Why Not Just Teach Rock and Roll

Why we don’t just teach rock and roll classes in public school instead of band and orchestra is a question posed to me this afternoon by our fearless leader, coordinator and supporter of all things art and music in our school district. She was asking because of ongoing conversations she is having with potential funders of our local public school music programs. The obvious answer has to do with the rigor involved in learning a band or orchestra instrument, working both sides of the brain, responding to written stimulus in real time and all that. But it got me thinking: What else? I know the answer to the question she posed has to do with more than cerebral calisthenics. 

For one thing, rock-n-roll has always been the go-to medium for the rebellious teenager. This is what kids do to establish themselves as NOT their parents. The less the parents like it, in some cases, the more the kids do. If we make rock part of the “establishment” by including it as part of a regular school day, we risk institutionalizing the very impetus which allows kids to come to the music of their generation on their own. Of course, I know that as a 60 year old classically trained musician I am never going to be cool enough to run a rad rock program. There are younger, hipper teachers who could for sure, and as facilitators and mentors and critical ears those teachers are invaluable. But kids will learn how to rock on their own, if they are bent that way. Nothing will stop them, and in this age of youtube and so many other online resources there is plenty of help. 

The real reason we don’t, and shouldn’t, focus on rock and roll for our music departments (and I know I sound like a fuddy-duddy even uttering that  phrase) is this: We cannot create a meaningful ensemble experience for 900 children at the elementary level and close to that at the secondary level unless we are teaching classes that allow 50 kids at a time to make music together. A marching or concert band or string orchestra is enhanced by big numbers of participants--the more the merrier. Whereas with a rock and roll- oriented class, unless you have 100 soundproof rooms and 20 teachers per school, you are not going to be able to service all the students who want to play. At best a rock band might have 7 or 8 kids in it, but usually there are more like 4 or 5. And they are loud, so you can’t really have more than one group rehearsing at a time. On the other hand, if you have 50 kids with violins or band instruments in their hands, you will slowly but surely have an orchestra or band that makes music together. This “together” is the best part of music, and yes, rock musicians play together, but not in the numbers that will thrill you if you are part of a 200-member marching band on parade day. Kids in rock bands become fast friends, no doubt, but your orchestra and band friends are a giant family, working toward a common goal. There is, to the extent that we can put instruments in the hands of every kid who wants one, a democracy to band and orchestra class and in this light, a five-piece rock band begins to look like an elitist cordoning off of talents. Not to pursue this chance for children to learn what it feels like to be part of something so big and wonderful with greatest vigor would be a disservice to our students, and this is why we need to support band and orchestra programs. 

Addendum: Since writing this, I have seen several videos of classes of 20-30 kids playing together in a pop music setting, multiple keyboards, guitars, amps, drum sets all working toward a common goal. This is inspiring and at the classroom level can be managed and give everyone something to do to be part of the whole. When I think of our district level events where we are able to hear and see hundreds of students at a time either marching or playing on a stage, this is where the band and orchestra program excels, and it is wonderful to have both experiences available to students at every grade level. 

Balancing Balance: Silver AGAIN!

Yesterday my middle school orchestra made its annual pilgrimage to the Forum Music Festival, and took home for the 5th year in a row a silver rating. This means we are in the top 20% of middle school music ensembles nationally, and for that I am quite proud. But we were sure we had a shot at the gold rating this year, and we are all a little disappointed.

What we got dinged on were things we can control, and things we can't really control, and we got dinged for things that, while they may have been less than gold to the judges, represented HUGE improvements over the course of this past year.

