| Is this a fair comparison?
My daughter plays softball for her school team. During the summer she chooses to play “Rec ball” instead of select ball. She is good enough to play “select”; in fact she was chosen to play All-stars.
She chooses to play “Rec ball” because the competition is not taken as seriously. There are a few weeks, and weekends, of All-star tournaments, but for the most part it is just for fun.
What if a kid joins band because music is supposed to be “just for fun”? What if his mom or dad got him all pumped up about “how much fun it is to be in band”?
My kids can play! In my entire career my bands have made less than a superior rating ONCE. Concert ratings don’t mean anything to me (a well trained monkey can play the same 3 songs over and over until they get it pretty near to perfect), but I must say that I’m proud that my students also earn superior ratings in sight-reading at festivals. You can’t sight read unless you are fundamentally sound!
I just was totally stunned this week when a fine band student, one who always seemed to love my class, told me that some parts of it were more serious than he liked. He was in music “just for fun”.
I know there is no right answer to this question. It just made me think really hard about trying to make music more fun for my students. I do have bad news for them! The will still be doing fundamentals, including those nasty scales that everyone hates. I’m an old dog with very few new tricks. I just think that I need to keep a better pulse on how my students feel about their overall band experience.
__________________   |