Re: band rehearsal every day


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Posted by Leland on February 29, 2004 at 23:29:12:

In Reply to: band rehearsal every day posted by ken k on February 24, 2004 at 19:25:14:

I've been surprised to hear about this every-other-day stuff over the past several years. My high school (graduated in '89) had band every day. In junior high, our director asked some of us better players if we wanted to play in a stage band (the old school term for "jazz band"), and we came in three days a week for an hour before school started. My college's wind ensemble met three afternoons per week.

When I think about it, the more skilled -- or smaller -- groups met less often, while the bigger, more-populated-by-less-talent groups met almost daily. That would indicate that the larger groups needed more time to coordinate & teach everybody.

I can't imagine that a teacher would be satisfied by hacking through the same stuff day after day. I also can't imagine that kids exhibiting the behavior that Jacob described would even be allowed to come back to band the next day.

One of my best friends took a band director job in Illinois, where he was being tasked with recovering the band program from a poor director. The next previous director had been there for years, and built the band into one of the best in the area. The last one (which he was replacing) had let things slacken to the point where my friend encountered broken music stands and drumheads at the end of the school year.

So, he laid down the law. For the entire first band camp, the kids played without stands OR chairs, and the drummers played on tabletops. He said, "If you can't respect your instruments, you don't deserve to use them." Their attitudes did improve, they knew he was honest about what he said, and they followed him into building the band back into a fine performing organization.

I firmly believe that people of any age will do their best to accomplish what's demanded of them, and if more is demanded, they'll do better.


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