It’s often easy for percussionists to become unfocused and unengaged if you’re not careful in picking the right repertoire and thinking about different things that pertain to percussionists. Do teachers who are percussionists find student percussionists easy to deal with?
#1 – Pick Good Repertoire – Pick repertoire that utlizies them. Somne grade 4-6 songs have uninteresting percussion parts. I know this isn’t always possible.
#2 – Avoid Having Too Many Percussionists – You are the one who is in control of this. My first school I taught band grades 4-12. I was able to attain almost ideal instrumentation after about three years, because I was the one recruiting them. I created incentives to help with that. Too many percussionists can make life difficult. You might feel like you don’t have much control over this. Talk to your feeder program if you’re a high school director. This may be controversial, but I don’t even allow percussionists in my current position. In 2nd year band, I train some students to take turns playing percussion. It’s not that hard to have a tuba player fill in on percussion, but next to impossible to have the percussionist fill in on tuba.
#3 – Create a Percussion Ensemble – One year the band was working on a very lyrical piece which was boring for the percussionists. Usually the percussion part involved 2,864 measures of rest with a triangle ding in measure 2,865. I would occasionally have the percussionists practice with us and made a deal with them…”If you count your measures and play that triangle ding at the exact spot it’s required, I will find a percussion ensemble piece that you can work on in the practice room.” They were running the sectional themselves and were working on a bucket drumming type of piece. I’d sometimes listen in to make sure they were making progress. They really enjoyed it. They ended up performing that piece for the concert. It was very well received by the audience.
#4 – Have the percussionists play the flute or oboe part on a mallet instrument – Use this tip when there are not enough percussion parts for everyone, especially if no mallet part is written. It usually blends well.
#5 – Move them to the front – Suppose there’s a piece that’s tacet for percussion and you can’t or don’t trust them to be on their own. Move them to the front. Print out rating sheets for your large group festival. Have the percussionists rate the band and provide comments.
#6 – Assign parts – My preference is that drummers work out a rotation among themselves. I don’t want them to become specialists. Some drummers have a hard time with this and need guidance from me. I create a spreadsheet and list them by rehearsal date. All of them rotate through all the parts until 2-3 weeks before the concert, at which time I assign them to a specific part.
I hope that these tips have helped.
James is retired from full time teaching. He has served private, suburban, and Title 1 schools and now teaches half time at a charter school. Find out more about James at www.jamesdivine.net Subscribe to his podcast Almost Everything I’ve Learned About Teaching Band.
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