Number one on the judges' written comments had to do with balance. This is something we struggle with constantly due to the size and make-up of our orchestra. In a group of 45, there are 20 strings, 20 winds and 5 percussionists. 6 first violins, 9 seconds, 2 violas, 2 cellos and a bass. We also have for the first time 2 trombones AND a tuba and a couple pretty decent piano players. A horn, 3 alto saxes, a tenor sax, 3 trumpets and 4 clarinets round it all out. So balance is always a challenge. The alto saxes alone can drown out the violins without even trying. Our balance has improved over this year. The kids are sensitive to their part in the whole sound, but they don't always have the skill level to achieve the sounds needed. How does a tenor sax fit into the sound of a symphony orchestra anyway? The cheap violins some of the kids are playing on came from nameless online places without proper setup and crummy bows. Almost all the string instruments are strung up with old strings. Some don't sound that great. I tuned every string instrument myself, and we got dinged for having out-of-tune open strings. They wanted the strings to use more bow. And all I can think is: they should have seen how much bow they used to not use!

Forum Festivals did send around an email/newsletter a while back with some tips about how to improve the sound of any ensemble. We took those suggestions to heart and learned how to breath together, how to listen for the melody and back off if you don't have it, how to start and release together. We talked about and worked on bow placement. We worked on dynamics, and did receive a compliment about that. The percussionists learned how to work together. We worked on breathing, keeping lines going. Everywhere and at all times we fine-tuned pitch. We learned about subdividing beats and finishing phrases. We matched note length and articulation. We got all the bows moving in the same direction.

I haven't listened to the recorded comments yet, but I am really hoping to hear some acknowledgement of those accomplishments.The kids and know what we've done. We know where we were in August, and we know how far we have come. Maybe it would be a neat thing to have a fall festival, where the same judges hear you and then hear you again in the spring to see how much progress has been made. That probably won't ever happen, but thinking about that progress over the course of the year does help me stay focused on doing well for its own sake.

It's been a gratifying journey this year, and I am so proud of these musicians. If balance is important to music, it is also important to life, and I have to balance the work we did with the outcome and realize that top 20% in a nation of school musicians is pretty good. When I think of each individual student's growth and the vast improvement of the whole group, I am overwhelmed. Balance that against the snapshot we present at this festival, and it all pretty much evens out.

C.A.M.P.

Curiosity, Affinity, Motivation, Perseverance.

These are the things I believe people need to succeed at anything, the Arts especially.

Every fall I start hundreds of curious students on band and orchestra instruments. I think that most of them have no idea what the endeavor they have undertaken really demands of them. They are just curious. That, and their friends signed up too. There are a few students at every school who have zero curiosity about playing a musical instrument. If the music instruction is compulsory, they go through the motions, barely, and I can only hope that something has sunk in when all is said and done, and that there will be some residual benefit to their brain development in spite of their lack of interest.

Within a few weeks, I can see the second thing on the list begin to manifest, or not. The students who have chosen an instrument they have affinity for, or those who have affinity for music in general begin to blossom. Their enthusiasm is what I live for. They are the students who run down the hall, across the playground to music class, bring me practice buckets full (more about this below) every week, who say "Yes!" when I say let's play Hot Cross Buns. They may not be the best players at first. Their love of playing may be way ahead of their skills and ability, at first.  The students whose initial Curiosity is their only impulse to play begin to falter, forgetting instruments at home, leaving them in the classroom all week, forgetting to come to class, or choosing to skip class. Some merely-curious students fake it for a while, but without the affinity, they don't last long.

It is in the second or even third year that the real motivation issues come up. Children who have the first two characteristics are self-motivated up to a point. Extrinsic motivations must also be present, in my opinion, to keep them going. Parental support, a growing sense of belonging to something cool, the thrill of performance are just three things that can motivate.

Where I have the most difficulty as a teacher is in this part of the equation. I'm not much for stickers or prizes or charts. What has been fun this year with the elementary students is the "Practice Bucket". It's a 4x4-inch paper with a bucket drawing on it. There are five lines inside that bucket. I tell the students they get to color one lined section for each 20 minute practice session. When they bring the colored buckets back, I hang them up on the wall. They are proud to see their buckets hanging there. (This comes from an idea I read somewhere that the work we do in class fills a small portion of a "bucket". If the students then go home and practice, the bucket fills up and we can move on to another "bucket". If they don't practice, not only does the bucket not fill up, but the work we did in class evaporates.) Even still, there are students who practice- as evidenced by their playing- who don't color their buckets. There are students who color buckets, but don't bring them back to school. And, of course, there are students for whom this is no motivation at all.

