3/20/2023 0 Comments Band balance and sonorityJames altar, a terrific way to announce the return of San Diego Early Music Society concerts. 2021 This surprising, beautiful sonority was sung by four gentlemen on the St. 2022 Accordingly, the likes of Audemars Piguet, Chopard and Bulgari have been competing to improve sonority by any innovatory means. 2022 The clarinet then falls silent, yet the sonority retains a sickly air. 2023 Mäkelä has an excellent ear for sonority, especially in the string section. Find the big moments in your show, cultivate a good sound at those moments, and then build the rest of the show dynamically around those moments.Ī good marching band sound with a great sonority does not happen by accident! Work to cultivate that great sound every day.Recent Examples on the Web His new work, which had its origin in a series of guitar etudes, is similarly kaleidoscopic in its shifting masses of sonority and hazy bands of color achieved in part through the use of microtones. So much more can be gained from simply backing off the blastissimo playing and instead developing true dynamics and true musical moments. Unfortunately, a lot of marching bands have two volumes: loud and off. It is so easy to get distracted by the visual aspects of your show that you forget to really listen. Most important: listen carefully to your group when outside. Good sounds with great sonority project much more so than loud sounds. Remind students to stay inside the ensemble sound and to not stick out. For example, if you have too much first trumpet and not enough third trumpet, ask one of your first trumpets to play the third trumpet part on that particular chord. For big moments, this might need to be rescored to individual players depending on their placement on the field. Take care that you can hear all parts of the chord being presented. (This exercise works great inside as well on the field.) Do this two to three times before having the brass play on the horn itself.īalance the chord from the bottom up. This gives you a chance to really hear what your woodwinds are doing. Have all of the brass buzz through this section while the woodwinds and percussion play. Remind students to play – not with their loudest sound – but with their best sound possible. Identify the peak moments of the show and spend some time at these points in developing a better sound. Then take a section of the show and buzz through that as well when evaluating and cultivating a great sound. During the warm-ups, have the brass buzz and the woodwinds play each of the long tones and lip slur exercises. Scale drills can be developed from your show music and directly applied to what your students are performing.īuzzing on the mouthpieces is one of the easiest and fastest ways to improve your overall brass sound. If articulation is lacking in a part of your show, develop that part into an articulation exercise on a unison pitch or scale from the show music. A good idea is to develop your warm-up routine based on the material from your show. Included in your warm-ups should be long tones, lip slurs, articulation drills, and scales. Don’t swap a long-term goal for a short-term gain. It is all too easy to use this time instead to learn another page of drills or clean a visual, but staying true to the goal of the warm-up will pay big dividends in the long run. We start every rehearsal with some very basic breathing exercises to get the students focused on breathing and relaxed for the rehearsal.Įarly on in the rehearsal, focus on actively cultivating the sound you want, and then, throughout the rest of the rehearsal, refer students back to that desired sound. It’s the same thing you would do anywhere, now just do it ‘on the move’. Here are suggestions to keep a healthy sound present regardless of the volume level. Your band’s sound is not something that can be fixed it has to be nurtured. A colleague of mine once asked, “Do our bands start sounding bad right before a contest or did we finally start listening?” The earlier we start to really listen, the better our marching bands will be.Īs with concert band, jazz band and chamber ensembles, it takes daily cultivation and development over a long period of time to make your marching band sound its best.
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