It has been a few days since the last blog post, so here is a quick update.

The band concert is scheduled for Thursday, December 3 at 7:30 PM.  The students need to wear their band polo with long pants and closed-toe shoes (not sandals).  Their shirts will be tucked in, so a belt is a good idea, but optional.  Students need to report to the band room to warm-up at 7:00 PM with the jazz band performing their pre-concert music at about 7:15 PM.

Here is what has been going on in class in preparation for our concert.

Wednesday, November 18 – Students continued to rehearse music for concert.

Thursday, November 19 – Students recorded the music in class.

Friday, November 20 – The jazz band was gone to the Baker University Jazz Festival, so the remaining students played musical games.

Monday, November 23 – Students listened to the recordings of the concert music and filled out a worksheet.

Tuesday, November 24 – Students finished listening to the recordings and filling out the worksheet.

Today it snowed!  But we still had school.

The 7th graders made up some ground on the practice competition over the weekend.  The 8th graders closed the gap between them and the 6th graders, but the 6th graders continue to lead in the practice competition.

Practice Competition

In class today, students continue to rehearse music for the concert.  The 6th graders learned to play the 4th movement of the Nutcrackers Suite: “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”  The 8th graders had sectionals and worked on “For Unto Us” and “Santa’s Fiesta.”  The 7th graders played through all of  “Star of Bethlehem.”

Band Routine

The 6th grade band is leading the practice competition with an average of 4.56 cards turned in per student.  The 8th graders are close behind with 3.93 cards turned in per student and the 7th graders trail with 1.68 cards turned in per student.  So far, students have turned in a total of 427 cards totalling at least 6,405 minutes of practice or 106.75 hours of practice.  The winning class will earn a party at the end of the quarter.  Keep up the great work and may the best class win!

Practice Competition

Students continue to work hard preparing music for our December 3 band concert.  The 8th graders played through all of “Santa’s Fiesta” today and are making headway on “I Saw Three Ships” and “For Unto Us.”  The 7th graders are working hard on their three songs: “Christmas Celebration,” “Star of Bethlehem,” and “Go Tell It On the Mountain.”  The 6th grade band has made excellent progress on “A World Holiday Celebration,” especially the percussionists who have quite a few instruments to cover during the piece.

Band Routine

The December 3rd band concert is three weeks from today!

Today the 8th graders had sectional rehearsal over “Santa’s Fiesta!”  Congratulations to Koral Long and Toby King who were selected to participate in the North Central Kansas Music Educators Middle-Level Honor Band!

The 7th graders are making excellent progress on their songs for the concert.  As we were rehearsing a particular section of a song over and over again, a student asked in frustration, “Why can’t we just play the whole song?”  My response was pretty simple: “If we played the whole thing, it wouldn’t sound good because we haven’t taken the time to work out each section and make each section sound good.”  That’s a pretty important lesson that students can learn from participating in band — Excellence comes from doing the little things correctly.  Mediocrity comes from doing the big things halfway right.

The 6th graders are making progress on “A World Holiday Celebration” and continue to lead the practice competition.

Practice Competition

Band Routine

On Wednesday, the 8th graders continued with sectionals over “For Unto Us.”  They are on track to be able to play the entire song tomorrow.  They also spent some time working on “I Saw Three Ships.”

The 7th graders made additional progress on “Christmas Celebration.”  They are on track to be able to play the whole song tomorrow.  They also reviewed portions of “Star of Bethlehem” and “Go Tell It On the Mountain.”

The 6th grade band continues to lead in the practice competition (the 8th graders are in a close second place).  The percussionists were assigned additional parts for “A World Holiday Celebration.”  Students also reviewed selections for “The Nutcracker Suite” and “The Nutcracker March.”

Practice Competition

Band Routine

Today in class the band students continued to make progress on music for their concert.  The 7th graders had their playing test over line 171 from memory (Concert Ab Major Scale).  The 8th grade band had sectionals of “For Unto Us.”  The 6th graders played more of “A World Holiday Celebration.”

Practice Competition

Band Routine

Students handed in their third signature sheet today.  The practice competition has finished its first week.  See the current standings here: Practice Competition.

7th graders finalized their songs for the concert.  They will be performing “Go Tell It On the Mountain” instead of “Two French Carols.” Tomorrow they have a playing test over line 171 from memory.  This week they are using SmartMusic to assess their ability on line 44.

8th graders worked most of the hour on “For Unto Us.”  Several sections have playing tests scheduled for tomorrow.  Also tomorrow students will have sectionals over the music.

6th graders played through all of “The Nutcracker March” today.  They also worked on the third movement of “The Nutcracker Suite” called “Dance of the Reed Flutes.”  Students are learning new notes along the way too.  They also started reading through a song called “A World Holiday Celebration.”

Band Routine

The first week of the practice competition has been a success.  Many students have turned in cards signed by a parent after practicing at home.  Students were given a special “weekend” card for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  They can turn this card in on Monday only.  Here are the current standings: Practice Competition

Students in all classes filled out their signature sheets today in class and played lines for each other to get signatures.  They have at least one line (6th graders have two) to play for a parent and get their signature.  The sheets are due on Monday.  All classes are hard at work learning music for the concert.  Here are the songs the students should be working on at home:

6th grade – The Nutcracker Suite, The Nutcracker March, A World Holiday Celebration

7th grade – Christmas Celebration, Star of Bethlehem, Go Tell It On the Mountain

8th grade – For Unto Us, I Saw Three Ships, Santa’s Fiesta

Band Routine

Today the jazz band was at Kansas Wesleyan University participating in a jazz festival.  The remaining students in 7th and 8th grade band came up with suggestions for what to do in class that would involve their instruments.  The 7th graders continued working on SmartMusic and also spent class playing musical chairs (they played lines out of the book and music for the concert while their classmates walked around the chairs).  The 8th graders played musical chairs for most of class.  The spent the last few minutes of class “talking about their feelings and then demonstrating their feelings on their instruments.”  [Don’t ask me, I didn’t come up with it!]  Funny stuff.  Toot-toot!

The 6th graders are making a lot of progress on The Nutcracker Suite for the concert.  They also learned a solo out of the book that they can play with piano.  The continue to lead the band practice competition, passing the 1.0 card per person average.  Here are the current standings: Practice Competition

Band Routine