Daniel Galloway is the Director of Bands at Clements High School, in Sugar Land, Texas. The Clements High School Symphonic Band performed at the 2019 Midwest Clinic, and both the marching band and concert bands have won numerous honors. In addition to three concert bands and a marching band, Galloway also co-conducts the Clements Symphony Orchestra, which performed at the Midwest Clinic in 2014. He has worked as a brass instructor with the Santa Clara Vanguard and Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps. He has taught for 26 years in Texas public schools and is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University.
What are the keys to building a program to high level and keeping it there?
Have a good relationship with the junior highs that feed into your school. This starts with being visible at the junior high level and establishing relationships with those students and their parents. Once students get into high school, establish a level of excellence without music becoming a burden. I think there is a balance between having fun in rehearsal and making sure that people are accountable. I treat them a bit like a college wind ensemble, at least in the top band, where I expect students to know what they are doing. I don’t have SmartMusic tests or listening assignments. I will call for sectionals. If a section is not working well, I’ll have the students record it and email the audio file to me for feedback.
Make the students who are not in the top band feel that they are an important part of the program, especially outside of marching band – because they are. Our second and third bands do almost everything the top band does, including taking out-of-state trips. This pays off when a freshman in the lowest band makes all-state as a junior or senior. It builds a sense of empowerment and a realization that if someone works hard, they will get better.
Private study plays a big part in excellence, and there is an expectation that private lessons are the path to improving at your craft. I would guess that at least 90% of the students in the top band study privately. The best lesson teachers are invested in what they do, rather than being in it only for the money.
What do you want freshmen to be able to do by the time they get to high school?
I want them to play with a characteristic sound, including vibrato, if that is part of what makes a characteristic sound. I want them to have technical facility – the ability to move around the instrument smoothly – and a range appropriate for high school. The extent to which incoming freshmen have mastered these things will vary widely, but these are three of the four things I look for in incoming freshmen. The fourth is understanding how to move and support air. Incoming freshmen have not always had the opportunity to play as loudly as I ask for in marching band, but the junior high directors are into the concept now and have opened up what the brass players can do.
How do you get an ensemble to play in tune?
We teach tuning through tone quality and intervals. Many tuning problems are actually tone problems, so I frequently tell students “In tone is in tune and in tune is in tone.” Good intonation comes from playing at the center of every note on the horn, and we teach students at an early age that they have to adjust with their ears to play in the center of their instrument.
I also have brass players sit with a tuner and find where their valve tuning slides should be pulled. The first and second valve slides on the Bb side of double horns should be pulled out some, as should tuba players’ third valves for those low Dbs. Take the time to have students look at the bad notes on their horns, so when they have to play them, the length of their instrument is already close.
During rehearsals, I have students pair off to tune, using tuner apps on their phones. I do not allow them to tune to concert F; instead, I have them tune problem notes. I make trumpets tune to E and D because those are flat partial notes. I have flutes tune Bb and above, and alto saxes tune F# and A. We keep the emphasis on playing in tone rather than in tune. If students do this and spot check the problem notes on their instruments using both their ears and a tuner, things turn out well.
We will play the Remington exercise on F to establish a baseline, but we will also play it in fifths to teach students that tuning is relative. I want them to listen and play in tune within themselves, relying on their ears rather than a tuner in front of them. We expand the Remington to triads and even seventh chords. I ask, “Did you play that major third correctly?” rather than “Are you stopping the dial on the tuner?” because students will frequently have to adjust up or down to make the chord work. I think we do students a disservice when we hook everyone up to a tuner because then students don’t learn to use their ears or adjust to their part of the chord. Teach them to lock the interval, and then they will know how to adjust in any situation. For our Midwest preview concert, a cold front dropped the temperature 30 degrees while we were traveling from the school to Houston Baptist University, where we performed. The only thing I said about tuning before the concert was that the trumpets were a hair flat, which was to be expected from the temperature shift. They pushed in, and everything was fine.
What are the differences between rehearsing a band and rehearsing a symphony orchestra?
We have to teach the wind players in symphony orchestra to play a bit more like soloists, which is a turnaround from the ensemble skills needed for symphonic band or wind ensemble. The strings are well-taught, so I usually only have to ask whether they can hear the winds and to balance to them.
