Managing Students (and parents) During Audition Season

Friends- as you know, managing students and their parents during audition season can be one of the most taxing aspects of our job. By no means do I have this figured out, and in fact, dealt with some challenges on this front just this week, but I have learned some proactive expectations to put in place over the years that have helped reduce some of the stressors. The following is an email that I send in some form each year after having talked about these tenets with the students in an ongoing way. I hope you find this helpful:

Hello, LH Band Students and Parents-

We have reached the time of year when the release of audition results for everything from band placements to leadership positions is imminent. In many ways, this is an exciting time of year, full of promise for continued growth and investment in the program and the amazing experiences to come. This is especially true this year as there is an unprecedented amount of interest in leadership positions, with a staggering 71 students attending the initial informational meeting; an incredible indication of the health of the program, and the highest number in many years, if not ever. Unfortunately, this higher level of interest and students auditioning also means, by definition, more students will finish the process without the result they were pursuing. As with all facets of our program, we want to include handling all possible outcomes, including ones that elicit disappointment, in healthy ways. For this reason, we encourage every student in our program, with the support of their parents, to process audition results in the following ways:

Did you earn the result you were hoping for?

• If the answer is “yes”, understand that it is likely that close friends of yours will not be excited about their results. With that in mind:

• Accept your success with humility and without any form of boasting.

• Check on the well-being of those you suspect may be disappointed. Acknowledge their efforts and how valuable they are to the team.

• Don’t act as if you feel sorry for them; just be a great listener and be their friend.

• If the answer is “no”, work through these questions and ideas with yourself:

• Was my audition my best work? If yes, is it possible someone with whom I was competing had a stronger audition than me?

• Did I seek feedback on my audition preparation BEFORE my audition? If not, is it possible there could have been areas for improvement in my audition I didn’t know about?

• If I feel good about all aspects of my audition and I feel sure I was stronger than someone who received the position/placement I wanted (this is a legitimate feeling), I understand that I need to, once in a calm and rational state, visit with the directors about where my audition stood and why the outcome turned out as it did.

• I understand that it is detrimental to the health of the team to tear down those who may have received a position I wanted or the directors.

• I am disappointed in my results and have honestly worked through the process above, but I have unanswered questions and want more information. Now what:

• Wait 48 hours to request a meeting with the directors. This is an expectation for students and their parents. It is difficult to have a productive, open-minded conversation while at the height of one’s disappointment, thus the 48-hour waiting period.

• Audition debriefs must be initiated by the student before a request is made by a parent. Once the student has met with the directors to review their audition, a parent meeting is possible if necessary after the student has received feedback.

• Go forward with the best interest of the team in mind. You wouldn’t have auditioned in the first place if you didn’t hope for great things for the band program, so keep this at the forefront of your mind and focus on enjoying every second you get to make music and memories with your friends and teammates.

Thanks, and we hope you are enjoying a great weekend!

Craft vs Art, or Craft that Unleashes Art?

I have found myself in a state of reflection in the past days since my band’s state evaluation performance. Though I have taught groups in the past that were deeper with exceptional players and that could play a greater amount of difficult repertoire, I have never had a group come as close to realizing its potential as this one. I have been doing my best to quantify why. What in the processes and expectations applied by our teaching team are different or better than in prior times? I don’t know that I have come up with a final answer to this yet, but it has led me down the following thought journey. 

Early in my career, I was pretty sure I had this band directing thing all figured out, and retrospectively, I was pretty obnoxious about it. One of the pieces of feedback I encountered more than once, particularly when my band would play for university conductors, was that we were good at the craft of music but had work to do in finding the art. To be frank, I was both offended by and dismissive of that idea and even the verbiage. “What on earth could this ivory tower college person know about what I do to teach these kids to play their instruments?” First, this was an unfair generalization on my part as I have since encountered many university teachers who also possess excellent pedagogical skills. Second, and more importantly, my dismissive stance stunted my musical growth, and even worse, that of my students. Instead of accepting the embedded compliment about the fact that we had the kids playing their instruments well and then honestly examining what was causing the perception that we weren't getting to the art, I allowed my ego to prevent me from perceiving the positive in their comment while striving to crack the code of what the critique meant. Over time, and honestly with age and enough stumbles, I have gotten past that and now actively work to have craft open the door to art, and for the art to inform the approach to the craft.

