r/ConcertBand

Hey community band people. I am wondering what your band does for Warm Up, and how long you tend to spend warming up each rehearsal.

Our community band usually just runs various forms of the Concert BFlat scale before our Oboe player tunes the group. Many of our members arrive early and do their own warm ups prior to starting.

We do have a former band teacher who believes we should be varying our scales and routines, however others feel that our time should be better spent working on repertoire

I was looking online to find a good plastic French one, but then I realized that they are almost the same price as a cheap Normal French horn and then I realize that the trumpets and trombones that are Made out of plastic or like 100 to 150 dollars while plastic French horns cost $877 or more

I posted a couple of days ago that I didn't care for slow songs in wind ensemble, but now I love them! I like it when professionals play songs like Colonial Song or Benediction, it turns out my ensembles don't do it very well. I was in two groups that attempted those songs, and I say "attempted" because we could play the notes but not capture the soul of the pieces. But today, the ensemble I am in which is still a community band but a bit more professional, played two amazing slow songs; Salvation is Created and Shenandoah. Both sounded amazing and while I couldn't see the audience, I'm sure there were tears in their eyes. I look forward to playing more slow/rubato songs with my semipro band!

Like Adoration by Florence Price or Colonial Song by Percy Grainger. Those are examples of slow band pieces. I've played them both in concert at various points and found them quite boring, but beautiful. I think slow concert band songs would be better off written for symphony, because on the radio slow music is generally strings music.

I’m not necessarily talking about the best performances musically, but the actual scale and engineering of the production itself, the staging, lighting, design, screens, etc.

For me, things like Pink Floyd’s “Pulse” and The Rolling Stones’ “Bridges to Babylon” tour have to be up there.

Also productions like:
• U2 - 360°
• Genesis - We Can’t Dance
• Muse - Simulation Theory
• Rammstein - Stadium Tour

Would love to discover more amazing tour productions people rate highly from a staging and production design perspective. Does anyone remember or have any in mind?

i'm joining band next year as a senior in high school. i've been in choir for about 7 years, play piano and guitar, and took ap music theory (my brother was briefly in band as well) but i've never been in band

anyway, band director is putting me directly into our advanced band because of scheduling issues and i'm nervous about it lol, i also have no idea what i'm going to play

suggestions, as a beginner? and anything to put me at ease?

if it helps, band director is music theory teacher so i'm not totally some rando joining adv band, but it's still nerve-racking because this'll be a new scene for me

i also don't know if this is the right subreddit for this but i appreciate any help!

Next year my concert band will consist of an alto sax, 2 clarinets, 2 violins and 3 percussionist. I may have 2 or 3 other incoming students as well but idk what they play. This is at a high school. Any suggestions for next year?

Hello! I'm a highschool student (10th going to 11th) and I'm auditioning for wind ensemble. I'm currently in symphonic band for even more context. There's a limited amount of spots so I want an audition piece that is good!

It needs to be 24-48 measures (preferably 24), and I need music in more common time signatures? Like 4/4 or 3/4. (This is because I found a piece, Sonata for Eb Alto Sax by Henri Eccles and its time signature was 3/2 I think).

Thank you!

Next year I will be starting my senior year of high school. I've been a percussionist since 9th grade. But next year I will be taking honors percussion class and honors band. I talked to my director and for honors band he's making me learn a wind instrument. I'm perfectly okay with this because I've had interest in learning one.

I was originally interested in learning bari sax, but my director also suggested tenor sax. I know for a fact that we have a tenor I can take home and learn over the summer to prepare for the school year. But we also have a bari sax, but we do have someone playing it. Except he doesn't really care for band and barely shows up to rehearsal and I can't remember the last concert he actually attended. My main interest in bari is for jazz band but even though our bari player does't do anything I feel rude asking for an instrument someone is using. (if i played bari I would take an alto home over summer break to learn)

Should I just settle for tenor and play with one of my friends or ask for the bari?

My bands wind ensemble auditions were in april and i didn’t don’t them primarily because i didn’t have time due to other classes that i cared about more, and don’t get me wrong i love wind ensemble music but there’s a couple of things that kept me from auditioning. before i tell you that, recently my band director asked why i didn’t audition. it caught be really off guard considering it was during class and i just said i didn’t have time and i don’t feel like im that good of a player (both very true). he said we’d continue the conversation later, so a few days after after school i went up to him and i had a whole conversation planned in my head abt why i didn’t join.. surprise surprise it didn’t go as planned. he immediately just says if i learn part of the solo and some of the scales he’ll let me audition before the end of the year. that caught me even more off guard so now saying the reasons i didn’t audition just felt out of place and the way the conversation was going, it felt like my reasons had become totally invalid and frankly, stupid. i told him i was just worried because i didn’t know how hard the music could be and didn’t want that to interfere with my classes and he said i would be fine. afterwards i did cry lol just because it ended up stressing me out rlly bad, especially because even tho i didn’t, it felt like i had gotten pressured/forced into auditioning when my mind was already set for months that i wouldn’t and id be in concert band next year. i want to do the audition mainly for my own validation, being able to know im good enough of a player for it which i see is very selfish. now to the reasons i didn’t, i don’t really like some of the people in my section which is a given i feel like (i play trumpet), i am passionate about music but i feel like some people are more than me and try to push that onto me or sometimes i feel judged because im not, simply because i care more about my academics and from most to least classes id like to worry about, band is the absolute least. i love band a lot, pls dont get me wrong. sometimes i feel like i get looked down on by my peers even tho that could be far from the truth, and idk its a lot and very little at the same time… and yes i understand these sound like excuses!! hence why my mind was made up in the first place about not joining because i knew i just kept making stupid reasons. i want to play the music, i want to audition, its really just the class. i dont want band to cause me the same stress a class like math would. there are some other reasons, but they’re rlly small and lowkey dumb so i wont list them on here. i hope that makes sense guys i apologize i realize now many of you might just say then dont join because you made this long ahh paragraph about it

any advice? should i just do it and see how it goes? (i’m almost sure i might do this, but i needed an outside opinion/perspective.)

Hey everyone I need some advice from the people who are concert addicted haha
I was in Milan for the nbhd concert and I loved it and had the time of my life, I’ve been listening to them for the past 14 years. The thing is that it healed something in me and that concert is everything I think about since then and I was thinking to buy another ticket for another concert in Europe but I don’t know if this is a good idea and I want opinions about this. Because people say it won’t hit the same and it might make me feel worse to go for the second time for the same show.. but I love them so much and I’m very undecisive about this. Any thoughts?

Hi, I’m selling two GA tix for Tiffany Day concert at Don Quixote, Los Angeles. $123.96 each. Please let me know as soon as possible if interested in buying and will send them over by Sept 12th @ 12:00 PM! (Event local time)