Creeva’s World 2.0

I’ve done the com­mu­nity band cir­cuit for a year now and I’ve played with two com­mu­nity bands.  The one thing I have noticed is that the bands don’t really seem to be grow­ing.  When they do grow it’s usu­ally by an older mem­ber decides to join in the band.  The youth mar­ket seems to be com­pletely dis­en­fran­chised.   I can under­stand part of that, though I declined to the join the VCMA when it was first formed due to not lik­ing the direc­tor.   It wasn’t because I didn’t want to play, I still had the yearly Ver­mil­ion Alumni Band to play in, then I moved to Ore­gon.   While there I hardly ever pulled out my trum­pet and when I did it was just for a half hour stint every few months.   My lips didn’t have the range or sta­mina they once did.   After blow­ing out my lip the last cou­ple years at Alumni after mov­ing back to Ohio, I decided I need to bring more reg­u­lar play­ing in my life.  This led me to com­mu­nity band.  Since I am young(er) I have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the band.

The first thing is that the music (at least over the sum­mer) is extremely heav­ily weighted to music writ­ten before I was born.   If we play any­thing done after I was born it was an arrange­ment of a pre-existing piece.  I hear the direc­tor say things like, “we’ll play this piece because every­one will know it”.   Most of the time this is said, I nei­ther know it, nor do I rec­og­nize the melody.  I feel attached and not a part of some­thing I can rec­og­nize.  This is not to say that I think the old music should be ignored, no mat­ter how much I dis­like tra­di­tional marches.  I think we should play a wider vari­ety of music that encom­passes all eras.  Young peo­ple that really aren’t in to band music should have some­thing that is rec­og­niz­able to them and not just some­thing that there par­ents kind of remem­ber or their grand­par­ents danced to on their first date.    There needs to be a mix­ture.   A mix­ture that should appeal to all those involved.

Rules I would fol­low to achieve this if I was choos­ing the music:

1.  Choose at least one movie/television theme song– prefer­ably some­thing rec­og­niz­able to all ages.   While we are play­ing Moon­river in the VCMA and I adore, it is not some­thing that the major­ity of under-forty crowd would rec­og­nize.  I think you would have to go to the over fifty crowd to truly appre­ci­ate and remem­ber it.  My wife said she would for­ever be in love and be inspired to work harder at learn­ing an instru­ment if she hears The Mup­pet Show Theme Song.  My per­sonal favorite is video game theme music, some­thing as tra­di­tional as The Leg­end of Zelda Theme Song or a num­ber from the Final Fan­tasy series.   There is a national com­pany that tours and just does live con­certs on video game music, it sells out pretty quickly.  These types of con­certs have a great deal of appeal to the under forty crowd and that should be taken into consideration.

Some TV themes I would like to hear:

• Bat­man the Ani­mated Series Theme
• The Mup­pet Show Theme
• The A-Team Theme
• The Adam’s Family
• The Star Trek Theme
• Farscape Theme
• Benny Hill Theme
• Monty Python’s Cir­cus Theme
• Futu­rama Theme
• The Incred­i­ble Hulk Theme
• Inspec­tor Gad­get Theme
• Mac­gyver Theme
• Mis­sion Impos­si­ble Theme
• Quan­tum Leap Theme
• Bonanza Theme
• Scooby Doo Theme
• Twi­light Zone Theme
• X-Files

Movie Themes I would like to hear:

• Any­thing by John Williams
• Any­thing by James Horner
• Harry Pot­ter
• Any­thing large movie made in the last 20 years.

2.  Choose at least one pop arrange­ment — the VCMA did the Bea­t­les and this would fit into this cat­e­gory.  The real prob­lem with pop music is that so lit­tle of it actu­ally sounds good for a con­cert band.   The fifties and six­ties pop­u­lar songs actu­ally sound the best, though there are a few later pieces that sound quite good also.

