Ensemble Book Reviews and Spring Concert Plans

I wanted to share my thoughts on some of the ensemble music I'm using. After doing my first Christmas concert a couple of weeks ago, I really want to gear up for our spring concert and do some real music. I plan on hitting the ensemble stuff pretty hard after Christmas. Right now my average student is finishing up study with the 4th string. I estimate that in 3 to 4 weeks I'll have 80% who've passed off the 6th string material. Then, they'll graduate on to the ensemble music.

Right now the plan is to have a few ensemble pieces that all of these students work through and pass off. Then, I hope to have several small ensembles of 3 to 6 kids to better fill out our Spring concert program.

Also, I've got students of pretty widely varying levels of skill. I've got a couple of 'nerds' who just are reading and technical machines. They have no previous musical experience but just freakishly adhere to every musical and technical suggestion I make. And they just can't get enough guitar.

I also have the band kids who can already read music. Then there are the students who have been in my class a previous year and are a little ahead. I say "a little" because this is the first year that I've actually done guitar exclusively in my General Music classes. So, we're basically almost a semester ahead of last year already.

Then there are my special education students. Of these, I've got three who will never be able to read beyond the first strings even with letter names and/or fret numbers written over the notes. Then there are probably another 8 to 10 who are "struggling" with 2 to 3 strings. For these students, I've had to find ensemble music that accomodates these challenges. I'll address this issue in my reviews of the books.

My main considerations in finding ensemble music for first-year middle school guitarists are ease of playing and quality of arrangement.  I guess I'm looking for the highest "quality of arrangement" to "ease of playing" ratio in these pieces.   Honestly, there is plenty of material out there that is good quality.  It's just more difficult.  I also was looking for some of the arrangements to be more rhythmic and contemporary.  There are tons of classical arrangements to be found, many of them free.  There is a definite need for lighter concert material to mix in with the classical arrangements.

I'll review the four ensemble books I got from the GAMA workshop this summer and also the other sources I'm using for the concert. There are a lot of other sources out there and I certainly haven't seen them all. I'm just giving my thoughts on the few that I've seen.  All of these books are companions to method books of the same title.  Some of them even let you know at which point in studying the method the ensembles can be used.  (Purchasing any of these products through the links provided here supports my blog.  Thanks.)

21st Century Guitar Ensemble

This is book one of the ensemble companions to the popular "21st Century Guitar" method series.  I haven't used the method book yet.  So I can't really compare it to that method.  This one I found to have the lowest ratio of the two afore mentioned factors.  Many of these short pieces have substantial measures of rest for one or two parts while the others begin alone, almost canon style.  I don't think you can easily hold student interest with many measures of counting rests in such short musical works. 

The arrangements didn't really do anything for me either.  I know that's very subjective, but I don't have the book in front of me.  I'm not using any of the pieces from this book and don't foresee using them in the future.  I think there are better options out there.  Again, if you want something more difficult, why not just do something which is also of more interest and quality.  I will say that the 21st Century Ensemble Series has a large number of books in publication.  Some of the other books in the series for specific styles and themes have good reviews at Amazon.com.  If you're looking for something different or a specific theme (like Peter Gunn), they may be worth checking out. 

Bill Swick's Guitar Class Ensemble Series

This is an ensemble companion to the material I use daily for classroom instruction.  I used "Song Tune" last year for my spring concert, and it was by far the best thing we did on the program.  It is the simplest tune, using mainly whole, half and quarter note rhythms, and each part has notes on a couple of strings each. 

This year I've given a few kids who are finished with the classroom materials the next two ensembles which are a couple of Paganini studies.  These have some eighth notes, a few high A's on the first string and some accidentals if I remember correctly.  The pieces in this series are all from classical compositions and have pretty basic rhythms for beginner guitar students.  The pieces become gradually more difficult as you work through the book with the last few including notes in upper positions for students who are a little farther along in their study.

Everybody's Guitar Ensembles

This is the companion ensemble book to Everybody's Guitar Method, which I used for several years in private lessons.  It's pretty much what the title indicates, very simple and graded to be easy enough for anyone to be able to succeed.  It's funny because I had already picked 3 or 4 of these pieces out for our spring concert and was calling them our "everybody" songs before I remembered the title. 

We're doing the first 4 arrangements which are very simple and probably way too easy for high school or what you might consider "normal" even for middle school, but with the large number of special education students I have these are great.  They're good sounding arrangements and are very short.  This book would definitely be good for use early in the year. 

