Competition is Hurting Our Band Programs Ed Dumas When I was a student way back when dirt was a new thing, there used to be competitive band festivals that we participated in. Each group would come in and get their chance to play, and sometimes there would even be a sight-reading component to the festival. At the end of the competition, a list would be created that ranked the bands from the best down to the worst. Oftentimes the list did not include just the winners but included all the bands and where those bands were ranked among the group. In a system like this, there truly was a loser, none more so than the band at the bottom of the list. This is NOT the kind of competition that worries me today. Most of these kinds of festivals have been done away with and are now replaced with festivals that rank the performances against a fixed standard rather than against each other. In the new system, any category could have every group achieving gold if they all meet the gold level. The new system creates a challenge for the adjudicators who need to know what the standards for these levels should be. Thankfully those difficult questions are now left to adjudicators and not students. No, the kind of competition that worries me today is what I often see between the students in the same group. If you are thinking that I am talking about what too often goes on between musicians regarding musical part placement, that is part of it. For example, it is almost cliché that trumpet players would say, “Well, I am the best so I should be playing first trumpet!” That is very hurtful, but there is something far more insidious among our students that starts to tear at the fabric of a good band. That something is the Competition for Attention. The students that we see today have been raised in the Attention Economy. Most adults still have their heads stuck in the idea that our world is a data-driven world, because that is how these adults were raised. While data collection online is still relevant, if you look around for a bit you will see that the Attention Economy gets the most press, and is the most fashionable trend in the economy right now. An examination of who is achieving the most wealth these days shows it is the people who gain the most attention on the internet. We call them The Influencers. These could be people that post videos of the latest clothes, makeup, technology, electric vehicles or just about any other goods they are willing to hawk for a sale or sponsorship. They have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of followers who then all run out to purchase whatever the Influencer now says is the latest and greatest in exchange for getting some kind of royalty from the producer of that consumer good. If you doubt the strength of the Attention Economy, just take a look at how it has captured politicians who now put out extremely irresponsible ads using military assault weapons for props! No matter how extreme the statement, the mantra has often been, “The politician who captures the most attention gets the most votes!” As an aside, I have said for years that instead, we should be looking for the most boring, unexciting, and intellectual person to lead us, because, in politicians, excitement is not a benefit! Now consider the attention economy from the perspective of our students. Today’s children have been raised on the idea that “the person who gets the most attention gets the most benefits” and they have applied this philosophy to the classroom. For them, popularity comes to those who shout across the room or down the hallway the most. They also have the most amount of time of other students looking at them, for negative attention is still better than NO attention. These are the students that are often the most intentionally disruptive in class even though it is damaging to others. They have now come to believe that it is their right to be this way because this is what the world says is successful. Raised on their phones, which are primarily used for attention-getting, these students find few consequences for not getting their work done. Instead, they gather great benefits by doing the most asinine things possible in class just to draw attention to themselves. Heaven knows that as a deeply introverted student I would have had trouble surviving today in an attention economy classroom. Is it as bad as I am making it out to be? No, probably not, but you will all likely recognize something of the trend that I have described for you. I was reluctant to write about this issue until I found another band class with a few students deeply ensconced in the Attention Economy that the result was very damaging for everyone else. I have always seen this Attention Economy problem as one of competition. That is, the students that are trying to gain attention believe that attention is something that must be competed for, and only the mightiest will win. Honestly, I can see why they believe this since that is the message from all corners of our world right now. The only trouble is, I can also see that it is a very false and troubling message. I have read all sorts of articles over the last few years of corporations now realizing that they need “soft skills” displayed by prospective employees on a resume. Oftentimes these soft skills translate into “Teamwork and Cooperation.” Employers are finding that employees who are constantly viewing the world using Attention Economy lenses are not pleasant to work with and are not successful in group settings. Attention seekers might succeed in a lone setting, but have trouble working with others. They are incapable of accepting any other ideas not credited as their own or even just brainstorming for problem-solving in a team. As well, they are also incapable of any level of competent management which is in seriously short supply these days. For decades now, the education system has touted using sports teams