3.  Choose one clas­si­cal piece that eas­ily rec­og­nized, so far in nei­ther of my com­mu­nity bands have we tack­led any clas­si­cal music.  We have done some “tra­di­tional” pieces, but noth­ing clas­si­cal.   Where is the Bach, Beethoven, or Chopin?  There is an abun­dance of this that has been arranged for con­cert bands, but the bands I belong to seem to over­look any­thing pre 1880 and post 1960.  Christ­mas music doesn’t really fall under “classical”

Out of these 3 areas com­mu­nity bands should be able to play one piece from each of these genre’s through out there year of per­form­ing.  I’m not say­ing it has to fol­low that one of each of these pieces get played every con­cert, but out the forty or so pieces I have played in both bands, they should be able to accom­mo­date one of each of these in their play rotation.

There are other rules I would fol­low also.

4.  No more then 20 per­cent of your music can come from any decade.  If it was all arranged in the eight­ies, that’s fine but the melodies and orig­i­nal music was com­posed accord­ing to this guide­line.   I’m not going to pick on arrangers for doing a mod­ern arrange­ment of In the Mood, its swing era song.   With this rule you could also still fit in eas­ily a whole con­cert and still have music writ­ten from before I was born.

5.  No more then 40% from any sin­gle genre.  Whether this is marches, swing, clas­si­cal, theme music, etc., etc. — vari­ety makes more peo­ple take notice unless you’re doing a theme concert.

6. Theme con­certs (usu­ally X-mas con­certs for com­mu­nity bands) — In a theme con­cert you should play a max­i­mum of 80% of the music that fol­lows the theme.   One or two pieces should be reserved for some­thing unex­pected and inter­est­ing that doesn’t fit the norm of a par­tic­u­lar theme.  Whether this is a Christ­mas march or a sum­mer play­ing of Sleigh Ride, the unex­pected brings peo­ples atten­tion by break­ing monotony.

7.  While con­duc­tors nor­mally choose the music in most cir­cum­stances, there should be one or two pieces cho­sen by the band mem­bers them­selves to work through and play.   These peo­ple are there to have fun, play some­thing they really want to play.

8.  Encour­age your mem­bers to com­pose or arrange some­thing for your band to play.  This makes the music all their own and gives your band some­thing special.

That cov­ers my notes from music selec­tion.   So how do you attract new mem­bers?   Other then peo­ple mov­ing into the com­mu­nity or the rare per­son find­ing out about you and show­ing up, there is lit­tle in the means of growth.  Com­mu­nity bands are com­pet­ing with the Inter­net, Social Net­work­ing, video games, hang­ing out with friends, going to the bar, or club­bing.   Hav­ing lived through my twen­ties already most of these are more fun at that age then com­mu­nity band.  You need to hook mem­bers while they are still young.

I’ve always played for the love of play­ing.  I really started when I was a sopho­more in high school, by my junior year you couldn’t keep me from audi­tion­ing or vol­un­teer­ing to play for what­ever group was avail­able.  This alone helped me grow into a much bet­ter musi­cian.  I used to be able to trans­pose music from the key of C or the Key of F in my head auto­mat­i­cally and play along from that sheet music.   My range and sta­mina were much bet­ter then they are still today.   My tech­nique today is bet­ter in a lot of ways, but I feel I was a bet­ter player in a larger scope back then.  That was after only a year of play­ing back then, I have some of that mem­ory still in my head and I’m old enough to have gained wis­dom.  My knowl­edge should have grown.   After my sin­gle year of col­lege I stopped play­ing with any group out­side of Alumni band.  It wasn’t out of dis­in­ter­est as much as effort.   If I didn’t love play­ing I wouldn’t stay with the com­mu­nity band, there is no one in my peer group and for a large part of it it’s not really “fun”, at least not in the sense it was fun back when I was in high school.

Most play­ers fall off because they are not engaged early enough into the com­mu­nity band cycle.  To give an exam­ple what non engage­ment with play­ing can do, for alumni band out of the 160 of us that went through 3 years together, only 5 showed up last year to Alumni Band, only two of us reg­u­larly play now.  That’s hov­er­ing around a 1–2% rate of a player likely to stick with their instru­ment after school form my per­sonal expe­ri­ence.  Almost all com­mu­nity bands explic­itly state that will accept mem­bers that are in high school with their band director’s per­mis­sion.   Now while I would have gladly played with a com­mu­nity band when I was in high school I was not going to go up and have Mr. Henry sign a per­mis­sion slip or call to ask if I could join the band.   This is a turn off.   What should hap­pen is that com­mu­nity band should be actively engag­ing the high school and mid­dle school band direc­tors for mem­bers every sin­gle year.  If com­mu­nity band mem­bers are wor­ried about mid­dle school­ers, then they should make a junior com­mu­nity band where the reg­u­lar band can show up if they so choose and the younger play­ers can show up.

