have a student (quite a few, actually) who was more talented than I and I would have to be able to actually teach him/them something.

I hired a young assistant once because I needed a woodwind person on staff. When she laughed about never going to her clarinet lessons prepared, I told her that was exactly the wrong thing to say to someone who spent his college days with a tuba on his face 6 hours a day, 4 of those in a practice room - and who was her boss. She didn't last long.

First of all, you almost *never* get to conduct more than the most basic sort of painfully lame first semester conducting class stuff. Most of the time you will beat simple time to keep the kids together. If you *do* get to "conduct" it will only come after you have spent YEARS of your life building up a band program where the kids can READ well enough to give you the time needed to actually polish both them and yourself. If you, like many reading this, start out as a middle school director or a "team teacher" who has a beginner class, your "conducting" will consist primarily of you beating on the podium with a drumstick. If your program has "money" you might get to "conduct" by using that drumstick on a "gock block".

Yep. All of that. Thanks for a great post and thread that I hope a lot of young prospective music educators will take to heart.

[bloke]

I’m NOT going to derail this thread by wandering off into the “societal deterioration” theme (nor its intentional causes), but it exists, it is ethic, and - just because we manage to raise our own (or some of our own) children properly - this doesn’t mean that our children are “the rule“. Rather ours (or “some of ours”) are the exceptions.
Band class is a miniature of what’s going on nationwide and worldwide: amazing technology and equipment available to assist in the education of extremely confused children.

[LibraryMark]

(snip)
Band class is a miniature of what’s going on nationwide and worldwide: amazing technology and equipment available to assist in the education of extremely confused children.

Tell you what, though, I sure wish I would have had some of that technology when I was in college. I still have PTSD from having to write out scores by hand in ink. I'm left handed and it was pure hell for me. Profs didn't seem to care. It was like my music penmanship was more important than the notes I put down. How wonderful it would have been to play things on a keyboard and see them on the screen, make a few tweaks and print it out. That, and youtube. I had to slip in a tape recorder to the music library and disconnect the turntable from it's headphone amp hook it up to my little cassette recorder. All the while hoping the librarian didn't catch on. Maybe she was looking the other way on purpose.

[bloke]

I recorded all of my listening stuff from LPs on to cassettes as well. I only had to do a little bit of it from the music library at the University, and the rest of it I just checked out LPs from the public library.

I would play those “listening tapes“ at night when I was sleeping, and actually learned them in my sleep - whether or not anyone cares to believe this.

A couple of days before the listening tests, all I had to do was to learn the names of the pieces and the composers of the music that I had already learned in my head.

Still to this day, it’s much easier for me to memorize music than it is to memorize the title of the music. I know a whole bunch of funky bass lines to a whole bunch of New Orleans brass band music, but the bandleader - on the gig - always has to hum the beginning bass line of the tune for me to know which tune he wants me to play, as naming the title doesn’t do me much good.

[Doc]

…as well as the old war-horse marches, which are another story for this generation that questions why a march needs to be part of a contest program.

In addition to being important musically and historically, Marches contain everything that students and musicians need to learn. And this is particularly so with Sousa marches. Marches are band staples… the meat and potatoes of the band world. To get away from them does a disservice to the students, to band music, and to history. It helps no one, except for those in that generation who want to remain ignorant, lazy, low music IQ, self-absorbed, entitled, $#!+ for brains.

[bloke]

I’m sure that many others will disagree, but I believe one of the worst things that happened to “band literature“ was “pieces being composed to grades“ rather than “grades being assigned to pieces“.

When this became prominent, the term “band pieces“ began to become derogatory.

[iiipopes]

...as well as the old war-horse marches, which are another story for this generation that questions why a march needs to be part of a contest program.

Indeed. I had the opportunity to direct a small ensemble for a few years. To me, marches are like miniature three- or four-act operas (depending if the march had a dog fight, er, break strain). When playing a march, I would not let it be taken lightly. I emphasized the differences in the strains and applied different interpretations to each strain consistent with absolute adherence to articulation and dynamic markings. Occasionally a player would comment something to the effect of, "I didn't know there was that much music in this march."

[Rick Denney]

Summary principle: a teacher can never expect a student to go beyond where the teacher was unwilling to go.

Corollary: good teachers know ten things for every one thing they teach.

Neither the principle nor the corollary can exist without the other.

I see the point of Wade’s homily as not being about proficiency, per se, but about the dogged pursuit of excellence. Lots of kids end up in music school because they were good enough to, say, get into all-state band. So what? A teacher—even one with an abundance of natural ability—unwilling to doggedly pursue excellence in college will never be able to inspire the pursuit of excellence in their students.

Not all teachers attained the world-class excellence they were doggedly pursuing, if that’s one’s standard. But they can still be great teachers.