for developing team-building skills in our students. The theory is that those students that play on a basketball team, for example, have learned to play together in such a way that they are able then to change their game (adapt to changing circumstances) in such a way that they can defeat the opposing team and win the game (prize). While some team development skills are happening, I would rate sports at a “C” level for success in developing teamwork. Here is a good illustration that I am paraphrasing from Dr. Tim Lautzenheizer, who was a guest Keynote Speaker at BC Music Educator’s Association Convention some years back. A beginning-level basketball program would start with dozens of players, all striving to develop skills good enough to play on the winning team in their senior years. Over the years of skill development, though, these big numbers become whittled down to 5 core players plus a few extras at the top level. When one of our basketball players is not performing up to an adequate level in one particular game, he might suddenly find that the coach has opted to remove him from the game and play another in his place. This program is now encouraging competition between the players and is defeating teamwork and cooperation. The players must compete with each other to win the right to then cooperate with others in playing against another team. If you doubt that this competition between players on the same team does not happen, consider this scenario. My younger brother is a retired pro hockey player. When he was in his late teens playing on a major junior hockey team, he found himself having to separate fighting players who were in a raucous brawl throwing punches and knocking each other senseless. My younger brother was the designated person to do the task of breaking up these fights as he was the only one big enough, including the coaching staff, to get in the middle and stop the bloodshed. Oh, did I fail to mention that those players he was separating were in the dressing room on his own team?! While we hope this never happens in secondary school sports, this is a sad story illustrating the dynamic of competition within a team and how it can be so destructive to that group. Imagine the following scenario in a band. During a concert, the conductor begins to give the clarinet section the eagle eye wondering why there are some truly weird sounds emanating from within the band. Finally, the conductor decides that little Johnny sitting in the third row of the clarinet section is the culprit so he points to him and says, “You out!” He then points to another clarinet player sitting waiting in the stands and says, “You in!” This would be a ludicrous situation but immediately highlights the strengths of any music program. In the world of music, this comic scene illustrated by Dr. Lautzenheizer would never really be created in earnest. In our musical world, ALL musicians must play up to the standard required for the performance and not just the select few students who are chosen to perform. In our musical world, the best students would get even more recognition for the entire group if they chose to HELP those that need some extra instruction or practice to play acceptably in the performance. This is a vision of cooperation, not competition. Now, Let’s go back to the scenario that is commonly seen in some beginning-level band classes. Most of these students would be working in earnest to learn some skills on their new musical instruments. But a small few are working earnestly trying to gain attention from everyone else in the room because they are ensconced deeply in the Attention Economy. They could be talking out at every possible moment, chatting on their phones, playing alone at the wrong times, or just doing silly things to gain attention which means social rewards later from others in the room. Most of our students understand that the Attention Economy has its time and place. These students will also understand that using the Attention Economy philosophy as a driver in music class simply does not work because music is built upon cooperation, not competition. The few that are striving hard for Social Attention need to be taught directly, though, that those behaviours must change for the good of everyone in the room. A line will need to be drawn for them with an explanation that constant attention-seeking in music class is antithetical to creating music. To move the class forward, I have had some success talking to the entire class about what is wrong with constant attention-seeking. Students seem to recognize that attention is based on competition as if attention was something that is doled out in tiny amounts. I have found that if I explain the roots of their attention competition, these students will often come to agree that this does not need to happen at every moment in every class. They can agree to call a truce on that competition during the band class for the good of everyone in the room. By bringing their constant personal attention-seeking behaviour to the attention of the class to be analyzed, it seems to take away the students’ desire and power to act in this way. When students understand that their learning and even fun in the music room has been held hostage by a worldwide focus based on individual attention, they seem more able to personally negate its effect on them. This kind of group self-analysis seems to work to help students overcome some insidious programming for self-indulgent attention-seeking. It is important to note, though, that the analysis of this competitive attention-seeking in class needs to come from a logical point of view, and not from an emotional one. Yelling at the students to “settle down” does not help them settle down. But a “looking back on what were you trying to achieve there” discussion followed by an explanation of classroom musical attention needs does seem to get some traction. Here are