Guest Article: A Plea for Methods Classes

Instrumental “Methods” classes are among the most important, if not the most important classes taken by a music education major studying to be a band director.  It is in these classes that the band-director-in-training is supposed to learn how to teach each of the instruments.  This knowledge is critical to the future director’s success when he/she begins working with their band. While there are so many things to learn about each instrument that we can’t list them all here, there are four things that a student must take away from a methods class:

1) Form a Correct Embouchure

A good embouchure is fundamental to good tone production and intonation.  This is the very first thing a band student should be taught and taught correctly.   

2) Produce a Characteristic Sound

This closely follows my first point above.  There is no substitute for a beautiful characteristic tone.      

3) Knowledge of Basic Fingerings

While fingering charts are available and are useful for trill and other unusual fingerings, the director can waste a tremendous amount of rehearsal time looking up fingerings if he/she doesn’t know them.

4) Knowledge of Intonation Deficiencies of the Instrument

It is impossible to manufacture instruments that play perfectly in tune.  While many notes on any given instrument are in tune, others are not.  Learning which notes these are, and what to do about them, is essential to teaching a band to play in tune.  This knowledge seems often to be missing, even with some experienced directors.

A Plea for More Instrumental Methods Instruction

A serious problem with the current model for methods classes is the amount of (or lack of) importance they seem receive in the instrumental music education curriculum.  Recently, in looking through the curriculum model of a college with which I’m familiar, I found that within a 128-hour curriculum, instrumental music education students take only one two-hour brass methods class, one two-hour woodwind methods class, and a single one-hour percussion methods class.  That’s ridiculous!  How could a person possibly learn and be able to do the four things listed above for every woodwind or every brass instrument in a one-semester, two-hour class?  It’s simply not possible!  And why would the single course in which the students are supposed to learn about the multiplicity of percussion instruments receive only one hour credit?  In my opinion, this simply makes no sense.

I’m afraid that unless more emphasis is placed on learning to teach the instruments, and unless more time is devoted to this important part of a future band director’s training, new directors entering the profession will be poorly prepared to do their job.  Let’s put more time and energy back into these instrumental methods courses!