For those who, as I did, wonder what these words even mean in this context, here is my interpretation:

Craft- The state of the pedagogical demands of each instrument being met at or above grade level by the players, while meeting all requirements of the repertoire being performed. (i.e., all notes and rhythm are accurate, intonation is excellent, articulation is clear and appropriate to the style, ensemble alignment is sound, etc)

Art- The repertoire is being performed in a way that captures all written and implied dynamics, shape, motion, spirit, and…. Is exciting, moving, fun, powerful, or in short, doing what the music was written to do. 

First personal revelation here- one MUST have command of the craft to get to the art! I used to see this as binary, when in reality, the comment I used to receive about achieving craft but not art was acknowledging the importance of craft, not downplaying it. Those people were simply challenging me to have more vision in how that craft could be unleashed. When I started to see this through that lens, it was no longer insulting, but instead, exciting!

This now begs the question, how do we gear our ensemble pedagogy in a way that doesn’t stop short of what will be required for it to transform into something of artistic merit as we approach a finished product, whatever that means to our group? This is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully at least serves as a jumping off point:

• Do not wait until notes and rhythms are learned or “it’s clean” to insist upon dynamics that are obvious, again, both written and implied. A guideline I use with our students is this- a well trained musician who is in the concert hall hearing us without a score in hand should know exactly what we are doing dynamically. With the possible exception of a very young middle school ensemble, this must be a requirement.

• Does your ensemble fundamental menu include easy ways to work on dynamic control, both directions?

• Style must be taught from the first rep of the first measure you teach of a piece, which of course means that our study must be such that we have made those decisions and thought about how we’ll describe and demonstrate that style in advance.

• Of course we must learn technical passages slowly with every possible method to yield a clean presentation, but the tempo must get to something that allows the resemblance of the necessary style sooner than later. Don’t be complacent about this; push the kids to get this done so the other elements of the passage are possible. 

• If lyrical passages that would (and should) be enhanced by tasteful rubato are present, then teach this skill in your fundamental time the same way you would any other skill. This can be as simple as using quarter or eighth notes on concert F, a scale, a remington drill, etc. Then, implement it in the music ASAP. You can still subdivide, bop, or anything else while using rubato. Again, pedagogical methods and artistic methods are not binary.

• When you demonstrate on your instrument or with your voice, do so in a musical, confident, mature fashion. Sing proper intervals with vibrato if that is how you model. 

• Last and maybe most important- go back to your reference recordings often and compare realistically. Is what you are sculpting sounding like the art intended?

I hope these are some items that compel thought, and also hope to hear your ideas on the subject!

Welcome to The Back of the Music Store!

My name is Reagan Brumley and it is my pleasure to welcome you to “The Back of the Music Store!” For those I don’t personally know, I have been a public school band director in Texas for 19 years. I have been fortunate to serve in several school districts, all very different from one another in terms of culture and socioeconomic profile. Through those rich experiences, I have learned volumes via trial and error (much more of the latter than the former) and from having studied at the feet of truly wonderful mentors. I love thinking, learning, talking, and sharing about this wonderful artform we teach, be it discussing instrument pedagogy, rehearsal strategies, program building, or the grittier, too often avoided subjects like burnout, (teacher and student) and the factors that contribute to this growing problem. All of those subjects will be tackled here. I also enjoy writing and am eager to merge my interest in it with my passion for wind band education in this venue.

As for my reason for choosing the title of the blog, “The Back of the Music Store”- I am an avid student of band history, from learning about the conductors and educators who have blazed the trail for all of us, to the history of wind band literature and its composers, to the source of the world’s lamest party trick; I can name every large high school Texas Honor Band and their directors from the contest’s inception in 1958 to current day. That, my friends, is how you get the ladies. All of that is to say that in my gathering of info about the days of yore of Texas bands, I have been told by many that it was commonplace for years, it seems from the 1950s well into the 1970s, for local band directors to gather on Saturday mornings in the back room of the area music store to talk about (ok, gossip about) the week’s events, trade rehearsal stories and strategies, discuss what is wrong with the bands of the day and how to fix them, and on and on. This, of course, sounds like heaven to me. My hope is for this blog to be a small, 21st century incarnation of those rooms. This is a place to talk band and cure the ills of the day for bands and directors all across the land. 

More to come….

rb