some statements I have used that have helped clarify these dynamics for students. “It is amazing what one group can achieve if no one is worried about who gets the credit for the results.” “All musicians support all other musicians at all times, including outside of the music class.” “Did that behaviour help you DESPITE the class needs, or did it help the class as well as your needs?” “In music, competition for attention does not help our group become better. We all need to focus on cooperation to improve.” I am sure that you will come up with your own summing statements to help students develop a more cooperative and sharing attitude in your music class. Feel free to use any of the above. This open discussion with your students regarding competition vs cooperation in band classes should now be illustrating to you another strong reason why the education system needs music classes now more than ever. I have heard statements such as “Music Makes You Smarter” for years and always kind of cringed a little bit on the inside at hearing those thoughts. What if, for example, it is found that music does NOT make you smarter, but rather that smarter people naturally gravitate towards participation in music? I have usually found the latter to be more truthful. But, an open and frank discussion with parents, students and educators about the value of using music studies to help encourage cooperation among our students is likely long overdue. Most music teachers understand this concept, and so have good, aware administrators. Bringing it out into the open on a large scale for everyone to see and recognize would give our music programs new life in an education system looking for direction. At this moment in our cultural development, few would not recognize the benefits of valuing more cooperation in our world. Music education can do this better than any other studies in public education and should be openly sought out for the benefit of, well, everyone.     Ed Dumas is a retired band director who taught his entire career in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District. Ed is now retired and living with his lifelong partner Laurie, and their little dog Sprocket in Parksville, BC.   You can find Ed’s other writings for the MusicED Blog at: https://www.tapestrymusic.com/news.aspx

Beginning Tuning Slide Positions Ed Dumas The things that I have learned from the thousands of beginning band students I have taught have exceeded what I have taught them. Except the things that I have learned are not the same as the ones that I have taught. Usually, what I have learned from the students is more along the lines of figuring out what happens when unintended outcomes are not considered when presenting material to students. An unintended outcome is something that the students learned that you did not actively teach and did not intend to have happen. Those unintended outcomes could be a positive thing if it is helpful, or a negative thing if harmful. Too often, though, not considering unintended outcomes results in a harmful change for student learning. The beginning position for tuning slides is just one of those things that can easily end up in an unintended outcome for students and needs to be watched carefully. I know that is just another one of the far too many things that beginning band teachers have to deal with that can just lead to band teacher overload. Still, I think once you understand some of the initial problems of starting beginning band students, you will find a few minutes very early in their progress to instruct students where they should be placing their tuning slides. I know that later on, the students will learn how to adjust their tuning, but in the beginning, they should be shown where the normal placement is. Let’s consider the flute players first since they are at the top of the band score. When beginning flute players are taught how to put the instrument together, quite often it is missed that the flute head should be pulled out from the end about 1 centimetre or so. There is not a marking on the flute head what the position is for “all the way in,” which means they may not know where 1 cm out is. This is in contrast to say the brass players where the metal parts are created in such a way that it is visible to the brass players what “all the way in” looks like. Flute players do not have that visual cue, so must then have to feel it all the way in. Once pushed all the way in, you could add a pencil mark on the flute head to give the students a visual cue. From there, they need to back off the flute head about 1 cm. Failure to do this procedure means that the flute will always be playing very sharp, and this has the unintended outcome of teaching the flute players of learning to play flute with their ears “shut off.” Few people would disagree that a flute played consistently very sharp is a very unpleasant sound, especially so if the section is not matching in their sharpness to the band. But even if the section is matching and they are together playing very sharp in comparison to the band, this can be a very subtle yet powerful force to teach the flute players to not listen while they play. “Since the sound hurts so much, just try to ignore it,” becomes the mantra. Now no beginning flute player has ever told me that directly. But I have noticed that in the years where I failed to teach them about flute head placement early on, they just seemed to be less aware of sounds around them and therefore struggled with tuning later, even after I told them about flute head placement. They seemed to have become tuned out to the issue, and that was my fault. So, I have learned from the students that very early I should teach the flute section to push the flute head all the way in, and then back it out approximately 1 cm. Then, I would have them take their trusty pencil that I know is on their stand, and use it to draw a line on the flute