The Great Musician Appearing Act

Yesterday, I wrote about community in the classical music world. More specifically, I wrote about the lack of any kind of community between the musicians and the audience. Today, I shall write about the most important aspect of building a community: presence. Presence is a larger concept of which Happy Feelings Time is a part. Basically, it comes down to the question: Do people know who you are?

In the case of, say, the Dallas Symphony, many people in the Dallas area know the Symphony exists. Very much fewer are the people who know the man who conducts it, or who the concert master is. Can you imagine a sports fan not knowing the names of their favorite team's members? No, you can't. Why? Because those people are invested. And just as importantly, a sports team is present in the lives of their fans. It is that level of attachment we must try to build, and to do that, we must be in the public eye as often as possible.

The Advertising Fallacy
Advertising provides presence. That can't be denied. However, it is wrong to assume advertising is the solution to all of our problems. I hear advertising for the Dallas Symphony all the time... on the Classical station. And audience levels are still rather low, excepting large performances of Carmina Burana or Britten's War Requiem.

Here's the thing. Advertising is there to let people know you exist. But if your presence in the public sphere doesn't extend beyond that, you cannot expect advertising to do all your work for you. Think of Coca Cola. They advertise. A lot. But they are also everywhere. Coke in McDonald's, Coke in restaurants, Coke at ball parks, Coke at the movies. Everywhere you can go where you can buy drinks, Coke is there. Coke's presence is as much part of that company's success as the advertising reminding people they should drink Coke. Reminding people "Yes, Coke is still here. Keep drinking."

Now, I doubt an orchestra can expect to have the same level of presence as Coca Cola. Unless you can put our Symphonies into liquid form and export that. Somehow, I do not expect such a thing to be palatable. Not only would it be a pulpified meat smoothie, it would also have to be served at such a temperature for the metals of the brass section to be melted. That is far too hot. The strings would make such a temperature a veritable fire hazard.

Playing for the People
The trick is, you have to get yourself out there. Sports teams, for instance. They have a game. They play on a field. How do fans know what's going on? They broadcast it. Why aren't orchestras broadcasting their concerts? Perhaps because of a fear that, should the concert be broadcast, people wouldn't bother to show up. And yet people go to sports games. Why? Because it's always better live. And what about the people who don't go? They're likely the people who wouldn't have gone anyways. But now they're watching, and you're making advertising money off of them.

Broadcasting helps people keep in touch, but orchestras have an advantage over sports teams: we don't need a rival team to play. Much better is to make sure to keep playing in very public areas. Dallas now has Klyde Warren Park, which has a stage, which could be used to the Symphony and Opera's advantage. There are always charitable events which could be played for. Churches are another popular place in Dallas. Bars and pubs. Etc. Etc. The list goes on.

"But how do we fit an entire symphony in these places?" Don't be so dense. You don't need to. You break the symphony into smaller pieces, and make sure the audience knows they are playing on the symphony's behalf. Chamber music shouldn't just be a treat that pops up from time to time. It should be happening as close to always as you can get. And there's no lack of opportunities, either. You just have to make them.

The great part about this is, you get extra advertising space. Fliers can be passed around, email lists can be signed, posters can be hung, shirts can be bought... Oh right, there's that. Hold on.

Merchandising!
Imagine! Dallas Symphony shirts, Symphony hoodies, symphony lunch boxes, Jap van Zweden figurines with judo-chop action, Symphony flame throwers! The sky's the limit!

And now back to our regular paid programming
But more important than the expanded advertising space is the fact that the players in the symphony are seen. They are heard. They are perhaps, occasionally, sniffed a little. People all over the city get the chance to meet the symphony not as a monolithic entity, but as individuals. The audience gets to shake hands with actual people, and the performers get to actually play the solos they always wanted to play. It's win win!

And also, they are still performing, which means lots of Happy Feelings Time after. So much Happy Feelings!

Granted, there are issues with monetizing events and paying performers. Ideally, these events would be as cheap as possible, or even free (gasp! goes the Board of Directors). But it could be done. I'm sure of it.

Now go out and play! Happy Feelings Time everywhere, with everyone! Whee!

Teaching Orchestra Classes

Continuing with my educational theme, today I'm going to discuss orchestra as a school class. I make the distinction between a 6th grade orchestra and a college orchestra because at the college level at least the players know how to play their instruments. Although, after having lived through numerous college orchestra rehearsals, I sometimes wonder if that is a fair assumption to make.

Anyways. After hearing a student orchestra rehearse the same piece for five weeks and not really ever get better, I began to think maybe we're doing something wrong. Is it possible that perhaps we don't know as much about teaching music as we think we do? I think it is.

So lets get cracking.

Problems Facing School Orchestras

1. Class size. It is well known by now that class size is an important factor contributing to student success. Large classes tend to hinder learning, smaller classes tend to help it. Or at least, not get in the way. The book "Boys and Girls Learn Differently"(a book which I recommend with reservations... it's a whole article unto itself) says that the optimal classroom size for middle school is around 20.

