When a student signs up for band, he or she often has a strong idea about what instrument he or she wants to play: maybe dad played the clarinet or an aunt has an old trumpet sitting around. Maybe the student has been dreaming of doing that cool trombone slidey thing since they were 5 years old! But band directors know that not all students are well suited to all instruments; factors such physical structures of the lip or jaw, or considerations such as arm length or ability to discern pitch need to be taken into account when placing students on wind instruments, and while the preferences of the child (or financial needs of the family) should absolutely be taken into account, as the experts in the room, music educators should guide students to instruments on which they will have immediate success producing a sound and playing the instrument. This process immediately enhances student enjoyment of and buy-in to the learning process. (Not to mention - isn’t it our job to set our students up for success?)

The same holds true for placing students in the percussion section: students should be able to demonstrate pulse and subdivision without instruction, and should be able to replicate a stroke and basic sticking patterns in a call and response fashion.

This is a novel idea in many areas, where historically students have picked for themselves which instruments to learn, so I put together a guide for the process I use to select students to become percussionists. It’s available as a PDF here. This guide will be published in the PAS Educators’ Companion Volume 6 in the first quarter of 2019.

Questions? I’d love to hear from you! Contact me here.