Band Directors Talk Shop

Chaperones can make a huge impact on your band trip. Put the right team in place and you’ve got a smoother trip and a built-in recruiting tool. Get it wrong, and you’re troubleshooting headaches you could have avoided. Here’s how to get it right! Respectfully, It’s Not A Vacation It doesn’t take long to spot ...

One of the challenges I have found in teaching band is giving students opportunities to actually make musical choices. In most of the repertoire we perform, many of those decisions have already been made. Dynamics, articulations, tempo, and style are printed on the page, and as the conductor, I make many of the remaining decisions ...

In our recent survey, we asked Band Directors Talk Shop readers to share “What advice do you have for a director taking over a program?”  With many responses to the survey, we came up with this list of your answers. Thanks so much to all of our readers who took time to fill out the survey. Keep an ...

Are you wanting to improve your student’s understanding of music notation? Note Names, Rhythms, Music Symbols & Terms? Basic music composition? This video shows what you can include in your beginning band student’s music theory book to improve comprehension. This book is created for students who start in 6th grade and have band daily for ...

When striving to produce a good saxophone tone, one of the most crucial pieces of equipment is the mouthpiece. There are many brands of saxophone mouthpieces being manufactured using a variety of materials, encompassing a wide price range and designed for performers at all levels of development. Beginning saxophonists usually play the stock mouthpieces sold ...