BEGINNING PERCUSSION

BASIC COURSE INFORMATION

Dear Students and Parents,

Welcome to Beginning Band and Beginning Percussion!  For many of you, this will be the start of a new and exciting part of your life; one which many of you will continue participating in for a long time. Band is a class experience that is very different than any other subject you will have.  You will be using the most expensive equipment in your school career, and there are many details involved in participating.  To help clarify what you’ll need, what we’ll be doing, etc, we will hold a special Band Parent Orientation meeting to explain this information to all parents. The Band Parent Orientation Meeting will be held on Thursday, September 1, at 7:00 pm in the Band room (room 102).  Think of this as the “team parent meeting” for band. First-time band parents will gain a great deal of information from attending.

In the meantime, the following information should help answer your main questions for the first few weeks.

What will I learn in this class?  By the end of the school year, you will be proficient in playing many instruments in the percussion family and reading musical notation.  You will spend about half of your time learning to read and play music on a percussion keyboard, and the rest on basic stick control and accessory percussion instrument techniques.  A small amount of class time will be spent on a unit on drum set technique.  You will also gain insight to historical and current influences on music.  You will be prepared to move on to Intermediate or Advanced Band.  You will be eligible to participate in our competitive drum line.

What do I need for this class?  You will need a pencil every day.  You will need a 1/2” 3 ring binder daily beginning September 7.  You will need a practice percussion kit daily, which you will bring to school and home, starting September 14.  We will provide many larger percussion instruments, which will be used regularly in class and performances.

Am I in the right Band class?  This class is for those of you with little or no experience on percussion instruments.  This includes percussion keyboards (bells, marimba, vibes, xylophone, etc), drums, and accessories (triangles, woodblocks, tambourines & more).  This is a specialized instrument class, and our class size is very limited. We will be encouraging some of you to learn a brass or woodwind instrument in one of our three other Beginning Band periods. There is a heavy emphasis on performance and all percussion students will be expected to participate in the Drum Line from February through the first week of May.  This group will have weekly after school and occasional evening rehearsals with several Saturday performances.