NO, WE'RE NOT JUST MACHINES

The other day at lessons one of my valued students had some questions about working out an arrangement for a song.

But her questions had less to do with the music and more to do with band member relations.

She wanted to know if she should get the other horn players to articulate a line the way she heard it.

My answer was for her to bring it up next time at band practice. What I thought about that line and how it should be performed was irrelevant at that point.

Friends, part of learning music is learning how to communicate such ideas about arranging or phrasing or whatever amongst yourselves in a manner that is  constructive, respectful, and that gets the point across.

I recall a day on the band stand with adult musicians...and one of them was having trouble finding a groove at the place where the  song shifted to cut time. A musician offered an opinion. I'm sure he thought he was only being helpful, but he said it in a way such that the other guy took offense and unplugged his own rig and went home.

If there's a moral to today's post it is this: communication in band class takes place on many more levels than with your respective instruments, and that's part of what you are there to learn -- or, as my friend and guitarist Tom Tice would put it, how to play nice with one another.