String instruments make an immediate sound when you place the bow on the string, as opposed to wind instruments, which have a slight delay. Vertical alignment takes some work because the strings sound early but are really on time, while the winds sound late but are as on time as they can get.
How do you solve a lack of precision in ensemble playing?
Approach the rhythms in a different way. I will have students count, clap the rhythm, say note names while fingering, articulate the rhythm on a dee syllable, and play the rhythm on concert F. These approaches use different pathways in the brain, and research suggests that when you take a different tactile or kinesthetic approach to something and then go back to the instruments, the precision will improve. Even if the counting itself is not perfectly together, the precision will improve when students go back to their instruments.
When we articulate on dee, I ask them to perform it as though they were members of the Marine Band, meaning that I want them to say the syllable definitively, with excellent diction on the left side (beginning) of the note – to the point that someone listening through the wall could understand the rhythm. Although many students giggle when I say this, the visual of sitting and performing like the Marine Band produces the result I want.
What are the best teaching tricks you’ve learned from other directors?
One of the many tricks I have learned from other directors is to have students listen side to side in ensemble trios. We also designate brass and woodwind color instruments and instruct students to make sure they can hear them. In concert band, we talk a lot about colors and listening to each other.
From J.D. Shaw, the former hornist with the Boston Brass, I learned to avoid saying, “Your articulation is too short.” This is completely wrong because articulation is the start of a note. Instead, we talk about the left and right edges of notes. The left edge is the articulation, and the right edge of the note is its length.
I have brass players put their mouthpieces inside their mouths, and we flow air with all valves down (or in seventh position). I say to flow air because flowing evokes motion without tension. Trumpet and horn players put the mouthpiece behind the teeth, while low brass players open as wide as possible. It seems like such a strange idea, but when you have a brass mouthpiece behind your teeth, it forces the throat to open up and relax. It changes the shape of everything and makes the sound bigger. Skeptical students are always surprised at the results after they try this for the first time.
One common problem is getting notes to speak immediately, and we use balloons to overcome this. If you don’t put five percent more air into the start of blowing up a balloon, it won’t inflate. Every student gets a balloon, we give students two counts to inhale and then inflate the balloon immediately afterward. I learned this from Chip Crotts, professor of jazz studies at Georgia Tech. Another trick to getting students to start notes with more air is to have them think about starting notes further down your instrument, further down the leadpipe.
Balloons also work for teaching dynamics. We have a system that equates how many counts it takes to inflate a balloon with volume levels. Eight air, meaning it takes eight counts to inflate the balloon, is mezzo forte, six air is forte, four air is fortissimo, and two air is outrageously loud. Flowing this much air is how you get a band with 60 brass players to sustain and play loud while still being able to hear the color brass instruments. I call it an orchestral brass sound: loud, but not distorted. We go through 300-400 balloons a month during marching season because students pop them flowing so much air. Some people don’t want their marching band to sound louder than a mezzo forte because they want to hear the flutes at all times. This is unrealistic for marching bands, so it is better to make sure the loudest dynamics sound good.
This is our fifth year of using balloons, and what we do with them is established during marching season. Balloons do make a funny noise when deflated, but students have realized that using them makes a big difference in the sound, so nobody giggles at the noise. Using them is just something we do.
.jpg)
What did you learn about teaching marching from your experiences in drum corps?
You only are going to be as good as you sound on the move. Standing still doesn’t matter. To that end, the more you play on the move, the better your marching band will be. You can sound great standing in an arc, but this does not matter if you cannot sound the same on the move. For marching warmups, we march and play at the same time, often in a set similar to what we are going to rehearse that day.
Repetition is not the same as improvement. Drum corps get better because they rehearse a great deal, but sometimes students don’t get the information they need to solve problems. If a first attempt to play something wasn’t up to standards, tell students what the need to improve and how to do so before playing it again.
The other thing I’ve learned in drum corps is how to deal with large spreads, difficult percussion to wind entrances, and timing front-to-back and side-to-side. If the music in a wide set with students spread from one 20-yard line to the other is not coming together, ask students where they are getting their time. Chances are that everyone will point to a different drum major. To fix such timing problems, decrease the number of sections playing until you figure out where students should get their time from. It might be the bass drum rather than a drum major.
You used excerpts from The Rite of Spring in a marching show, about which one judge commented about the difficulty. How did you get students to do something this difficult?