At the middle school, we use practice logs, and I started the year with a chart for each class. The class that got the most practice minutes by the end of the semester was going to have a pizza party. Great idea, but only about 3 students ever bothered to fill in and turn in their logs. They were practicing, or not, but the incentive of the pizza party was not enough to spur the lazy ones to practice, and the hard working ones didn't need that incentive. I have tried basing grades on this practice log, and still only get a handful of submissions. So, my part in Motivation remains mysterious to me. When it's there, it's there and when it's not, there's not much I can do, it seems.

The last letter in the acronym- P for Perseverance- is the one that carries the student into high school and beyond and leads to adults who enjoy making music for fun or profit. These are the kids who may have been great or mediocre or even terrible players in the beginning, but who kept coming to class, kept working- even a little- at home, who enjoyed being in concerts, who kept trying and are now maybe the leads in their marching band sections or who aspire to major in music in college. Maybe they are the last chair in the second violin section, but love being there. Maybe they get together with their friends and jam in the garage. Maybe they play in a community orchestra. Maybe they will be doctors or programmers or teachers or parents or join the military, and I believe they will succeed at any of those things, given enough C.A.M.P.

Chalk It Up and Move On

10 holiday shows, over three weeks, with a 90% success rate. Not bad. Yesterday was the 10th show, and all I can say is: It's a good thing the first nine went so well, or I would be starting Winter Break with a giant dose of depression.

There are a number of factors that contributed to yesterday's failure. For starters, this school has been undergoing some major renovation that has resulted in the loss of the music room. There is so much pressure on the one available room that we have had to knock back to one day per week for instrumental music. With the once-a-week model, failure is almost guaranteed. Class attendance has been sparse for the last month, because of projects, field trips and just plain forgetting. Also, because of a shows at other schools, I wasn't available for any rehearsal in the venue. So, yesterday morning, students showed up out of the woodwork with instruments, but no clue what we were going to do with them.

Before we walked across the parking lot to the mega-church where we hold our big school-wide performances, I tried to talk the kids through the expectations of the show. When we got there, I tuned everyone and put them on stage to show them where they should stand. The piano, which I rely on for support both in teaching and performance was way on one side of the stage. The crew said they would move it out for me, but it would have to stay there for the entire program, and no other class would be using it. Since we haven't had a piano in class anyway this year, I opted to leave it out, except for one song.

Instead of playing piano, I pulled my flute and violin out and played along with the students It was still a disaster. Half of the students in each group stood looking like deer in the headlights, frozen and unable to remember how to do anything. One 4th grader spent the whole time mugging the audience and twisting around to see the kids sitting on the risers behind him. We had to start over when the cellos didn't start with us on one song, and when no one started with me on on another.

Finally it was over- maybe 15 minutes all together- and sweating profusely, I ushered the kids off the stage, back to their seats. Walking out later- off to the middle school to finish the day, and leaving before the show was over- a few parents gave me the thumbs up and said "good job". I thanked them, grimacing to let them know that I appreciate their support, even though we both knew it was awful.  In my email later there was a message from a parent who thanked me for letting all the kids play, and reiterated how excited her son is to play trumpet. If this was 15 or 20 years ago, I would have been blubbering to my husband and feeling like I had chosen the wrong profession. I would have been beating myself up. If I hadn't had nine other, excellent shows before that I would have been mortified at this failure. But as it is I can chalk it up as just one in many shows over many years, and keeping my performance mottoes in my back pocket, move on.

Something for Everyone

I've written recently about the joys and challenges of differentiation in the music classroom, and I have had occasion this week to see the rewards and the pitfalls of this most cherished of educational buzzwords. It's winter concert season. I have five schools whose programs will range from classrooms of kids wearing Santa hats singing Rudolph to full-blown displays of performance art of every genre. For my part, I need to have kids on stage, blowing or bowing and making recognizable sounds. Harmonies would be nice.

