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 Mr. Ahrens teaches band at Bear River High School in Grass Valley, CA.  @MrAhrens 
 MUSIC QUOTES:   www.davidahrens.us & Sound Education are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. |
 The craft of music is generally taught prior to the art of music. Students begin their studies at an age where an appreciation for music’s humanity has not yet been developed. (Some never achieve this). It is our duty as educators to assist student musicians in connecting their personal expression and emotions to what may be to them simply a physical and mental exercise. . . . → Read More: Life Lesson #11: Connecting Emotion  A successful musician must be setting goals all the time. We have goals about the preparation of a particular piece of music for the purpose of performance. We make specific goals to attain certain levels of proficiency on our instrument. We make goals regarding successfully auditioning for honor groups, universities, scholarships, or winning seats into bands, orchestras, or other performance ensembles we desire to join. . . . → Read More: Life Lesson #10: Setting Goals Harvey Phillips started in music by bringing his Father’s violin to band class and trying to play along. “In 1942, shortly after we entered World War II, our band’s only Sousaphone player joined the Navy, and my high school band director asked me to play Sousaphone.” Arnold Jacobs spent a good part of his youth progressing from bugle to trumpet to trombone and finally to tuba. . . . → Read More: Getting that Heavy Metal Sound When a student first walks into the band room, training in leadership is underway. The older students (and the director) are modelling behavior through their own actions. This is indirect leadership. This is possibly the most important and powerful form of leadership. We are defined by our actions, rather than our thoughts or even words. And young, nervous 14 year olds walking into a room of well disciplined, well behaved, and kind older students will do all they can to fit in to the mold that has already been set. . . . → Read More: Life Lesson #9: Leadership While there is a general agreement that the effects of technology within the classroom have been beneficial, it is clear that there have been efficacy failings for a variety of reasons. Access to the best and most recent technologies is not available to most teachers. Few teachers or administrators have had a clarifying vision on technology. This should include research into and implementation of technologies that have the greatest impact on student learning. . . . → Read More: Teachers Teach – Technology Supports The beginning of that segment of the journey began memorably with a sea of red tail lights putting a sudden harshness to the muted gray tones of rain. Then the semi truck to our right began to fishtail – in and out of our car’s personal space. We saw the trailer of the semi truck behind us pulling to the left as the cab got ever closer to our back bumper. Thankfully, that’s the end of the exciting story. . . . → Read More: California All-State Music Conference Arguably the most difficult time in anyone’s life is that period of adolescence happening in the middle school and high school years. With puberty comes several physical and chemical changes leading to a general switch in demeanor, emotionalism, heightened social dramas, and often crippling fear and/or anxiety as to real or imagined perceptions of onesself by one’s peers. Meanwhile, expectations to stand out from the crowd academically in a time of quickly rising global competitiveness are placed on these children by parents, teachers, and themselves. . . . → Read More: Life Lesson #8: Self-Confidence Each member of a band or choir has musical value that may be positive or negative. We learn about our duty to each other to practice our parts to near perfection so that our value augments the caliber of the performance. We all have personal experiences with band mates (or perhaps ourselves) who did not put forth a diligent effort in learning their parts and thereby caused an entire performance to suffer. . . . → Read More: Life Lesson #7: Personal Responsibility / Punctuality For now the plan is for a rising tide of theory competence to lift all students, regardless of grade level, to what will be our starting point standard for next year. I will then have a differentiated plan in place to continue the advancement of the older kids while starting the process over for the new member. Of course, this is how it should have always been, but I have been more focused on performance outcome and this segment of the curriculum has received short shrift. . . . → Read More: Quick Melody Composition in Band Class Question: What are some helpful techniques for improving the high range of my high school tuba players? Most high school band music is written in the lower register. Answer: I was once told that the best way for tuba players to improve their range in the upper register is to play up there. . . . → Read More: Tuba Q and A: High Range |
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"I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely." - Ludwig van Beethoven, 1801 |
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