Part 1 on these first few pieces is first string only and very simple quarter, half and whole note rhythms.  They also have 2 to 3 additional parts with optional chords.  Some of the lower parts include notes as far down as the 6th string.  This book also has arrangements which are limited to the first three strings or so, two of which we used for our holiday concert. 

These were My Dreydl and Jingle Bells, which were very nicely arranged and simple to play.  We put them together in all of two weeks time.  I had a couple of second-year kids strum chords which really filled the sound out.  The arrangements become slightly more advanced as you go through the book, but overall this is probably the simplest of the books.  These pieces are mostly lighter numbers which can be hard to find arranged well like this.  This book is highly recommended, especially for Middle School.

Hands On Training Guitar Ensembles

This is the companion to the H.O.T. method books.  It contains very nicely arranged pieces which are simple to play if you have some kids who are reading on all six strings.  It says in the description on their website, "no sixteenth note rhythms".  There is a very tasteful use of dynamics as well as other guitar sound effects and optional percussion parts on some pieces .  This book has several American and international folk song arrangements.  This book is a good value and contains a wide variety of styles.

Jerry Snyder's Guitar School Ensemble Book

The Jerry Snyder Guitar School series is probably one of the more popular methods for classroom instruction and with good reason.  It is very well written and if you don't have a copy for reference in your classroom, you should get it.  The companion ensemble book is also excellent, having the best arranged pieces of those reviewed here.  When playing through these, you can really tell that these were arranged by someone who has played a lot of guitar and knows his instrument. 

Most of these arrangements are a little more difficult, but many are entirely appropriate even for middle school students performing an end of the year concert.  This book has the best balance of classical and contemporary arrangements of the books reviewed.  There is also a wide range of difficulty to be found from piece to piece.  Definitely don't overlook this book.  It deserves a place in your reference library. 

How They're All Going Together

For the final concert, I plan to have 3 to 4 "everybody" pieces which should take up all of 5 minutes,  3 or 4 pieces that most of the other kids play together and then a few small ensemble pieces for the kids that just need something a bit more difficult.  Then we're having our high school counterparts play a few pieces as our special guests. 

Last, I've arranged for a buddy who is a classicaly-trained professional guitarist to come perform a short set for us.  I think we're going to end the concert with him, the high school guitar teacher and myself playing as an ensemble for the kids.  I though they would get a kick out of seeing the old guys play with a pro.  I'll update as we get closer to the concert.

Right Hand Technique for Middle School Guitar

I thought that it might be good to address the issue of right hand technique since it is something that I really struggled over at the beginning of the year.  I went to the GAMA workshop and was inspired by a couple of people who had gone beyond picking with thumbs and were doing finger alternation.  Of course this was on the high school level, but I really wanted to do something more than just using the thumb. 

I began with teaching alternating "I-M" rest strokes while we were learning the first string.  Then, we started the second string.  When we finally began approaching the point of putting them both together, I realized that I would have to deal with the issue of string-crossing.  If you've never played classical guitar, this has to do with avoiding awkward fingerings when going from the 1st string to the second and so forth.  The idea is to alternate so that you're not playing with the same finger on two consecutive notes. 

The problem is that sometimes in order to alternate you have to:

1. Make an awkward crossing to a higher string with the lower finger while moving the entire hand parrallel to the strings and try to keep the angle.
2. Incorportate the "A" finger and plan out string crossings ahead of time.

When I was in college, I learned a set of general principles for avoiding string crossings and wrote in the R.H. fingerings in tricky places using the "A" finger to avoid awkward "I-M" crossings.

I just really thought that this might be way to difficult for Middle School kids.  So, I emailed a few people I really respect in the field to ask what they would do on the Middle School level.  One was a friend of mine who is a professional and he recommended I talk to his buddy who works with Middle Schoolers out in Austin, TX.  They are the guys with the Austin Guitar Society who run the guitarcurriculum.com site.

I really like their philosophy of emphasizing technique and ensemble playing from the start.  I spent a couple of weeks looking pretty hard at their stuff and have incorporated some of the ideas, but it becomes obvious pretty quickly that the techniques don't fit with a traditional guitar method.  They've begun with the idea that the methods are the problem, and I whole-heartedly agree.  So they wrote their own curriculum from scratch. 

I just couldn't do a whole new curriculum a few weeks into the semester.  I think that if I'm still doing this in a couple of years, I'll probably be using this.  I would definitely like to do some of their training.  It's a very comprehensive but is definitely a "next level" concept for someone who wants to really train up players. 

I also talked to Bill Swick from Las Vegas Academy Guitar Program.  His is program is probably one of the most prestigious in the country and the entire county out there has a huge guitar program.  (Check out the GAMA video.)  He teaches high school but told me about the technique he used when he taught middle school. 

