Percussion Unit Comes to a Close

Your percussion exam will be on Tuesday, April 27th. You will be asked to perform six exercises as part of the exam. They are:

• Stroke Quality Warm-up, m.m. 65
• Single Stroke Roll, silver level
• Single Stroke Four, silver level
• Single Paradiddle, bronze level
• Flam, bronze level
• Flam Tap, bronze level

The Vic Firth website has a great resource page for these rudiments. If you want to hear recordings of the rudiments, practice with them at different speeds, or see videos of them being performed, you can do it all at the Vic Firth education site.

Exam and Playing Test: February 18th!

The brass unit will come to a close this week. On Thursday, February 18th there will be a brief written test followed by individual playing exams. You will have the opportunity to sign up for a final exam time during Tuesday’s class.

You will be asked to play the following songs for your final playing test:

• Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (melody part) on pg. 34
• Bingo on pg. 42
• Aura Lee on pg. 42 or Bouffons on pg. 43 (your choice)
• Your composition

You are welcome to use the accompaniments from the text, but are not required to do so.

Brass Concert Repertoire

Below you will find the tentative repertoire for the brass concert. We will be hopefully adding 2 – 4 of your compositions to the program on Thursday!

Please let me know if you have any questions.

• Hot Cross Buns, pg. 25
• Cobbler, Cobbler, pg. 31
• Twinkle, Twinkle, pg. 34
• Bouffons – Low Brass Feature, pg. 43
• Twinkle Duet – Blasingame and Hunt
• Jazz Scherzo in C – Routen
• Oats, Peas, Beans, pg. 40
• Bye-Bye Brass Waltz – Mullaney and Routen
• Little Tom Tinker (as a round), pg. 40
• Aura Lee – Trumpet Feature pg. 42
• Bingo, pg. 40
• Amazing Grace, pg. 44
• African Farewell, pg. 57

We will perform many of these with the cd accompaniment, so be sure to incorporate that into your practice.

Mutes

Mutes are used often by brass players to change the tone and timbre of the instrument. There are several types of mutes used by brass player and it’s important to be able to understand how they work, what they do, and what the different types of mutes sound like.

A brief screencast is below. It includes everything you will need to know about mutes for the exam as well as some examples of what the different mutes sound like.

Music Composition Assignment 2010

Please check out this post on the music composition assignment from last year. All of the details of the assignment are the same, but the due date will be next Thursday, February 11th.

For notating the assignment you are welcome to use the Band Building’s computer lab or if you need staff paper, you can go to blanksheetmusic.net.

Embouchure Resources

As you begin practicing your brass instruments, many of you will find that the most difficult part of the process is getting the right pitch. Below are some links to drones of D, Eb, and F. You can play these as you practice to get a better feeling as to whether or not you are matching the pitches. You can right click on the links and select “save linked file as.”

Drone in Bb
Drone in C
Drone in D
Drone in Eb
Drone in F
Drone in G
Drone in A

Also, below is a great set of resources on the embouchure.

Wikipedia article on the embouchure

There is an amazing set of clips of Arnold Jacobs, former tuba player with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and renowned brass pedagogue, discussing the embouchure. This set is not necessarily geared towards the beginner, but there is a lot of great information and insight to be gained from it. It’s worth the 8 minutes!
Below is a video (also featured in a post from last semester) from the United States Army Field Band.

Finally, we went through this method in class and you can use the sheet that is linked to access Bruce Pearson’s article on how to teach the embouchure.

The Mouthpiece

Please see the video below regarding the mouthpiece. This is the first screencast I’ve attempted, so I have many technical issues to work out, but hopefully you will find it useful.

A couple more resources you may want to take a look at:

A mouthpiece comparison chart from Schilke, and one including more manufacturers (you can click through the ten pages to get an idea of just how many sizes there are). These charts can be difficult to make sense of, but give you an idea of how complex mouthpiece sizing can be.

For most of us in this course, the mouthpiece that comes with our instrument will provide us all we need. As you progress you may want to experiment with some different models and see if it makes a difference on your playing.

A pdf of the powerpoint used in the video above is available for your reference.

Resources on the Harmonic Series

The Harmonic, or Overtone Series is one of the most important topics we will cover in the brass unit of the course. A solid understanding of this can make learning the instrument much easier.

In class we discussed the overtone series phone number: 854-3332. It will be important for you to understand what that means and how that applies directly to your efforts as an aspiring brass musician.

There are two excellent resources you should consult for more background on this topic. They are more scientific than what we will cover in class, but offer a great perspective. The first is the wikipedia article on the harmonic series. I know that wikipedia’s accuracy can be debated, but this article is well written and has some excellent diagrams. The second article is from connexions, it goes into more depth than the Wikipedia, and pay particular attention to the bugle call examples.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Welcome Spring 2010

Hello everyone and welcome to the spring 2010 Instrumental Techniques course. This course will give you an introductory experience playing an instrument from the brass, woodwind, and percussion families. It is my goal to have class time be almost completely experiential, so this blog will contain many of the learning resources you will need for some of the exams.

I’m looking forward to a great semester! If at any time you have any questions about the course please contact me at eoleary2@nd.edu

Playing Test

Below you will find the examples from the text to be performed on your playing test. The test will be very brief and should last between 3 and 5 minutes. You will be e-mailed times for the playing test. Should you not be able to make it to your time let me know as soon as possible. Please contact me at eoleary2@nd.edu with any questions.

Playing Exam:
The test will be a total of three excerpts from the book. You will have the opportunity to choose two of them from a group provided and the third is required of all of you.

1. Choose from one of the following:
Shepherd’s Hey, Pg. 33
Lightly Row, Pg. 32
Patsy Ory-Ory-Aye, Pg. 40

2. Choose one of the following:
Scarborough Fair, Pg. 45
Hat Dance from Mexico, Pg. 47
Amazing Grace, Pg. 44

3. Everyone must solo for one chorus over the blues in F accompaniment.