Expectations of Perfection

Solomon's first band concert was last week.  We have looked forward to this for weeks.  He is in both beginning band and beginning jazz band.  It's his favorite class.  Band was always my favorite class, too so I'm excited to see him this involved and engaged.

After the beginning bands played we heard the 7th and 8th grade bands.  I have to admit I was underwhelmed.  I thought, "I was once in junior high band.  I was once a musician with this level of experience.  And I don't think we sounded so ... unpolished?"  And then I reined myself in and thought what any reasonable adult should think when looking back onto experiences in their youth -- which is, "My frame of reference is skewed.  Of course we sounded unpolished.  We were 13."

On Friday night Jennifer, Caleb, Lance and I got to talking about what we remembered of our band experiences.  They all had the same thoughts I did during the band performances.  (Can I just say that it meant the world to both Solomon and me that they all came to the concert?  How fantastic is this family?)  Lance, being Lance, has recordings of his 9th grade concert performances and they're even on his iPhone.  So we did what anyone reliving their glory days of junior high band would do and we listened to one of them.  It's a piece called Havendance that my band also did in 9th grade.  It was my favorite concert piece ever.  It's demanding, difficult, beautiful and so extremely fun to play.

You know what?  It sounded amazing, even coming from the tinny iPhone speaker.  The instruments were in tune, there was one tempo.  The dynamics blew me away.  So my frame of reference isn't as skewed as I thought it was.  We really were as good as we remembered.

Now, for a bit more reference.  Lance, Jennifer, Caleb and I all went to junior high in the same school district.  Caleb went to a different junior high than the other three of us but we knew his school and his band and he knew ours.  We went against each other regularly at all-region competitions for concert band and marching band.  We all went to the same high school.  Lance was a few years behind me in school, Jennifer and Caleb were two years behind me.  Jennifer and Caleb are the only two of us who played in the same band for the same years during high school.  Also, when I compare the 8th grade band here to the 9th grade band of which we were a part, I'm comparing students who've all had 3 years of band experience.   Middle school here is grades 6 to 8 and junior high there is grades 7 to 9.

Since we could hear such a vast difference in musicality between the 8th grade band of a few nights ago and our 9th grade bands of years ago we started talking about what the difference could be.  We've come to the conclusion that since, as a group, 12- to 14-year-olds are capable of the same basic things, it lies in the director.

Our junior high band director and the directors we had in high school were smart, passionate about music, passionate about teaching kids music.  They told funny and corny jokes.  But when it was time to rehearse, they could turn into the meanest, toughest, ugliest guys in the world.  They were perfectionists and they expected us to be perfectionists.  Making a mistake due to inattention was not tolerated.  We tuned ourselves against a devil of a tuner with an eternally spinning wheel.  When we had trouble sticking to one tempo, the Evil Metronome of Death was hooked up to a PA system and that beat was broadcast throughout the band hall at a deafening volume until we succumbed to it and, by God, we played in tempo.  It wasn't uncommon for one person to be singled out as the one who was missing the run of 16th notes in the 58th measure.  That one person then played those 16th notes alone half a dozen times in front of everyone until they were right.  I remember more than one temper tantrum from a director that consisted of throwing a baton, knocking over his music stand and stomping back and forth across the room.

Solomon's band director is a very sweet, personable woman.  She clearly loves what she does, she loves teaching, she loves music.  The kids love her back. I haven't spent any time in her rehearsals so I can't say what happens in them.  But if I were a betting person, I'd bet she doesn't tune kids and their instruments against a machine.  I'd bet there is no Evil Metronome of Death in her band hall.  I'd bet she does not stress to her musicians the importance of watching for down beats, for cues about when the melody cuts from the flutes to the clarinets.  I'd bet she does not express disappointment when things are not played the way they are supposed to be played.  I can be reasonably sure of winning all of those bets because what we saw and heard on Thursday night does not reflect a director who expects, demands and gets everything of which 8th grade musicians are capable.

I believe that my band directors bordered on abusive.  If a parent treated a child the way we were treated as a group, it would warrant intervention of some kind.  There's no doubt about that in my mind.  But you know what?  My band experience is one I would not trade for anything.  We had extreme pride in our performances, no matter what the venue.  We were really good and we knew it. Despite the yelling, the occasional humiliation and the frustration with not always being perfect, I never questioned enrolling in band every year.  I felt affection for my directors and consider them some of the most influential teachers in my entire school career.  Other people with a similar experience have told me they feel the same way.

I would venture to say that if we hadn't been as good as we were, if we hadn't had so much pride in what we did as musical students, we wouldn't have loved it so much.  And our excellence, our pride, was a direct result of the way we were taught.  I hope that the lack of pressure and the lack of expectation to work harder than he has before does not deter Solomon from future years of band enrollment.  I want him to make it to high school band where there might be a director that demands the best.