I never once heard my junior-high band director make a single note on any instrument. Yet her bands always demonstrated excellence. Nobody questioned her commitment to excellence, or her ability to know when it was and was not being pursued. I’m sure she was technically good on her instrument, but she didn’t need that to provide effective instruction sufficient to prepare students for a lifetime of avocational music. Students committed to going further than that needed to supplement what she could provide with private lessons, but in so doing they would be seeking to earn her respect, which had value to them. That’s what made her an effective band teacher for grades 7-9.

Wade’s complaint about students was their laziness, not their limited talent (blow off lessons, show up unprepared, etc.). A super-talented performer might get great gigs but will not have trod the path most students face, and won’t be able to lead them along that path. (Actually, this is a straw man—even with unbounded talent, unmotivated and uncommitted music students will probably never get those gigs. The principle and the corollary can’t exist without each other, but they usually don’t have to.)

Rick “who teaches adults for a living” Denney

[bloke]

Rick may not agree, but I believe his post backs up my “Rubank advanced“ thing.
- It’s not a particularly difficult book.
- I never said that anyone else would want to hear any degree recipient - in particular - play through that book on all of those instruments. Ie. I never suggested that any degree recipients - in particular - who played through those books would be worthy of recording, or using as an audio demonstration.
- I never suggested that degree recipients should be able to breeze through those books, as long as they were able to struggle through them.
- Playing all of the instruments they teach - having, at least, struggled through a book of this level - adds a considerably deeper layer of understanding about that which they are teaching.
——————————
Stepping into one of these jobs, there’s so much to learn about paperwork, rules, laws, liability, procedure, managing students and their eccentricities (sometimes including “how to avoid having one’s car stolen“, “how to avoid getting mugged”, etc.), and on and on… that it’s so very important that - at least (on the FRONT end) - “competence in the field“ be a set of tools that are beyond question.

[Mary Ann]

When I was in EE school and taking a math course in probability and statistics, there was a woman in the class who complained bitterly about having to take it; she said, "I'm going to teach grade school; what do I need THIS for?" And I thought, oh I really pity your students because you are going to teach them to hate math.

And then there is the myriad of high school band directors I have sat next to in community bands, who think "in tune" is what the tuner says. How did they get through college that way?

[bloke]

… not to mention those who seem to think they are cool (and/or their bands are “well-tempered”, or something…??), because their bands tune to A and then to B-flat.

[Three Valves]

In addition to being important musically and historically, Marches contain everything that students and musicians need to learn. And this is particularly so with Sousa marches. Marches are band staples… the meat and potatoes of the band world. To get away from them does a disservice to the students, to band music, and to history. It helps no one, except for those in that generation who want to remain ignorant, lazy, low music IQ, self-absorbed, entitled, $#!+ for brains.

[Mary Ann]

Sort of off topic and sort of not.....in the community groups I play brass in, you can tell which conductors were (are) primarily grade school conductors, and which ones were (are) primarily high school conductors, by the size of their beat. Really. The grade school ones have a beat that uses their entire upper body like they are trying to drag a locomotive along with; the high school ones are simply a lesser version of that, but still v e r y p r o n o u n c e d. The GOOD band that I play in (i.e., it actually makes music) the conductor was a high school teacher but also a pro woodwind player and just retired, at 82, from conducting a union pops orchestra. His beat, if the group starts to get off, gets SMALLER to force people to watch him.

[Doc]

And then there is the myriad of high school band directors I have sat next to in community bands, who think "in tune" is what the tuner says. How did they get through college that way?

Mind boggling, isn’t it?

[russiantuba]

I have always referred to these as APPLIED lessons, as you apply everything you learn in other courses to general music making. Not surprisingly, over the years, the students I have had that practice what I ask, work hard on their major instruments and strive to be better musicians (and not just technicians) are the ones that end up becoming the best band directors who end up leading the best band programs.

Some of the better musicians would march another instrument during their additional required years in collegiate marching band (woodwind would tackle brass, brass tackle a woodwind), or at least they would play in the non-major ensemble. Most even would say the difficult skills on their second instrument help their main instrument.

With that being said, I feel too many professors just give an A for lessons to make the students happy. I give a lot of additional assignments, like listening reviews, keeping a practice journal, etc., that shouldn't be an issue (basically a free grade if they do it), and if they practice, they will get an A. I am not one of those professors, and have given much lower grades (and it is harder work to give lower grades).

It isn't that hard to practice...

[prairieboy1]

I would hope that the comments and observations that have been made here are also matched by positive comments and praise when Music Ed Majors do conduct and interact with their students at a level that is deemed successful by their supervising teachers/conductors. You'd be hard pressed to know it by the very critical tone of so many of these posters. I also happen to be a retired teacher and principal as well.

[Mary Ann]

Re the comment about marches containing everything one needs to learn...have you ever played horn parts in Sousa marches? I did last night. -- pah --- pah --- pah ad infinitum.

[Doc]

Re the comment about marches containing everything one needs to learn...have you ever played horn parts in Sousa marches? I did last night. -- pah --- pah --- pah ad infinitum.

At least they aren't ...tut ..tut ...tut

[Mary Ann]

Well, at least one of them is going ---pfft ---pfft ---pffft