head where it should be placed from now on. This line helped them start with a better position from then on, and therefore more attention to the sounds that were coming out. If we found later that we needed to adjust the flute head not just for this one day but for every day as a starting place, we could just wipe off the line and draw a fresh one to be used to start each new day. The line is not intended to be a permanent “for all time” kind of marking, but just a reminder that the flute head needs to be started from the pulled-out position before doing any other adjustments from there. First-year clarinet players have a similar challenge of possibly learning to play with their ears shut off. This comes from starting on a reed that is too soft. Unlike flute players, clarinet players need to start with the barrel and mouthpiece pushed all the way together as much as possible, as clarinet players are often quite under pitch in the beginning. Still, all the way together is often not enough to get the clarinet players up to pitch, so sometimes the result for them is that they have also learned to play without listening to the exact pitch. Since they have no control over the pitch yet, they then must choose to ignore the too-low sounds to keep learning the clarinet. There’s that unintended outcome again. The solution for clarinet players is to not start on such a soft reed. In the article “What Reed Strength Should Beginners Start On,” I have gone into more detail about the pitfalls of starting on a soft reed. Another one is that some clarinet players tend to shut off their ears when they feel they cannot adjust their sound to get it more in tune. Again, the fault for that was mine. Starting on a 1.5 student level reed, such as a Rico or Juno, is so soft that the pitch will be wildly flat. Starting on a 2 is better, but I have always found a 2.5 for beginners to be about right. Remember this is a student model reed, not something like a VanDoren which would be massively too hard for beginners. But starting on a 2 or 2.5 on a student level reed gives the students a chance to put the pitch in place and start to learn to play with one common sound, instead of shutting off their ears. You would think that the problem of reed strength is similar for saxes, but there is another level of problem that messes it all up. That is, I have seen plenty of first-year saxes put the mouthpiece on the cork just enough to stop the mouthpiece from crashing to the floor. It is so close to the end of the neck and cork that it is massively flat, far more than the clarinets would do with a too-soft reed. Again, this was my fault because I did not give them enough instruction on how to apply cork grease so that the mouthpiece moves better on the cork. The solution for saxes is two-fold. First, they need to start on a decent strength reed, such as a 2.5 like the clarinets, assuming of course that they are using a student-level brand such as Juno or Rico Royal. Then they need to be shown how to apply the cork grease to get the mouthpiece on much closer to the top end of the cork. Then, like the flute players, they need to be shown how to draw a line on the cork so they know where to put the mouthpiece next time as a place to start. Doing this helps them slowly learn to listen while playing, rather than intentionally not listening as an unintended outcome. If you have been paying attention so far, the woodwinds alone have three separate problem tendencies. The flutes play massively sharp if not corrected, the clarinets play a fair bit flat, and the saxes can play massively flat. It is no wonder the students are learning to not listen while they play! Just wait till we get to the brass! Now I have seen trumpet players play well into their development with the tuning slide pushed all the way in. I have seen second and even third-year players still playing with it pushed all the way in because they were not instructed where the normal starting place should be, which is again about 1 cm out. Don’t forget to use that pencil to make a mark on the slide to help! What I have seen from trumpet players who do this, though, has helped me understand unintended outcomes. I have noticed that beginning trumpet students who have had trouble getting up to the second harmonic (G) on trumpet are also often the same ones that are playing with the slide pushed all the way in. As soon as I correct the position of the slide, they seem better able to get up to the open G correctly now. Speculating on why that is, I would suggest that the students can hear that the pitch is very much too high when they are playing with the tuning slide pushed fully in. To correct that they try to push the note downwards using their air and embouchure, which often means they drop the harmonic down to a low C. If I try to get them to push back upwards to the G harmonic, it often does not seem successful until I pull that tuning slide out where it should be. It is as if there is a fight going on inside their ears about where that note should be placed because the students have not been shown where to place the slide to fix the problem. The problem is not harmonics but rather a bad tuning slide placement. Not correcting it can be completely defeating for the trumpet player. As a result, I tell the students to never play trumpet with the slide pushed all the way in, as this can mess up their harmonics. This is true of all valved brass instruments. If that was not bad enough for the valved brass, what happens to trombone players can be even worse. Trombone players who play with the tuning slide pushed fully in begin to affect where they place the main slide on the trombone. Since all the pitches are created too sharp, they will learn that each slide position should now be pushed out a little farther to compensate. Once the slide is now returned to where it should be, the students have learned the unintended outcome