We didn’t tell them it was difficult. Rather than telling students that something is difficult, instill confidence by saying, “This is what we’re going to do to make this excellent.” If your attitude about it is relaxed, students will approach it feeling the same way, but if you tell them something is difficult, they will be more uptight about it.
When you are introducing a piece at the upper limits of what one of your ensembles can handle, how do you get started?
We would never just read it down. Sightreading something at the peak of students’ ability puts them in survival mode and is a great way of learning something incorrectly. There is no benefit to it.
We listen to a recording and the split the group. We have the luxury of having two band rooms and might separate brass and woodwinds to work different sections. If we run a portion of the piece, we might have students play their rhythms on concert F, clap rhythms, or name notes at a slow tempo, but with works at the peak of any ensemble’s ability, it is better to start at the micro level than the macro. Sightreading something difficult seems like a waste of valuable rehearsal time. I would rather work on one section and a time and build the piece up.
How do you figure out what makes each group of students tick?
This year’s marching band had some ups and downs. At first we couldn’t figure out why, but then we realized we had more sophomores in the band than usual. These were students who were no longer at the bottom of the high school pecking order and knew they were the largest group in the band, so they felt a bit more empowered than was beneficial.
Examine the makeup of your band. Is it freshman heavy? Senior heavy? Determine the maturity level of the students. The band that performed at Midwest had a more subdued personality than the band that made the recording. This year’s group was compliant almost to a fault, whereas I wanted them to be a bit more outgoing, both in their playing and in rehearsals.
Even different sections of the band can have different demeanors. I can tell my trumpets and horns to give me more sound, but with the trombones, I have to add a disclaimer about how much more I want.
It is also necessary to watch for times when students are getting a lot of work from other teachers. I will ask, “Are you guys buried in homework and tests right now?” When they tell me yes, I remind them that band is their escape – 45-50 minutes when they don’t have to worry about their other classes. Gauging the students’ total workload is an ability that directors don’t always consider. I don’t want to burn students out to the point that they quit band at the semester. Along similar lines, end each semester with something positive, so students look forward to band next semester.
What are your thoughts on AP classes?
The AP system has a lot of merit to it, but it is pushed so hard sometimes that people forget there is more to life. Some students can handle this well, but I see students get stressed because they are taking six or seven AP courses. I had one student who took ten AP exams. I don’t see them quit band, but the stress takes a toll. This is why I don’t do much testing with my students. I want them to enjoy being in band. If I can motivate students to do the work they need to, I do not see the need to add to their stress. I want to be the person who is not stressing them. This is not always the case, but it is what I strive for.
Increasingly, universities, especially private ones, are requiring students to take their courses, stating that AP courses do not necessarily have different rigor, they just move faster. I took AP courses in high school, and so did both of my children, but they only took what they wanted. That’s what I would like to see – students taking AP courses only for subjects that interest them.
What advice would you give to a new teacher graduating from college this spring?
The best advice I would give somebody graduating from college is to listen to the people who’ve come before them and not to get discouraged. Avoiding discouragement is still difficult for me sometimes. I have to step back and remind myself that something is not the end of the world.
Watch what other teachers do, and try to make it work for your personality. Young teachers struggle to understand why a more experienced teacher can make their band sound better in a short time, but when they try the same approach, it doesn’t work. This happens because one teacher’s techniques will not automatically work with another teacher’s personality. They have to find out what works best for them.
The world is not black and white; it is increasingly gray. You have to look at every situation and every student differently. When you learn to do that, you get ownership from students, parents, and administration. This does not mean nothing is worth standing for. It means to pick your battles wisely, which can take years to figure out.
* * *
Clements High School is one of eleven high schools in the Fort Bend Independent School District just southwest of Houston. It is one of the highest-rated schools in the country with many regional, state, and national honors in math, science, and various other academic subjects in addition to fine arts.
* * *
Fennell at TMEA
My assistant, Jeff Johnson, and I attended a particularly cold TMEA at which Frederick Fennell gave a series of talks. There were graduate students responsible for escorting him and his wife, but somehow they forgot to escort the Fennells to dinner the night of Valentine’s Day. The Riverwalk was packed with music teachers and Air Force personnel. We were eating at an Italian place by the River Center Mall when we saw Frederick Fennell and his wife, Elizabeth, who was using a walker, enter. There was an hour wait for a table, and it was obvious that Fred was frustrated. They walked to the bar and were just ten feet from us. Jeff looked at me and he said, “You’re going to ask them to sit down, aren’t you?” I responded, “Why not?”
