Band Practice

Years 7 and 8 at my school have started a new venture Mondays and Fridays after school, music lessons!  There’s a man who lives down the street who writes music and used to teach band at a church. So every Monday and Friday they lug close to 25 instruments down to the school so that Years 7 and 8 can learn how to read sheet music and play an instrument.  He has clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, tubas, and some drums.  It’s really neat watching them.  I happened to sit in on their first time holding the instruments and while it was nowhere near “good” it was definitely noise.  He gave them each an instrument and told them to try and make any noise that they could and dance while they did it.  The kids took to it instantly and while it sounded like a heard of elephants dying, the kids had a blast and got over their fear of the instruments.  A few lessons down they began to learn the fingerings for the basic scales on each instrument.  The brass instruments got it fairly quickly but the unfortunate clarinet and sax players were having difficulty with the reeds and getting anything out but squeaks.  Give it a few more months though!  We’ll end up having a top notch Primary School marching band.

The pile of instruments