A school Jazz Ensemble has the unique necessity of teaching Music Theory skills if they want their students to be able to play more authentically. A more advanced, and indeed more authentic, jazz ensemble rarely has the notes given to the rhythm section, and typically features a great deal of improvising. For the educator that wants to get their students past the written bass lines/voicings, you might consider using your warmup time to get your students moving in the right direction, even if it’s slow going. I’ve included some sample warm-ups, which should be transposed into different keys below. The warmups are designed to be used flexibly, and should reflect your goals for the ensemble. If your focus for the rhythm section is for them to become more tight as a unit and more stylistically accurate, they should read the included harmony, and begin to improvise style changes, bass lines, and voicings. If your rhythm section has a harder time reading notes, or coming up with lines for improvising, perhaps they should play the written lines. Starting on the third page, I’ve included the first 4-measures to “Autumn Leaves.” The samples included expand in their range from |1 2 3 1| to include the 5th of the given chord. The last few examples attempt to outline the “common tones” between the harmony, hopefully conveying the relationship between the harmony and the Bb Major scale. Just like in Concert Band, your warmups should be geared towards the pieces you’re working on and I would urge you to write your own goal-oriented warmups.
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During my Elementary Student Teaching experience I had the opportunity to work with the 5th Grade Band. As a way of motivating the students we organized a Pep Band to go to the 4th/5th grade basketball games during the district tournament. Since the students give up their recess twice a week for Band rehearsal, this offered a sort of reward for the students, and showed the students a different outlet/purpose for music. The music consisted of songs the students could have heard at other sport events or songs from movies like the Death March. All the songs were fairly short, with optional repeats at the end of them, were numbered on one sheet of paper, and used simplified rhythms. This allowed us to be flexible, move quickly, and didn’t require screaming over the game/crowd to indicate the next song. Using only one sheet of music kept the gigs easy and let the students maintain themselves. They were only responsible for their individual instruments, one stand, and one sheet of music. Generally, we were in and out of the basketball games in an hour or less. The most prominent consequence of using this ensemble was in the appreciation and visibility it created for the school and the main music teacher/director. The games in our district were back-to-back in the same gym, so at times there were up to 6 different schools represented at the same time. Several parents and administrators from schools in the county would stop by just to say how much they enjoyed our band, and were often surprised by how well they sounded as 5th graders. It’s an excellent opportunity to get members of the community or middle/high school programs involved, and provides further justification for the band or music program in your school. Check out the PDF attached below for an example of a flute part. |
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March 2023
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