It involves simply assigning a finger to each string: A - 1st, M - 2nd, I - 3rd and P to 4, 5 and 6.  I thought this made a lot of sense and decided that it would be a good step in the right direction after thumb-picking for a couple of years.  I pulled a couple of pages from a classical book that involve playing open-string patterns and worked them with the kids for a week or so using the meticulous attention to technique suggested by the guitarcurriculum.com method. 

Then, we went back to our method book and played all of the 1st string notes with the A finger and all of the 2nd string notes with M.  Most kids grasped this pretty well, and we are using it with a good deal success to this point.  I do have to note that when you use this technique with a traditional method you begin with the 1st string which is the A finger.  This inherantly makes proper technique more difficult to reinforce. 

I've got the technique principles written on their rubric/grading sheets and consistently try to reinforce them, but I know that all of this would be easier if you could start with playing P, I and M on open strings the way the Austin guys do it.  You would just have to have a curriculum written to that goal.  Well, they do and again that's why I think that eventually I may go that direction. 

For now, the kids are using footstools, sitting in a healthy seated postion, and they're playing with PIMA using reasonable technique.  This is a great improvement from what we were doing a year ago and I think that it also gives us a lot more range in the difficulty of literature that they can perform without having to worry about string crossing.

Christmas Guitar Concert 2009

Tuesday night was our Christmas concert, actually my first Christmas concert for guitars. I had 53 of 58 students show up which is very good for our rural school. I was very happy that there were enough instruments for everyone to play especially since a few kids didn’t bring their own after having said they would.

At our school, all of the kids can’t provide his/her own instrument. I have about 25 guitars that we use at school every day. We made up the difference for the concert with about fifteen kids bringing their own instruments, using a few baritone ukes that were here when I first came to the school, old guitars that I have here at school, and using a few of my own personal instruments.

All went well, and I had each class play its own piece sitting at the front of our seating arrangement. When they finished, they moved back to their permanent seat and the next group came and sat in front. When the third group had finished, we had everyone sitting on stage together. We played the nine pieces I listed in my previous post minus Joy to the World, which we didn’t have time to finish rehearsing

Tuesday night was the first time all of them had played together. That being said, it went pretty smoothly. I did learn several important lessons from this performance which I will be glad to share with you.

First, for a guitar performance, sound reinforcement is a very high priority. The day of the concert, I found out that the sound system I used for last year’s performance no longer worked. There was another PA in the auditorium but it only had one speaker and I didn’t have a lot of time to set up a new PA. I honestly thought, “I’ve got almost twice as many players. I should be good.”.

I knew that we wouldn’t be heard over the air conditioning (imagine a 747) without sound reinforcement. But I had run into the air-conditioning man in the hall that day. He showed me how to turn the fan off and said that he would program the unit it from his computer to turn off in time for the concert. Well, I didn’t get it done correctly and the folks in the back couldn’t hear much. Next time, I will definitely have my condenser mikes set up and have sufficient amplification.

Second, there comes a time when one must sacrifice aesthetics and acoustics for practicality. We were really too big for the auditorium. It was darker at the back of the stage and parents can’t see kids back there anyway. Besides, with the loud air-conditioning factored in the acoustics weren’t any better than the gym. Our next concert will be in the gym. It may sound worse and look cheesier to this musician, but Momma will be able to see Sweetie Pie from the audience and that’s probably all she cares about anyway.

Third, I would begin rehearsing the ensemble music earlier and lose the expectation of having everyone play everything. I spent a larger portion of the beginning of the school year just playing the stuff out of the book and really started working ensembles about three weeks before the concert. They did really well with this because of the simplicity of the music we did, but my students that were already way ahead could have been working on some more challenging pieces for a smaller ensemble performance.

I kind of geared this beginning of the year concert toward what everyone could do. My special needs students could play one of the parts on most of these pieces. Then, they kind of struggled through other pieces. When a couple of players are “off”, it makes the whole thing sound less professional.

For my spring concert, I’ve already chosen my “everybody” pieces. Then, I’ll have a few “average” pieces that all of my regular ed. kids will perform. Last, I plan to include many more small-ensemble pieces for my students that are more advanced. I think this will help fill out the concert more and give exceptional students a chance to really shine.

Finding music on this wide range of skill levels can be a challenge without just buying a ton of music to check it out. At the GAMA Teaching Guitar Workshop, this summer, I got five or six ensemble books. So, in my next post I’ll give reviews of the three ensemble books I’m using and their appropriateness for different skill levels.