Younger play­ers are look­ing for peo­ple to emu­late, to try to sound like.  Hav­ing men­tor­ing by accept­ing is only going to raise their skill level.   Play­ers that show up are not get­ting school credit, they are not get­ting paid, and so why have any stip­u­la­tions.   If the music is too hard for them they are not going to stick around.   If they don’t really enjoy play­ing and are only in the school for social­iza­tion or the fun from that they are not going to show up.   If com­mu­nity bands are there to make its own mem­bers bet­ter, then the younger the bet­ter, they can make the band as a whole be bet­ter.  The older play­ers get the ben­e­fit of mild teach­ing and under­stand­ing of what they are doing and the younger play­ers gain a mentor.

Once the younger play­ers are hooked they are more likely to stick with music, since they then have a place to play after they grad­u­ate.  They will be informed about the com­mu­nity band and will be reg­u­lar mem­bers.   If they are any­thing like I was they will find a great relief about hav­ing some place to play over the sum­mer.  Older mem­bers may even make a lit­tle bit of side cash by giv­ing lessons, even if they aren’t as good as a true instruc­tor they could still impart wis­dom and teach a stu­dent to the edge of their abil­i­ties, at which point the stu­dent could move onto some­one else. My high school self could play rings around my present self. I think com­mu­nity bands under esti­mate the skill lev­els of these players.

Is there a strong future for com­mu­nity bands?  It depends.   The older gen­er­a­tions need to real­ize that play­ing in band is not “cool” at least not until your in your thir­ties, and I still get the occa­sional snicker about it — I just don’t care.  A com­mu­nity band is con­sid­ered a tired thing by the younger gen­er­a­tion who would pre­fer most of their live music to con­tain elec­tric gui­tars.  The abil­ity to evolve and bring new mem­bers in is essen­tial for most com­mu­nity bands to last another twenty years.   Show­ing play­ers it can be fun by play­ing music they can iden­tify with and accept­ing them as peers within their mem­ber­ship.  You could still have a stip­u­la­tion where the younger mem­bers couldn’t vote in elec­tions, I’m sure you wouldn’t want your board run by four six­teen year olds — but hav­ing one of them in a posi­tion with a voice may give you greater pos­si­bil­i­ties then some­one like me who is already twice that age and out of touch.

I’ve got­ten the VCMA web­site in a sta­ble place.  I can quickly edit it and make changes, so before any rad­i­cal redesigns I’m now work­ing on mov­ing them over to Google Apps for inter­nal paper­work.  I plan in the near future sign­ing the VCMA up for a Myspace page and a Face­book account.  Peo­ple in the younger peer group will be able to see it as an orga­ni­za­tion to iden­tify with.  The older mem­bers need to real­ize why they started a com­mu­nity to begin with, which includes — hang­ing out with friends, play­ing for peo­ple, becom­ing bet­ter musi­cians, and hav­ing fun.  None of what I have writ­ten breaks any of that.  It may take them a lit­tle bit out of their com­fort zone, but the mantra of busi­ness these days is to embrace and extend.   Growth hap­pens once some of these things are fol­lowed.  If the bands I play with don’t start embrac­ing this I’m not sure they will last another twenty years and things will get shaky in another ten.   Growth has not con­tin­ued, but rather it has stag­nated, unless there is some­thing done to counter-act this, the down­ward trend will continue.

In my band I’m still con­sid­ered just a kid, though my father had his fourth child by my age.   I’m too young to them to be any­thing but a kid so what do I know.  I’m too old for any of the young peo­ple to truly lis­ten to me, plus I’m over thirty so I’m to young to be trusted.  If we go by Cory Doc­torow’s book Lit­tle Brother — they don’t trust any­one over 22.   Some­how I’m stuck in the adult ver­sion of the tweens.  So no one will truly pay atten­tion, but that doesn’t mean this shouldn’t be said.

Pic­ture from here