So You Re The New Band Director Now What

This book introduces music education majors to basic instrumental pedagogy for the instruments and ensembles most commonly found in the elementary and secondary curricula. This text focuses on the core competencies required for teacher certification in instrumental music. The first section of the book focuses on essential issues for a successful instrumental program: objectives, assessment and evaluation, motivation, administrative tasks, and recruiting and scheduling (including block scheduling). The second section devotes a chapter to each wind instrument plus percussion and strings, and includes troubleshooting checklists for each instrument. The third section focuses on rehearsal techniques from the first day through high school.

Strategies, Tips, and Activities for the Effective Band Director: Targeting Student Engagement and Comprehension is a resourceful collection of highly effective teaching strategies, solutions, and activities for band directors. Chapters are aligned to cover common topics, presenting several practical lesson ideas for each topic. In most cases, each pedagogical suggestion is supported by excerpts from standard concert band literature. Topics covered include: score study shortcuts; curriculum development; percussion section management; group and individual intonation; effective rehearsal strategies; and much more! This collection of specific concepts, ideas, and reproducible pedagogical methods—not unlike short lesson plans—can be used easily and immediately. Ideal for band directors of students at all levels, Strategies, Tips, and Activities for the Effective Band Director is the product of more than three decades of experience, presenting innovative approaches, as well as strategies that have been borrowed, revised, and adapted from scores of successful teachers and clinicians.

In Habits of a Successful Band Director Scott Rush provides: A how-to book for young teachers; A supplement for college methods classes; A commonsense approach to everyday problems band directors face; Sequential models for instruction that are narrow in scope; Solutions, in the form of information and probing questions, that allow assessment of a classroom situation; Valuable information in a new format and references to other helpful publications; A contemporary text for all band directors. Some of the topics covered in the ten chapters include: classroom organization and management, working with parents and colleagues, the importance of the warm-up, rehearsal strategies, selecting high-quality literature, and student leadership. The appendices provide valuable outlines and reproducible forms such as medical releases and pitch tendency chart.

Bowen Merlin—yes, that’s his real name—accepts a position in the quaint town of Lancaster, New Hampshire, as the high school band director. He leaves New York City for the snowy countryside of New England just in time for the holidays. With class, homework, after-school activities, and a surprise Christmas concert to plan and rehearse, Bowen is plenty busy. And since he’s never had much luck with romance, factoring in time to find Mr. Right isn’t a priority. Until he meets the proprietor of Snowy Ridge Apple Orchard, Felix Hansen. Suddenly, true love seems like a possibility for the first time in Bowen’s life. The two are a perfect match and fill the skipped beats of each other’s hearts. But as wonderful as Felix seems, he’s harboring old scars that could bring an end to their budding relationship after someone in town goes to great lengths to sabotage their careers. If Bowen is to survive, he’ll need to lean on old friends and new, convince Felix he’s worth any hardship, and prove they can come out of the catastrophe stronger if they do so together. Also available as an audiobook! A Lancaster Story series reading order: #1 Kneading You (FREE) #2 Joy #3 Color of You Keywords: gay romance, age gap, opposites attract, single parent, single father, small town, blue collar, sweet and steamy, new boy in town, mm romance, Christmas, spicy, heat

The Stooges Brass Band always had big dreams. From playing in the streets of New Orleans in the mid-1990s to playing stages the world over, they have held fast to their goal of raising brass band music and musicians to new heights—professionally and musically. In the intervening years, the band’s members have become family, courted controversy, and trained a new generation of musicians, becoming one of the city’s top brass bands along the way. Two decades after their founding, they have decided to tell their story. Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game is a collaboration between musician and ethnomusicologist Kyle DeCoste and more than a dozen members of the Stooges Brass Band, past and present. It is the culmination of five years of interviews, research, and writing. Told with humor and candor, it’s as much a personal account of the Stooges’ careers as it is a story of the city’s musicians and, even more generally, a coming-of-age tale about black men in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. DeCoste and the band members take readers into the barrooms, practice rooms, studios, tour vans, and streets where the music is made and brotherhoods are shaped and strengthened. Comprised of lively firsthand accounts and honest dialogue, Can’t Be Faded is a dynamic approach to collaborative research that offers a sensitive portrait of the humans behind the horns.

For slightly over two decades, the College Band Directors National Association published the CBDNA Journal, a research outlet for all types of subjects of interest to the membership. Following cessation of activities in 2002, Michael Votta, Jr., the Journal's most recent editor, assembled representative articles on composers and their works, historical research and composition analysis investigations, and produced this fine collection of writings. As a source of well-constructed research by some of the country's leading musicians, it fills a much needed place in everyone's library.

Band Aids is an organizational guide for early career band directors and for more experienced directors seeking new organizational and management strategies and approaches for their school and community bands. The authors present a practical approach to organizing, managing, and teaching an instrumental music program. Classroom management, instrumentation, starting beginners, parent organizations, band trips, and assessment are among the relevant topics presented and discussed. This text is an invaluable guide for directors searching for assistance, not with music skills, but with the day-to-day teaching and management of a band program. "Tips" and "Key Points" enable a quick review of material covered.