With the earlier start to the school year, we do get a bit of extra time to prepare this show. But my first motto of performance is "You never finish, you just run out of time", and this proves true, even with the extra month. So I grab at the things the kids can play, try to polish them up and put a holiday shine on them and know that the audience will have something to enjoy.

My second motto is: "It is what it is". It is not the LA Phil. It is not even what they will be able to do next spring, and it's also not what they were able to do last spring, and that is one thing that needs to be addressed in a class with different skill levels all together. In the elementary classes, the second-year students expect, rightfully, that they will be progressing on to music that is challenging to them, showing off their improving abilities. But because of scheduling, it hasn't been possible to develop much repertoire to reflect this. There are a couple songs that we can split out "advanced" parts and "first-year" parts, but some of the few songs we present are going to be, necessarily, beginners' songs- that they played last year.

Even at that, many of the beginners feel overwhelmed by the looming specter of performance. So I give them my third motto: "Fake it till you make it". Keep your instrument up, look like you know what you're doing, and the audience will not know the difference, especially because we DO have the second-year experts playing along. This sets those beginners at ease, and they get the same thrill from the performance experience as the more skilled players. I hope it's enough to keep them going till they get those skills too.

I have had more than a few students try to quit this week. And they fall into two categories. First are the beginners who are scared to death until they understand the three mottoes. Usually a little pep talk is all they need to hang in there. Then there are the advanced players who are just disgusted with me because I haven't challenged them sufficiently and they don't want to play this baby music. To them I say we are just trying to get through a show, here, that everyone can play in. After the holiday, we start working on District Festival music, which will definitely be more difficult. Usually telling them that convinces them to keep at it.

Developing life-long musicians is my goal. Quitting just before the winter concert doesn't achieve anything for anyone, and it's a fine line to walk to keep the music flowing. But it is worth it when I see happy parents, principals and children all basking in the glow of a successful presentation. It doesn't really matter that it was just Hot Cross Buns and Jingle Bells.

I Wish You Could See Them

Friday, in my middle school orchestra, is one of the days I set aside for "collaborative, student-driven" work. I get out of the way, with the only instruction being to work on our repertoire in whatever teams they choose, or, if they prefer, they can work alone on their part. The motivation comes from the drive toward Common Core Curriculum which values collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking. The inspiration comes from El Sistema, the Venezuelan approach to music education which, out of necessity, often allows for the controlled chaos of many students practicing different instruments in the same room.

Our room is not large, only the size of a standard classroom, and there are 20 plus kids in each class. I needed, this week, to work exclusively with one 6th grader who was really falling behind, so I didn't even do what I do some weeks: get out an instrument and play with them, which helps me gain a whole new perspective on their parts and the challenges they face. This week I monitored the activity from the corner where my desk is, while focusing most of my attention on one student.

Anyone walking into the room during these sessions would think I am losing my mind, and indeed, sometimes I think I might. But I see things and hear things that set me up for a glowing weekend of happy reflection. The kids take this task seriously, while having great fun. The groups shift around; for awhile there might be a bass playing with a violin and a flute. Later the same violin will pair up with a French horn and alto saxophone. The trombone and tuba will play with the trumpet and a clarinet. Snippets from the entire repertoire bounce around the room, and occasionally, the whole class coalesces into one, playing some piece spontaneously together. Leaders emerge, with one or another picking up a pencil to be the conductor. They absolutely do not care that there are a bunch of other people maybe or maybe not playing the same thing sitting a foot away. They enthusiastically call out the name of the next thing they want to play, they stop for each other and work passages out, they share information about fingerings, shifting, vibrato, things I can't always spend time on. It is noisy. Great work is happily happening. I am not lifting a finger. I wish you could see them.

