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Make Rehearsals Memorable

Trey Reely | October 2011


    Reviewing previous lessons is a time-honored and important aspect of teaching, yet it can also be a major source of depression. Naively proud of my educational offerings the day before, I am often rudely brought back to earth by the blank stares and slack jaws of students who seem to have no idea what I am talking about when I ask them about the previous day’s lesson. It would be easy to blame the kids (which may be appropriate in some cases) but the better solution would be to find ways to present concepts in a more memorable fashion. I have adapted a six-step SUCCESs model from brothers Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick (Random House) as a foundation for more memorable band rehearsals.

Keep it Simple
    This is an extremely important concept in this day of short attention spans. When introducing a concept, find the simplest way to explain it. Better yet, get out an instrument and model it. Students, especially younger children, learn faster through imitation than long physiological descriptions of what they have to do for a certain effect.
    If there is any concept expounded on at greater length than breathing I am not sure what it would be, yet simple is better. A lesson on breathing might go like this: “Pretend you are a vacuum cleaner. Breathing is like suction. Pull the air into your body like a vacuum cleaner sucks in dirt.” Combine this with a breathing exercise, and it is a concise but effective lesson on breathing.
    It is also important to determine what core concepts to teach and emphasize them repeatedly. I frequently tell students that rhythm is number one in sightreading. In other words, when reading new music, I want most of their concentration centered on getting the rhythms correct. When they concentrate mostly on the notes, the music is more likely to bog down. They might play the right notes but if they occur at the wrong time, they become wrong notes. Correct rhythms at least keep the piece moving. After I explain this to them once, I do not tell them over and over again. I just repeat, “Rhythm is number one!”

Do the Unexpected
    One characteristic that many distant memories share is their original unexpectedness. Memories of the daily, mundane things of life fade quickly while unusual events that intrude are more likely to stick. Rehearsals are much the same way.
    The unexpected can often be a matter of letting up when the natural reaction would be to buckle down. Many years ago, Tom Landry, the iconic and stoic former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, felt that his team was in a funk, and he could not really put his finger on what was wrong. He decided to forego practice for the day and just let the team play an informal game of touch football. The change of pace was just what the team needed; that practice has been recounted by several Cowboy players over the years in their own memoirs and is often credited with turning around their season. Something as simple as rearranging the seating for a rehearsal can have a similar rejuvenating effect. At marching band practice, have students march the halftime or contest show by class while the other classes watch and cheer.
    Some of the best opportunities to do this are spontaneous. One year as I conducted a symphonic band rehearsal, a percussionist from the concert band that rehearsed at the same time walked through the rehearsal room, grabbed a mallet from our percussion cabinet and left. A few minutes later he came in to get something else. Annoyed at the interruptions, I sent one of my students over to the concert band room to get something from their percussion section. At some point my assistant director, who was in charge of the concert band, noticed my students coming into his room to retrieve items and put two and two together. So he sent his students back into my room to get more things. Things escalated to the point that one of us ordered several of our larger young men to go get the other director. The other director responded in kind, and we passed each other in the hallway, held aloft by each other’s low brass sections. It was great fun, and his players never interrupted my rehearsal again.
    Unexpected illustrations are typically more memorable. Young students will often plop down in front of a music stand and accept whatever position it is already in without adjustment. Instead of instructing students to put the music stand into a position that promotes the best posture, I announce that I am about to tell them something that will build their self-esteem so much that they will want to run home and tell their parents: “You are smarter than a music stand.” The point is that they should manipulate the environment around them and not vice versa.