Twenty.

Excuse me while I vomit out my nose from laughing too hard. I'm not saying this is unattainable, but 'good' orchestra programs, even at the 6th grade level, rarely if ever have fewer than 30-40 kids in a class. It's not surprising, as orchestra is by nature a group activity. But still.

2. Lack of teacher's aides. In absence of low class size, "Boys and Girls etc" recommends the help of one or sometimes even two teacher's aides. These teachers are able to provide individual assistance where the head teacher cannot. When staring down a battalion of 6th graders, allies will at least give some moral support. But in an orchestra, you are far outnumbered, and they can smell your fear. Just say to yourself, "This. Is. SPARTA!" and go down in glory.

No. I mean, get some additional help.

"But what about money?"

Money? Oh right. Money...

3. There are other problems, but I'm going to stop with a big one here. When learning music in an orchestra or a band, there are actually two subjects going on. There's the subject of the instrument, which is obvious. It's the thing you just dropped $500 on for a ten month rental. Then there's the subject of music. Which is less obvious, but mostly because it's so obvious nobody thinks to think about it.

See, music isn't just playing notes. It's also knowing how notes are put together. Learning patterns. Reading notes. As it is, we're teaching those kids the ABC's without teaching them how to string them into words, much less how to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into whole compositions. Imagine trying to read Les Mis one letter at a time, and you'll get some grasp of what we're expecting orchestra classes to accomplish.

Ultimately, it is problem number three which poses the most difficulties to a student orchestra and their director. They are really trying to learn and teach two different subjects in the same amount of time as one. Problems 1 and 2 exacerbate this problem greatly, as individual help cannot be provided to struggling students in real time, and the class is usually far too large to facilitate group discussion of music or problem solving.

So it's no wonder orchestras take so long to learn a piece. The students are reading one letter at a time without comprehending words, there are more students making mistakes than a single teacher can reasonably be expected to keep up with, and that teacher somehow has to try and divide 45 minutes worth of time into teaching instruments and teaching basic music theory. Yeesh! Even Sisyphus had it easier than school orchestra directors.

Possible Solutions

1. There's not a lot that can be done here because orchestras are, by nature, usually rather large. There are some things that immediately spring to mind, however. The first is the divide orchestra classes into sections, rather than the full orchestra. This will not only reduce the class size, but also make it easier on the teacher as he or she will not have to deal with all of the little idiosyncrasies which plague each instrument. Other than that, I don't know what to say. This is the most intractable of the problems.

2. Get aides. No, not AIDS. The other aides. This is only problematic insofar as it requires money, but the benefits would be well worth the cost. The size of the classes almost requires additional assistance for effective teaching. And I don't just mean "Let's divide the orchestra into sections and have the assistant teach one and the head director teach the other." I mean the class is going on with two teachers: the head director giving the large scale instruction, and the assistant weaving in and out helping individuals with their own unique problems in real time.

I cannot stress this enough. Mistakes must be addressed quickly as the mistake is being made. Otherwise, it is highly likely the student will not even realize there is something wrong and keep on doing what you don't want them to be doing. Not that they weren't doing what you didn't want them to be doing in the first place, but... you know what I mean.

In addition, assistants can provide much needed moral and psychological support. "Is it me, or does Jimmy's intonation sound worse than a donkey getting eaten by a velociraptor?" "No, it's not just you. But at least his tone is good. Emily's violin sounds like it needs an exorcism. I keep expecting the scroll to twist around while spewing out obscenities about my mother." "Ha ha! I know, right?" (This is totally not an actual conversation I have had with an orchestra director. Totally not at all.)

There. Don't you feel better now? This way, you can relieve all your frustrations without ever taking them out on your students.

3. And now the radioactive elephant in the room. I mean, I don't even know where to start. However! There is some hope. At the 6th grade, beginners level, I highly doubt students need more than 15-30 minutes of practice a day. There's just... not enough to practice, you know? They know all of three notes. Only so much you can do with that.

Keeping this in mind, it is entirely possible orchestras spend far too much of their class time teaching the students how to play. Given a 50 minute class, if you divide up the class into a 25 minute theory class and a 25 minute practice, we can probably cover everything we need to cover so long as we are exceedingly efficient about it. This is still far from ideal. Music theory is a class of its own, but it is progress.

Another possibility is the use of computers. "How People Learn" describes an experiment wherein students learning physics are allowed deliberate practice through a computer-based tutoring program. The students exposed to this program were able to reduce the time it took to reach real-world performance criteria from 4 years to a paltry 25 hours.

I mean. What? Really? Is this real life? Did I seriously just read that? Well.

I can attest to the usefulness of these programs, as well. One of the private schools I teach at has several computer modules where piano students go to learn their music theory. It would not be difficult to adapt those kinds of programs to the specific needs of string, wind, and brass players (and singers who, judging from performance at the college level, seem to need help the most).

So like I said. There is hope. But we have a lot of work to do. Now lets hunker down and prepare for the onslaught. It's a long night, and Gandalf isn't guaranteed to show up.