of playing the positions all too low. This can take a great deal of time and effort to correct, and it just seems so much easier to fix that slide position correctly before that problem ever arises. Now a warning about some trombones. Some manufacturers with very snug trombone cases have also added a feature of the case that forces the student to push the main tuning slide all the way in before it will fit into the case. They have done this as a way of quietly encouraging students to move their tuning slides to avoid them getting seized into place. Hopefully, then, the instrument goes into the repair shop less frequently due to a stuck tuning slide. While it is true that tuning slides should be moved to avoid them becoming seized and then greased again when they do not move well. But the unintended outcome from the manufacturers is that they are encouraging trombone players to play with the slide pushed fully in, especially in the early formative months. This has the effect of messing up beginning players’ slide position placements. If you find a trombone case like this, make sure you remind your trombone players to pull that tuning slide back out and use a pencil mark for correct placement. Now here is a topic that is not part of this article, but I feel is important to mention here. I have seen way too many beginning trombone players so frustrated that they are ready to quit forever after only a few months in. When I did some investigation to find out why it all boiled down to their slide was just a mess and impossible to move in time with the band. Under these circumstances, nothing but frustration is achieved, and I am not surprised that they want to quit. Take a moment to review how to lubricate a trombone slide well, and check regularly that your new players are doing this every day. You will find this discussion in the article “Slide Lubrication.” Now if you are starting to think that I am nitpicking over little details and missing the big picture, I would somewhat agree. I think I am nitpicking over little details because that IS the big picture. All those little details when ignored, add up to a mess of troubles for students. When they are just starting on a wind instrument, it is much easier to cover all the bits than to have to correct all the troubles later on. So, how to cover all the details in the beginning week or two and still keep your sanity is a big thing for teachers. I would suggest that the best place for help from a clinician is on the very first day of putting that instrument together. Making sure all the little details are done correctly on day one will give you a better payoff than getting clinicians to work with your students later to fix all the “bad habits” that are now part of their playing. Plus, clinicians on day one will give you the bonus of helping you keep your sanity! I encourage you to find a way to use some local adult musicians in your area to help teach your beginning band students all the really important details of playing their wind instrument. Added together, all of these little details from many differing wind instruments can easily overwhelm even the most experienced band teachers. But using local adult help for a session or two can make your life so much better while also helping your students to steer clear of negative unintended learning outcomes. Please feel free to contact your Tapestry rep for help with this suggestion, as we want your students to succeed as much as you do.

Tonic Minor vs Relative Minor? Ed Dumas I was very fortunate in my music education to be offered a music theory course in grade 9 which was an added extra to our concert band studies. We received course credit on our transcripts for the work, and time was made available during the day for students to schedule this into their timetable. Today, these options seem to be closing down more and more due to ever more “mandatory electives” being inserted into students’ timetables. This is a very regrettable trend, as the cost of losing elective choice is showing up in students’ interest in work choices later in life. In my case, this basic understanding of the building blocks of music acquired in grade 9, and then later in college and university held me in good stead well into my years as a band director. It helped me understand what I was playing in secondary school, it helped me enter college and then university music and education studies, and it helped me understand how to lay out a roadmap for student learning of the same basic music theory skills. Over the years, many students have asked me about the requirements necessary to enter a post-secondary music program. Upon hearing that they needed a good understanding of music theory to approximately Royal Conservatory level two, many of those students would be discouraged and never return to the world of music. I can see how this is a self-defeating cycle that leads us to a rather acute shortage of music teachers in our province. So, my knowledge of music theory has led me to take on an active role in teaching the same theory skills to my music students as much as possible. I did not always have the benefit of teaching a supplemental course for which students could receive credit to make this happen. Usually, I had to make do with covering what I could in concert band class to help this along. As many time-sensitive music teachers do, I then doubled up by covering one topic while reaching a different, but also necessary, objective as well. For example, I knew that I wanted my music students to be able to play in all forms of scales, major, natural minor, harmonic minor, and melodic minor. Once having taught the students what a major scale was and how to play it on their instrument, the next task was to then teach them how to play a minor scale. So, we would play the Bb major scale, and then follow it with the G Natural Minor scale, which is the relative minor of Bb