PREPARATION

We hope that our material is fairly self-explanatory, and that you can easily construct your own lessons around it, but here are some suggestions and additional information which you might find useful.

The Preparation Level does not have any notation and is therefore not included in the books.

Scroll through the pictures to show the correct hold for each instrument. Click on an image to enlarge it. For a more in depth explanation, scroll down to the videos below the pictures.

We suggest doing this exercise with just the mouthpiece, to avoid all the distractions associated with holding an instrument for the first time. The focus is on buzzing to produce a sound, but doing this with the drum track is a good opportunity to introduce some musical basics, such as feeling the beat.

This is a tongue twister if said fast enough, but here it is used to help differentiate the use of the tongue, lips and teeth in starting a note. You can say any phrase with normal tongue use, then without the tongue, and draw comparisons with clarity of speech and note production.

The students may have been introduced to these concepts at KS 1. Use the mouthpiece again without the instrument to buzz these exercises. It is extremely important for brass players to be able to distinguish differentiations in pitch.

Students may well need reminding about tonguing.

The class should feel and move to the beat. Encourage them to show the dynamic changes with arm movements like orchestral conductors. The backing track is very long – just use as much of it as you need.

The students should also try playing loudly and quietly on their instruments, conducted by the teacher or another student.

It is important to be consistent with the terminology, and not use beat and rhythm interchangeably. To help establish this differentiation, listen to the song, sing it, and then tap the underlying pulse/beat on the thighs. Then listen and sing again, clapping the rhythm of the words. Next, have half the class clapping the beat, while the other half claps the rhythm. Finally, buzz a line with the mouthpiece.

Have fun finding movements to show the tempo changes.

We believe that students don’t find reading music difficult if they are introduced to it from the outset, and that continually writing the note names into their books does them no favours in the long run. This exercise is designed to help them learn the difference between lines, ledger lines and spaces on the stave.

Finally, for this level, the students try to get a clean, clear sound on their instruments.

The terms ‘semibreve’ and ‘rest’ will be introduced properly in the next level, but if you get the students to play for 4 beats and stay silent for 4 beats at this stage, they should find it easier to understand those terms when they encounter them properly in Level 1.

These notes are available as a pdf from the Downloads page.