MUSC 3502

Personal Reflective Essay

Leung Lok Wai
1155092495

Brass instruments have become more popular in Hong Kong compare to the past days.
There are many bands and orchestra in different primary and secondary schools,
which shows the rising needs and attention of learning musical instruments besides
piano and strings. As a brass student and teacher, there are several problems that I
have spotted about brass learning and teaching of myself.

Difficulties on Buzzing
Brass playing can be a negative experience if the student does not manage to buzz
well. The first step of brass playing is all about buzzing and embouchure. When I was
learning euphonium when I was small, I have seen many others gave up on brass
instruments due to the failure on buzzing well and produce no sound, and have no
control on the instrument. I have also heard of some students who did not go back for
lesson after the first brass lesson since they cannot produce any sound with the
instrument. The feel of failure does keep students away from these brass instruments
since they are already facing obstacles at the beginning.

If students could not buzz well in class, it is a good chance to try other interesting
activities with them. Singing solfège and playing rhythmic exercises, for example,
clapping rhythms with students are some of the good practice. Teachers can develop
the musical and rhythmic sense of students without involving mouthpiece buzzing and
the instrument. This will build up their musical knowledge and grab their attention on
the lesson, and also to have a feeling of succeed in learning music.

For fundamental and technical area, I will introduce some exercise and games which
trains breathe in and out to students. One of these interesting games is to use air to
hold a piece of tissue paper on a wall. Students need to blow their exhaled air to the
tissue paper and let it stick on the wall without falling down to the ground. If there are
more students in class, the game can be introduced as a competition to see who can
hold the paper on the wall with the longest time, which will raise their interest more.
This simple game actually does simulate the large intake and breathe out actions when
playing in brass instruments, and also teaches students to focus their air to create a
faster and focused sound on the horn.
Difficulties on Holding & Mastering Heavy Brass Instruments
Moreover, there are limitations in controlling the instrument well for younger
students. Brass instruments are quite heavy not just for children, but for adults as well.
Especially for low brass instruments, the weight of brass and metal used in low brass
instruments are way heavier than other instruments. Instruments like euphonium and
tuba could be played when sit down only for children as they do not have enough
strength to hold them when they stand up. Students may hold it wrongly or damage
the instrument easily.

For trombone, it is hard for young students to keep the right positions of holding a
trombone horizontally since even adults will get tired if they played the trombone for
a long time. As a teacher, it is hard to fix their positions every time which is time
consuming and students will get bored too. Another difficulty for teaching the
trombone is about the slide positions. There are total of seven positions in trombone
for changing notes in half steps, but children cannot move to the positions which are
farer as their arms are not completely developed to become as long as the adults.
Moreover, there are no specific markings or absolute slide positions on trombone. It is
difficult to teach numbers of positions to students and ask them to memorize those.
Therefore, some notes and positions combination needed to be omitted or changed for
students, which might lead to the issue of wrong intonation and intervals as well.

The above difficulties about holding and mastering the heavy brass instruments affect
the teaching process of teacher since brass instruments need the coordination of arm
and finger muscles as well. The solution that I have noticed after lesson is no matter
what, stick with the instrument first. In order to raise interest of students with the
instrument, it is necessary to allow them play and explore with the instruments more.
For example, I will try glissandos with trombone students to explore different sounds
on the trombone. This will help them to familiar with the trombone slide and listen to
all microtones of the notes, which helps with getting the right slide position in a
slower pace. Moreover, the sound effect of glissando will attract students more with
its uniqueness, which is a good motivation for students to try out different positions
and play different sounds on the trombone. And there will be no intonation problem
on glissando as well.

Limited Resources and Lesson Time

Mostly students in Hong Kong can have access to these bulky brass instruments
through school and agency instrumental classes, which makes class teaching is a
majority in brass teaching. However, class teaching in Hong Kong do have limitation
from schools or agency.

Instrumental classes held by schools and agency are more common in Hong Kong
since there are less people who would own their own brass instrument from the
beginning. In school classes, I could only spend 45 minutes per week with them and
there could be different brass instruments in one class. Moreover, the school teachers
or agency would include some teaching targets, for example deal with some band
songs, encourage some students to take grade examinations. It is very hard to deal
with all requirements at such a short and limited time.

The first solution that came into my mind after pedagogy lesson is about lesson
planning. As there are students who have different instruments and needs in the same
class, it is needed to have a well-planned teaching/ lesson planning. For example, I
would plan the class mainly with ensemble setting as the teacher requires to practice
band songs more frequently. It is good for students to have more ensemble training
and playing, which helps to develop intonation skills. Moreover, cooperating with
friends and others are actually more fun than practicing band pieces on their own.
Besides of coaching and asking students to play in ensemble settings by themselves, it
is great for teachers to play duets with students as well. This is a practice which my
trombone teacher used with me many times. Playing duets with the teacher actually is
also a kind of ensemble training, and teachers can take up a more complicated part of
the duet and try to match with the student. Students will feel satisfaction after clearing
challenges together with the teacher. Moreover, teacher can build up a better
relationship between him and students through duets, which also benefits the teaching
process.

If there are particular students who need to tackle examinations and tests, then I will
plan the classes into two parts with the ensemble section for some warm up and
practice, and then to one-to-one lesson time with different students. The individual
lesson should let everyone to be involved more so that it is needed to plan it in a cycle
way and look after different students from time to time.

Score-Reading
Another obstacle is about reading score. Many new students who actually have not
learn anything about music theory and reading scores yet. However, many agencies
and teachers would teach students how to read symbols first as parents would aim for
higher results from the playing of children. Students who were taught under this
practice could not relate the sound and the notation together very well which results in
slow coordination from reading to playing. Myself is also an example of notation
readers. I need to spend more time to relate the sound back with the notation since I
was taught to decrypted the notes faster than to listen in the same time.

According to the “Sound before Symbol” theory, we should not force students to read
and memorize symbols before they play music on the instrument. Therefore, I will
teach solfege and teach fingerings or positions to help students to learn the notes first
without the score. After that, I will try think and imitate some easy songs that students
recommend and interested, then teach these songs to them by hear and
fingerings/positions. Actually, I have succeeded a few times teaching “Happy
Birthday” and some Christmas songs, like “Jingle Bells”, to students. The results are
quite satisfying even in primary school classes. The notes can be changed to be more
playable for them and they can play the song out again in a short period of time. This
practice actually helps students to rely less on score reading. Besides, when there are
some songs which students do recognized, teachers can grab attention from the
students easily as well. This solution can really teach music musically to students.