Our beginning band students at the North and West Intermediate schools enjoyed their first experience at making music all together as a band last week. These students began learning how to play and care for their instruments at the beginning of the school year in September. At band lessons, where students are grouped homogeneously by instrument, we work on tone production, fingering or sticking, and note reading by studying and playing songs from our lesson book.
We are now starting to prepare the students for their performance at the annual Band Festival (Tuesday, May 20, 2014, 7:00 – 8:00 PM @ Shriners Auditorium). While most of the music that we play in lessons is in unison, except for occasional duet or trio, playing band music requires the students to learn the part that is unique to their instrument. When we play together at band rehearsals we put all of the different instrument parts together, which is like assembling a giant sound puzzle.
The beginning band students loved making music together with their friends and are already looking forward to their next rehearsal!