 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: sockmonkey70
Date: 2007-02-04 18:55
There is a topic right now pertaining to the lack of tuning students have.
But my post doesn't exactly pertain to that, so I have made a new topic.
Our band director was a stickler for tuning, which is probably why we most always were in tune (or as close as an entire band gets) during performance.
He had a profesional set up in our band room to record our pieces when we rehearsed. And sometimes (especially preparing for festival and concerts) we would spend an entire day just listening to the recordings, with him pointing out probems with intonation. It helped train our ears to pick out what was good and what flat out stank. We also did tuning excercises before class almost everyday to train our ears, and during section rehearsals we would spend a good deal of time with the tuner.
I was just wondering if any of you band directors out there have a similar set up? I think listening to our recordings really helped us play more in tune. Sometimes when playing a piece, one gets distracted by technicalities and forgets to listen to EVERYONE..not just your section..but the whole band..
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Author: stevesklar
Date: 2007-02-04 20:49
My high school band director had an 8 track tape player in the band room (high tech back then), but rarely recorded anything (the device was used to record our concerts). But he would play back our concerts.
Also during practice he would stop us if our intonation got too far (an individual, section or entire band) out of tune.
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Author: Mags1957
Date: 2007-02-05 00:24
We have a Roland digital recorder in our band room. It will record to a digital card or to CD. We use it regularly, to record our rehearsals. We listen back - it's amazing how different it sounds to the students. It is very helpful to them to hear the problems from the listeners perspective - I highly reccomend recording yourself often, even your individual practice sessions.
When it gets close to concert time, we really try to get some good "takes" recorded. I tell the students that it is because we will be making a CD at the end of the year, featuring highlights of the year (which we do). However, the real reason we record so carefully is to get the students into that "performanc zone" several days before the concert. Then when the concert comes, the nerves are not really there at all. We almost always end up using the live concert performance instead of the rehearsal performances on the CD, but doing the recording before hand really gets the students into the performance. It has made a HUGE difference in our performances - I recommend it highly!
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Author: Mike Clarinet
Date: 2007-02-05 08:07
In my community band, we tune at the beginning of the rehearsal, are encouraged to listen to tuning, but after that, IMO not enough attention is paid unless there is a disaster. Listening to concert recordings of ourselves, this is our biggest musical issue. It also cost us a gold award at BASBWE last year (We did get an extremely good silver. The adjudicator said we were an inch off gold, mostly due to intonation.)
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Author: Jhall
Date: 2007-02-05 16:41
I have my students tune on several different pitches. We do this after a 10 minute warm up. We also do a lot of recording and listening in class.
Mags1957, I like your idea about the highlights CD preparation.
If a section is close, I ask around the band what they think. They getting very good at listening for beats. Of course, if someone in a section is far off, the band does react!
When asking students to adjust, I use terms like "pull out the thickness of a dime" - or "a nickel." If it's really close I'll suggest the thickness of a new dollar bill!
I also bought several Center Pitch tuners, one for each row, for the kids to use and pass around during the rehearsal. It all helps!
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