major. This is the method of approach that I was taught when I was a student, so just naturally followed the same pattern. Intellectually, I easily understood that the relative minor was the same as the major scale beginning on the sixth degree of the scale. I found this easy to grasp because of the strong basis I had in music theory derived from that music theory course I took in grade 9. So, automatically it seemed to me that when teaching the scales to my band students, I should start with the major scale, and then move to the relative minor. In the key of Bb, we would play the Bb Major scale, followed by the G minor scale. Though I understood that concept well, my students, maybe not so much. The issue seemed to be that when I talked to students about the minor scales, I would get a “furrowed brow” look which I have always looked for when seeking out students who still had questions. Some students, it seemed, were not comfortable asking a question, but when I saw the furrowed brows, I knew it was not making its way home to a level of satisfactory understanding. So, I started testing my students to see if they “got it.” This was not a formal test with grades and all that. I just wanted to see if the students could recognize in sound a simple minor scale vs a major scale. If they could not do this simple task, they would surely have greater trouble identifying if a piece of music was major or minor. I would play some scales to the students and just ask them to tell me if they could identify which ones were major and which ones were minor. The results were less than impressive and indicated that students were still struggling with the concept of major vs minor scales. After several years of teaching scales like this, I then found myself at a BCMEA Convention sitting in on a session with Jeff King talking about his new band technique book that he co-wrote with Richard Williams. The book, if you do not know it, is Foundations for Superior Performance by Jeff King and Richard Williams, KJOS, 1998. I chose this session to sit in on because I figured the speaker might have some valuable things to say that are relevant to me, and maybe the book was worth looking at. Well, Jeff King first talked about warmups and such as are often found in technique books like this one. Then he moved on to the scale-based technical studies and explained that his book moves from the major scale to the tonic minor, rather than the relative minor. The reason that they chose to do it this way is that as a band teacher himself, he found that students’ ears would kind of “flip” when the students were asked to move from the major to the relative minor. Right away I was hit with a profound flash of recognition that I remember to this day. When moving to the relative minor, the student's ears would lose track of the tonic pitch, and therefore would be more concerned with searching for that than in trying to hear the differences between major and minor scales! In short, I was breaking the rule of giving students ONE thing to learn at a time. Now they were having to learn the intellectual connection between major and relative minor, at the same time as they were learning to hear the change in intervals from a major scale to a minor scale. Sitting in that session hearing Jeff King explain to us why he chose to go to the tonic minor scales struck me so hard that I remember sitting up, leaning back, and throwing my arms up in recognition. I wanted to get up right there on the spot and leave, but not because I was offended or anything like that. I wanted to leave just to race down to the nearest vendor and purchase one book for every one of my students! I didn’t leave right away of course, as I just cannot be that dramatic, but I was sold on the concept and have been ever since. Now, I will have the students learn to hear and play major scales, tonic natural minor scales, followed by the harmonic minor scales, and then melodic minor scales. When it comes time to learn how to construct the minor scales, I will then turn to the whiteboard and show the students how to move from the major scale to the relative minor scale. But, I will not ask them to play that change to the relative minor. We will play the tonic minor instead. The difference that came later with students' understanding of major and minor scales was profound. Now they could play a major scale and then simply flatten 3, 6, & 7 to create the tonic minor. We could as a class flip back and forth between majors and minors without having to change tonic centers or lose track of the tonic pitch. We also did not have to flip pages in a book, which I discovered was another huge issue. Many of the technique books that I have used in the past I have loved for different reasons. I have loved I Recommend, James D. Ployhar, Alfred Music, 1972 simply for the rhythm studies at the end. I even loved the old Exercises for Ensemble Drill, Raymond C. Fussell, Alfred Music, 1985 because the book was written in a way that the same book could be used with ANY musician. Few of these other books, though, including those that I have loved, ask the students to move from the major to the tonic minor. Instead, the norm for so long has been moving to the relative minor. The only reason I can find for that decision is that it is the way piano scales have always been taught to piano students. I have even had a disagreement or two about this with piano teachers, but I stand by my belief that moving to the tonic minor is best for wind students. On a piano, so much of what the students are learning is fingering patterns when learning scales. This is understandable when you look at a piano keyboard and think about fingerings when moving from white to black keys and then back to white. Depending on the scale you are playing, the finger patterns you use will vary to fit the black and white keys. Finger patterns are an issue on our wind instruments, but