Band Teachers’ Corner #1: Preparing for Success

To have a successful school year, you need to take stock and make sure your students have and get what they need to succeed.

1) Take an inventory of what you have in your classroom.

Put things into categories: Main Instruments, Auxiliary instruments, mallets/beaters/sticks. This is where you take a look at your drum set and see what cymbal stands need sleeves and felts, what heads need replacing, and what your stick/mallet inventory is. If you need help and can budget for it, a local percussionist can help you with this and do some minor repairs along the way. Tuning up drums will make a world of difference to your overall sound!

2) Budget and prioritize what you need.

If a drum is missing a tension rod, that is a necessity. New drum heads, depends on wear and tear. Mallets? If you don’t have a bass drum beater, you won’t have a bass drum playing in your classroom. Mismatched mallets sound horrible on suspended cymbal. Missing a $3 cymbal sleeve? Replace it before you need to replace the $300 cymbal on that stand.

3) Figure out your large and your small instrument needs based on your repertoire for the season.

You might decide that you don’t need all your thing-whackers out in the percussion cabinet, and that they’d be safer in a bin in your office until they are needed. Maybe you only need one set of all purpose mallets for your suspended cymbal and your vibraphone. Does your triangle need a clip/string and beater? Yes, they will need all of those to play a decent sounding triangle during that Vaughn Williams march. Whatever you need to fill your repertoire, you will want to be sure you have those specific instruments available and functioning in your percussion cabinet.

4) Plan to have a large section or a small section. You never know what/who you will be in your program. If you only have two players, some pieces will be really frustrating and sound empty if you don’t have enough people on percussion. If you have a large percussion section and are only playing marches, you might have people sitting out and not learning any parts at all. Remember to consider your percussion section when you are picking repertoire. Another solution is to program some percussion ensemble music for your concert. One small all percussion piece can be motivating and exciting for a learning percussionist.

4) When you know your numbers, look at your percussion lines in the score and decide what needs to be played (and listen to the pieces). What is a must for coverage and what can go? As their leader, percussionists will default to the director as to which parts to play. In many clinics I have found percussionists sitting out when there are mallet parts and auxiliary percussion parts to be played, simply because they were not instructed to do so.

5) Make a percussion “Master List” and have music copies/binders to reflect that. Assign parts. Highlight where they change instruments. You may need to cut and paste or write parts in so that a player knows what to do and where to go without any confusion. Percussion is a difficult and logistically challenging instrument group. Practicing through entire pieces is essential for them to learn where to go next, to set up their instruments efficiently, and to successfully work through their parts. This is a good time to set up several trap stands with towels on sturdy Manhassett music stands marked specifically for the percussion section.

6) Think through percussion stations and set up changes between pieces. It may seem like nothing to move from bass drum to triangle, but there are logistics! Practice not only the pieces during your rehearsals, but time between piece changes (sometimes even movement to movement in a larger piece will have instrument changes). Percussionists need time to literally move through their parts. This will be the test if their work stations are functional or not.

Still need help? Hire a professional! I’ve been teaching percussion clinics since 1996, and have taught percussion to teachers. I have seen what is missing, and can help you get on top of it. Book a Zoom Session by Contacting Me.