In the process of trying to deliver what our patrons want, rather than what convention dictates, encouragement from several directions has led us to a new category of music coming to our web site in the coming months - the Massed Band Collection.
The need for pieces to play as combined band programs is being left completely unfulfilled - either your high school students are bored playing sixth grade music or your beginners are in way over their heads playing the older kids' pieces. The selections we're creating are three-level medleys which will work in single band performances, or in any combination of two versions, or the whole enchilada of all three versions working in conjunction. Some sections have everyone playing together - and the parts interlock and support each other - and some have individual bands playing their own material, so each band can have its own moment in the spotlight. (When you play just one or perhaps two of the three bands' parts, there are easy slices to be made deleting those unused solo sections.)
The benefits of combining your bands are many and obvious to experienced band directors, but for novices: realize that the best recruiting tool you have for your younger members is your older membership! And that the one of the best motivations for your older kids is the enthusiasm of younger players who idolize them!
There are two medleys in the works at this point, both of which should be available in the next few months: The First Hundred Years, a collection of early American folk songs (it begins with three contrasting versions of Yankee Doodle from the three bands, for example), and Christmas Collage (in which "Jingle Bells" is given the same treatment). Other combination pieces are on the drawing board - but if you have suggestions of ideas that you might use in this form, pass them on in the comments and we'll see what we can do for you!
Gordon was working on the Christmas medley over a year ago, when he was still teaching the Jerome band program, with the intent of using it in the year he chose not to teach band. Melissa encouraged him to explore the genre once she realized what he'd been developing, and then a few others thought this would be a useful and marketable creation. The biggest thank you goes to Gordon's longtime colleague April Peterson, who told us how she couldn't find anything to fit this bill for the Kuna program Gordon'd left her years ago, and wouldn't we be interested in creating something for her? That was the straw that broke the dam, to mix our metaphors.
Check out the GPS MUSIC Massed Band Collection as it appears over the course of 2013 - and if you teach in a program that can use something like this, drop us a line!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
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