I realized that I needed to focus on the lower register daily so that my middle school band students know the importance of consistency of sound. I had never heard a group whose pedal tones were as loud as their highest notes. I sat inside their warm-up circle and was forever changed as a teacher by how loud their lip slurs were and how powerful their pedal tones were. Several years ago, I was invited to spend a day with the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps. Last year, I had fifth-grade flutes, clarinets, a trumpet player, and a baritone player who could play a two-octave Bb scale.
They have all the information they need from the fingering chart. If you encourage and challenge your young students to see how high they can play, you will be amazed at what they can do. I have found that if a song only uses six notes, many band directors focus on those six notes so students can play that particular song. By the end of the year almost all students can play the one octave scale, with the exception of some struggling clarinetists.
#Trumpet pedal tones chart full#
This break between notes gives woodwind players a chance to find the fingering for the next note and everyone time to take a full breath. We open the method book to the fingering chart and play a scale, alternating between whole notes and whole rests. We start working on the Bb scale second semester. Students who produce a high buzz will need to relax and work on the horse buzz, while students who buzz quite low should first be brought up to a Bb and work on getting a good sound there before expanding the range. While working up to sirens I watch students to see whether they produce a high or low buzz at first. Brass students love doing this, and I have fun challenges to see who has the best siren.
Then I demonstrate the siren on the mouthpiece going from low to high to low.
I will have kids alternate the horse buzz with the bumble bee buzz. I don’t teach students the terms at first we start with siren sounds on the mouthpieces. I used to tell students to firm the corners of the mouth, but this is a difficult concept for beginners, while everyone understands what a smile is. Bumble bee buzz is a fast buzz done with cold air and a smile. I have all brass players blow slow, warm air on their hands before we start playing. Horse buzz, so named because children can relate to the sounds horses make, is a slow buzz with warm air. I teach brass players two types of buzzing, called horse buzz and bumble bee buzz, terms I learned from Scott Watson, the tuba professor at the University of Kansas.
I have found this to be helpful for getting clarinetists over the break.įor the first two weeks with my beginning brass students we only use mouthpieces and play call-and-response rhythms. Once they can play a strong low F, I then show them the register key. On woodwind days, I sometimes take the clarinets aside to work with them down to low F. Percussionists come every day because they need more time to learn everything percussionists have to learn. Woodwinds meet Monday sand Wednesdays, and brasses meet Tuesdays and Thursdays. My beginners are divided into woodwind and brass classes. I started marking the low concert Bb on students’ fingering charts, with a goal of getting every student to play a one-octave Bb scale by the end of the first year. What I failed to realize was that I am a visual learner, and some of my students might be as well. When I started teaching, I only used the fingering chart in the back of the method book if someone played the wrong note and I did not remember the fingering. I am a trumpet player and have middle school students who can play higher than I can. About 10 years ago, I added range-building exercises to my daily warm-ups with my middle school band program, with spectacular results. Daily warm-up routines that focus on tone, matching pitch, tonguing, articulations, and chorales for blend and balance are commonplace.