Make it Concrete
    Concrete language that uses the senses helps musicians, particularly inexperienced ones, understand new concepts. The article “Teaching with Analogies” by Jesse Krebs (The Instrumentalist, Sept. 2009) has many good examples of this: The clarinet hand position is shaped as if holding a tennis ball, light tonguing is like having one cell of the tongue touch one fiber of the reed, ritards should be played like a ball slowly rolling to a stop, a crescendo should be like a plane taking off, and a decrescendo should fade like a sunset. The playing of low soft tones on the clarinet is like a large, heavy road roller at work, smoothing out freshly poured tar on the road bed. This machine is doing its job powerfully but slowly. The playing of high, loud notes can be compared to a large truck speeding down the highway.
    Several years ago I was frustrated by my low budget and the deteriorating condition of our school-owned instruments. I put a meeting table in the middle of the band room and surrounded it with all the pitiful equipment our program as using. What used to be simply words on a budget request were now vividly on display. I received a better budget the next year.

Make it Credible
    Getting students to listen to what you are teaching can be difficult, particularly if you are new and your ideas contrast strongly with those of the previous director. Three years ago I started a new position after teaching 23 years in another district. My experience and previous success gave me instant credibility with those who hired me, but somehow did not seem to count for much with students and parents who missed the former director. It was a frustrating realization that I would have to build credibility bit by bit. Nothing I said about my past was going to do any good (and would even be counterproductive), so I began to work on the future.
    I found the best way to build credibility was to create successful performing situations. I was in no hurry to throw inexperienced students in over their heads. Some directors rush too quickly into contests and damage their credibility before they really even get started. I did not enter my senior band in a marching or concert contest until my third year at Riverview; I waited until I was confident that they would be successful. In the meantime they played on programs with a local university, under respected clinicians, in mass band events with other schools, and for local elementary schools. With each positive experience, they began to see that the things I asked them to do worked.

Use Emotion
    An emotional connection will help make students care about what they are doing. Have you ever wondered why students cannot remember to play the dynamics? There are several reasons, but the most common may be a lack of understanding and connection with what they are performing. Mining the emotional content of music is the best way to remember dynamics rather than just playing them as a mechanical response to written notation. Directors should select music with enough musical depth to make this possible. A steady musical diet limited to stands tunes for football and basketball games is not going to do the trick. Directors should also conduct with feeling and guide students on their emotional journey through the music. This is crucial for the ultimate musical interaction between conductor, band, and audience.
    A few weeks ago a former friend and drum major I had in high school died in an accident. It amazed me how many of the comments on Facebook were from high school friends she knew from band. At a band practice that week I took a moment to speak about my high school band experiences and encouraged my current students to value the lessons and friendships that they have now because they are truly unlike any they will have in the future.

Tell Stories
    Band directors love to tell stories so it is best not to get carried away with this one. Balance it with the idea of keeping it simple. To illustrate breathing, I tell a story from my childhood: I had many animals when I was growing up including hamsters, gerbils, dogs, pigeons, and fish. This would make extended vacations difficult at times. In 1971 my family spent the summer at Fort Walton Beach while my dad trained at a local Air Force base for his tour in Vietnam. As final preparations were being made for the trip, my dad turned his attention to the transportation of my personal menagerie. He entered my room carrying an old, white bucket and a long, clear tube and told me that we were going to siphon the water out of the aquarium. I asked him if it would hurt the fish, and he assured me that they would know better than to come near the tube. Having said that, he lowered one end of the tube into the water, put the other in his mouth and inhaled very quickly. As the water began its journey through the tube, Charlie, one of my goldfish, decided to take a look at what was going on. He swam toward the tube and before you could say “Go fish!” the tube had sucked out his left eyeball. My body convulsed as the eyeball wound its way through the tube, finally lodging itself halfway down. What was gross enough became grosser as my dad worked the eyeball down the tube until it plopped into the bucket.
    I use this story to illustrate the idea of suction. The students are grossed-out when I tell them to breathe in like they are sucking in an eyeball, but it is definitely memorable which is what I am after. By the way, Charlie lived another year, and other than bumping into the side of the aquarium from time to time, he was okay. Also, my dad learned never to overestimate the intelligence of a goldfish.
    Good teachers do many of these things naturally, but even the best would be more consistent and creative by intentionally using the SUCCESs model: Simple. Unexpected. Con-crete. Credible. Emotion. Stories.