Thomas J. West Music

One of the feature concerts at this year's Midwest Clinic was the Seika Girl's High School Band of Fukouka, Japan. Their concert was webcast by BandDirector.com, so despite being unable to attend the conference, I was able to experience their performance. Stunning. Song after song, performance after performance, nearly flawless execution and well-shaped musicality. Witness their performance of Claude T. Smith's Festival Variations in 2007:

The Specialization Approach in Japan, South Korea, and China

It is common in southeast Asia for young people to find their aptitudes early in life and then be tracked into activities that foster those aptitudes. Beginning in elementary school, students in band and orchestra programs put in 3 to 4 hours per day of work on their instruments. It is common for students to work out the technical specifics of a new piece of music on their own before the first ensemble read-through.

In his article Video Postcard from Japanese Elementary Musicians: Wish You Were Here, fellow band director and MPLN member Brian Wis describes his personal experience with a Japanese student who moved into his program and the work ethic that propels these young people to such amazing results. One can argue that this level of specialization is "tracking" students and not allowing them to explore all of their options. In some ways I agree, but there is a way to marry the two approaches.

Teaching Students To Do For Themselves

In one of those wonderful moments of clarity, I lay in my bed shortly after awaking this morning with thoughts of Seika in my head and the question, "How can I teach my students to aspire to this level of excellence?" In those moments of relaxed contemplation, amazing answers often arrive in one's mind with little effort. The answer was clear, my students simply need to get more successful repetitions of their repertoire accomplished in the time that we have to rehearse the music.

As I did with my first two years in my current position in utilizing practice journals, I am endeavoring to use a formalized structure to teach the students an aspect of music performance that is requires a level of knowledge and application that they will not obtain by simply going through the process. The assumption is always that they will do what they have to in order to get the music learned, but the common experience is that they play as much as they can and then simply rely on the strongest players to carry the load.

As I fill out my interim report comments for marking period 2, I find myself making many comments stating things like "I encourage the student to become more self-reliant and not wait for the teacher or another student to demonstrate how the music is supposed to go."

When I have to fight with my own children at home to do chores around the house and they are complaining and saying, "But I need your help!" which is code for, "But I want you to do it for me!", I know that this kind of pandering is happening at school.

I need to come up with a way for students to become aware of how many successful repetitons they are accomplishing in the rehearsal time they have available.

Reaching For Excellence Begins With The Teacher

As I began to contemplate a formalized approach to tracking the number of successful repetitions of the students music, it became strikingly clear that in order to get the students to make the effort to track their progress themselves, our ensemble rehearsals in class would have to take on that same format. In the very next thought, it also became strikingly clear that I as a teacher was going to have to plan ahead for every rehearsal and ensure that we achieved the maximum amount of successful repetitions of each piece we intend to perform for our spring concert in April.

Yes, to teach self-reliance to the students, I am going to have to step up my own game. Talk about professional development!

This comes at a time in the school year when we are about to go to stage this coming Tuesday with our winter concert offering, and I am again frustrated with the quality level of our efforts.

I will be sure to devise an approach to teaching the students about the process of excellence, and I will be sure to share my experiment here on my website. Stay tuned...

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