I turned to Elizabeth and asked if she would like to sit down. She said yes, and then Frederick Fennell came up, and I invited them to eat dinner with us so they didn’t have to wait. He took us up on the offer. We sat with the Fennells for two hours, to the envy of other the directors in the place, many of whom were likely thinking of doing what I had just done. During the meal, we heard stories about his time with Persichetti and all the other people he taught with, and we took a picture together afterward. We paid for their dinner and walked them back to their hotel, and right before they got on the elevator, Elizabeth handed me $200 for taking care of them.
* * *
On Taking an Ensemble to the Midwest Clinic
Having taken both a band and a symphony orchestra to the Midwest Clinic, what recommendations would you make for a director considering auditioning?
Your band’s march should be fantastic. The other selection you play should have substance and feature soloists who will complement your band. With the symphony orchestra, the strings-only piece needs to be quite good, and the full orchestra piece should feature soloists. We recorded grade 5 works but picked music that was fun and different. You have to start planning in November what you’re going to do in December. I started working with the band on our march in December and had it where I wanted it by mid-January. After that, I primarily focused on the other piece. With the symphony, we rehearsed the strings in December, then added the winds in January.
The recording venue should be the best you can find. When we recorded on the stage at my school, it never sounded as good as when we recorded in a big concert hall. We used Houston Baptist University’s world-class hall, which made the band sound full and rich in a way that can’t be replicated in a band hall or rehearsal room.
I think there is also a psychological effect to it. Students seem to play better when they’re sitting in a hall instead of their band room. When students are playing with good tone and hear how resonant they sound, it makes a difference.
What did you do to prepare for the performance once you learned you were selected?
We set up a Dropbox, scheduling every day from August until our preview concert before Thanksgiving. In July, we scheduled the first two months of rehearsals, deciding which piece we would rehearse each day and what about it we would be rehearsing. We shared the music with students so they didn’t have to wait for us to pass it out. As we got into heavy marching band season in October, we planned two weeks at a time, both for concert band and after school marching band rehearsals. Every minute of every day was planned and shared with students in advance, so they knew what to be ready for.
As part of our preparations for Midwest, we built a copy of the Midwest Clinic stage in the band room. I borrowed risers from other schools and got everything to the dimensions the Midwest Clinic specified. Rehearsing on this setup made everything feel natural at the performance.
It was also helpful to force ourselves to schedule a preview concert before Thanksgiving. We pushed the kids hard to be able to play the 45-minute concert, and everybody went into Thanksgiving a little bit more relaxed. I did not rehearse the week of Thanksgiving break, and they came back on the Monday after Thanksgiving sounding better. Sometimes, giving students a break is a good thing, especially because at the same time as we were preparing for the convention, students were also working on their all-state music.
What advice would you offer about the trip to Chicago?
Finding a local high school we can use for a one- or two-hour rehearsal was quite beneficial. Rehearsing on a stage in some sense of normalcy, instead of a ballroom in the hotel you are staying at might have been the key to why our concert went so smoothly.
If you use a travel company, make sure the package includes a person who stays with your group the whole time. We had a band director named Brian Christian, who had taken a group to Midwest before, so he knew what kind of stress we faced. He would go ahead of us to places, to get our tickets at the museum or make sure the room we had reserved was ready to go.
I used school buses to carry the luggage to the airport, and in hindsight, I would have had a parent drive a box truck. Our marching band uses a semitrailer for this, but because we didn’t bring any percussion instruments or the other big things the marching band travels with, I didn’t consider the logistics of maneuvering instruments and luggage around bus seats. I considered not even bringing our tubas and had a plan in place for us to use the tubas of the school we rehearsed at, but the closer we got to leaving for Chicago, the more strongly I felt that the tuba players played too important of a role to use unfamiliar instruments. We paid the extra money for the oversized cases so they had something that they were used to playing on.
The Midwest Clinic provides high-quality percussion instruments, so although I know of some people who drove their percussion instruments up to Chicago in a box truck, we used what the Midwest Clinic offered, which the percussionists deemed just as good as what we had back in Texas.
