Come Join the Band - 2013 Wrap up (Success through Comfortable Failure)
For the past 3 years I have had the opportunity to coach a class on starting your own band through the University of Rochester’s Pre-College summer session. Alan Murphy and I always have a great experience working with the high school students for “Come Join the Band: Creative Music Making for Everyone.” It’s always a great learning opportunity for us as teachers and performers to revisit our own formative learning time. Looking back on how we experienced learning an instrument for the first time or interacting with new band members is a great way to check in on how comfortable we are as professional performers and educators. Facilitating the formative process of learning instruments and working as a band (in this case with members who have never even met and may have little to no music performance experience) is really profound. This step in the learning process (failure!) is something that can be really discouraging if you’re not used to it. I know that I’ve had plenty of good and terrible experiences evaluating my drumming, composing, and singing (either as it happens or from a recording), and I think it was helpful to the students to know that everyone else in the band was there to support them. We all got to the point where we were comfortable talking about what was awesome and what could use some improvement--a big step than not even a lot of professional groups get to!
We kicked off the first of two weeks by learning a simple tune by ear. Everyone sang the bass line, lyrical melody, and patted/tapped the basic beat and beat division in our heels and hands--all at the same time! You can see an example of this process on Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines In A Crusht Tin Box” in the IfCM video here from Montana (starts around 30 seconds in):
I demonstrated how the rhythm patterns directly related to playing a basic beat on the drum set and everyone tried it out. This is usually learning “through failure moment #1”--drums are uncomfortably foreign at first, but then they get easier. Now that all of the students have a task that they currently are unable to do (play a rock beat on the drum set with all 4 limbs) we all practice it together with one person rotating to the drum set and the rest of us patting on our legs and tapping our heels on the ground. Everyone did a fantastic job listening to the pattern that they were playing and gradually making it more steady by the time they tried it on the drum set. Getting used to practicing rhythmic coordination away from an instrument like this is really dependent on your ability to listen carefully to the weight of your limbs and adjust them to the way that your ears perceive the groove. Listening critically to rhythmic interaction without the amplified sonic bombast of drums, cymbals, or even drum sticks, is really important in the learning sequence of becoming a competent musician. It was great to see the students improve their listening skills as an ensemble through the weeks, and I think that their willingness to practice rhythmic coordination away from the instruments contributed to that.
We followed this presentation with similar hands-on demos by Alan (piano), special guest Kyle Vock (bass), and IfCM intern Ben Fang (guitar).
[pic of Kyle with boys] We all worked with them on singing as a group and Alan, Kyle, and I had a chance to perform music that we regularly play as the Mighty High and Dry. The students shared a song or two that we pooled together to chose what we’d like to learn based on the difficulty, instruments available, and overall familiarity with the song. We listened to a wide range of styles and artists including the Ben Folds Five, Muse, Los Lobos, contemporary gospel, and video game soundtrack music and settled on two songs to start: “No One” by Alicia Keys and “Crushcrushcrush” by Paramour. Lots of workshopping about how to listen for different instruments and building parts out of what you hear.
Here's the completed result from a field trip session to GFI Music, a great professional recording studio in Rochester:
We are looking to stay involved with the students creative lives and hopefully offering a regular class to get them together with other like-minded musicians. Stay tuned for more exciting youth creativity around Rochester!
- Chris Teal