black and white is just not a thing. Instead, we must be concerned with a wind instrument that is at best an approximation in sound of what that scale should be. With woodwinds the fingers certainly have patterns but the sounds all have to be “massaged” a bit to put them in the correct places. With the brass instruments, the pitching problem is even worse as it is possible to put down all the correct fingers and get none of the pitches even remotely correct. This is due to having to deal with finding the correct harmonic as well as the correct fingers. On a piano, though, whether you get the finger patterns for a scale correct or not, the sounds will still come out the same as they did last time unless there is something seriously wrong with your piano! It seems kind of obvious that we should have seen that the method of learning on a piano will be different than a wind instrument simply for the fact that the problems of creating that series of sounds are fundamentally different between the two. As such, it is far more valuable, in the beginning at least, for young players to HEAR the difference between major and minor to be able to check if they are “doing it right.” Hence the need to shift to tonic minor instead of relative minor. One final thought about these band technique books. I have also come to love the Foundations for Superior Performance book simply because when doing scales and technique studies, students do not need to flip pages to find the next exercise in the key you are working on. That seems kind of logical, and yet so many technique books are not arranged by keys, but rather by the type of study you are doing. For example, if the students are playing major scales, they will be given all of the major scales on the same page. Ditto for minor scales, first in relative minors, then a page of harmonic minors, then a page of melodic minors. These books would often then progress in the same way through any following studies such as chords, arpeggios and so on. If the teacher is trying to learn a new key such as Db, then the students will be constantly flipping pages which wastes a significant chunk of class time. The Foundations for Superior Performance book will put all of the Bb studies on the same page including the tonic minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, and any subsequent chord and arpeggio studies. As the teacher, you can move through those studies in one key centre just so much faster and then get on with the music that you want to play. The next page will have Eb studies, and then Ab studies, and so on. That just seems to make better sense and is one of the many reasons that I have loved this book the most. Even if you never really get into the Foundations for Superior Studies book like I did, try moving from the major scale to the tonic minor in whatever technique book you are using. Don’t even worry about flipping pages to find it, but instead just show the students how to flatten 3, 6, & 7 to hear the tonic minor. Then, when they have that figured out, show them how to turn that tonic minor into the harmonic minor by raising the 7th back up. Listen for the flattened third and the larger leap at the top. Finally show them how to create the melodic minor by raising 6 and 7 on the way up, and lowering them on the way down while keeping the 3rd flattened. You could have your students switch between those scales freely without looking at the music, just so long as you do not YET move to the relative minor and confuse them until the intellectual studies are complete. Moving to the relative minor might be something you choose to do later, but during that initial recognition of major vs minor (and WHICH minor), keep the tonic pitch the same. Once they can hear the structure of the scales, then it will be acceptable to move to the relative minor to explain the relationship of key signatures in major and minor scales. Then, once students have mastered recognizing major and all forms of minor scales, you could start discussing the structures of major and minor scales. This discussion is dependent on students knowing what Tones and Semitones (Whole Step & Half Step) are and being able to hear the difference between them. Once they can recognize Tones and Semitones, you can then begin to teach them the order of tones and semitones. Most music teachers should be able to recognize and demonstrate to students that a major scale structure is    T  T  ST  T  T  T  ST.  Students can then be shown that a natural (unaltered) minor scale is   T  ST  T  T  ST  T  T.   When students are recognizing the differences in sound between the major and the minor scales, it is these orders of tones and semitones that they are recognizing. To be more precise, it is the location of the semitones that they should be listening for. Further studies in minor scales will recognize the structures of the harmonic minor scale with its “Tone + Semitone" at the top, and the structure of the melodic minor scale with its different ascending and descending versions of the scale. Many teachers at this point will likely suggest that this discussion about moving from the major to tonic vs major to relative minor is kind of moot since so many students today just cannot play at that level right now anyway. I would suggest a few things to those comments. First, they might be right. But I know that if I never teach any particular concept to my students it pretty much guarantees that they will not know it. I also know that if I can find a way to teach it to students with better success and less confusion, then I owe it to my students to do so. Try presenting minor scales to your students using the tonic minor, and see if it helps. If it does improve your students understanding and recognition of minor scales, then have another look at Foundations for Superior Performance by Jeff King and Richard Williams. Trust me when I say it will be worth it!