Affinity, Talent, Olympics and a Music Teacher's Realistic Expectations

The Winter Olympics in Sochi are dominating the news this week, and we are watching young people do amazing things, things no regular human body can do. Indeed, these young people ARE like gods, pulling off feats of strength and agility, balance and speed that truly boggle the mind. And as always happens when I witness such extraordinary accomplishment, my mind wanders back to the question of talent.

The other thing that is dominating my personal world this week is a couple of sections of about 30 measures of music that are part of the program we are preparing for the upcoming La Mirada Symphony concert, of which I am now a member. As it happens, the two things overlap in that a good chunk of those 30 measures can be found in the cello part of John Williams' Olympic Fanfare and Theme, which we are going to perform in a couple weeks. You know the piece. You hear it whenever they start the broadcast of the Prime Time highlights. The rest of the measures are in Charles Ives' Variations on America, also on the program.

These are both great pieces of music, worthy of my best efforts. But, jeeze, John and Charlie! I get it. You wanted a shimmering, sizzling undercurrent of buzzing strings to support the themes riding high in the winds. But do we really have to play ALL those notes? At those speeds? What were you thinking? Do you hate cellists?

Okay, so the scene is set. I have been procrastinating all weekend. I must nail these passages, but I can not see how to do it. I am a fairly accomplished cellist, and back in the day when I practiced 8 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week, I might have found my way to getting my fingers around these crazy licks. But I have other things to do in the next few weeks.

I have written in these pages before about my beliefs about talent. Namely, that if a person loves something enough, he or she will demonstrate what most people call talent. This passion will manifest early in the very best athletes-they say that Wayne Gretzky as a two-year old cried when the TV hockey games ended- musicians, mathematicians, dancers, etc. And if it is nurtured (or, occasionally and perversely, blocked in some cases) by adults and society, it will eventually bear fruit in the form of a successful career. That's it. I do not believe there is some pixie dust that drops on us from the universe to bestow magic powers on us. We may have certain physical attributes that lend themselves to development, but even those can be overcome, given enough drive to DO the thing. Short basketball players, deaf musicians, blind artists do exist because of affinity for the thing they want to do.

So here's the thing. I have been moaning to my ever-patient husband about the impossibility of the mastery of these passages. I storm around the house crying "Who can PLAY this stuff!? Who can THINK that fast"?! And he turns to me and says "I guess you just don't love it enough" (he has heard my rants about talent and affinity), and I guess he's right. I do love playing my cello, and I love to work things out and enjoy the thrill of nailing a difficult passage, but THIS music seems so pointlessly complicated somehow. And impossible. I guess I never loved playing cello enough to spend eight hours a day when I was little. And I didn't love it enough to obsess over orchestra music in high school or college. I got by. I loved playing when the music was a little challenging, and my efforts would be rewarded quickly. If I had really LOVED it at all those stages along the way, I probably would be able to play those passages now.

And that's what I really want to get to here. This is not really about my own limitations, but about how my students view their own limitations. As we are preparing a 4th year in a row for a shot at a Gold Rating at Forum Festival this spring, I have been badgering my students to practice more, spend the time, woodshed. I wonder if it seems impossible to them, perhaps, that they will be able to play some of this music I have chosen for them. They may not see the point in all those notes. They are kids with other things to do. They have homework, robotics, soccer, social lives, families. Only a handful of them LOVE it in the way that could be construed as talent, and those few are the core of whatever success the group will have. Can I make the others love it more? Should I back off of my badgering? Will some of them get the spark BECAUSE of me pushing them to do something they didn't know they could? Probably there is a little "yes" and a little "no" in the answer to each of these questions.

It's good to remind ourselves periodically what amazing things humans are capable of. These Olympians cause us to spout all the usual words about dedication, perseverance, and, yes, talent. But I really think they just love what they're doing. Why they love it so much is the mystery, perhaps. And that is not to disparage them or the incredible hard work that goes into doing what they do. But without the love, they are just like that kid in the back of the orchestra (maybe that kid is me) who is getting by and letting someone else bring home the gold.