Welcome to our podcast, Band BFFs.
The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
On today's episode, we're going to be discussing Wings to the Mind by Brian Balmages.
Cheers to starting the conversation!
All right, this piece is great for a young band, even a beginning band.
Band is in the key of concert B-flat, 4-4 throughout.
It has a six-note range.
It is a short minute and 15 seconds.
It comes with a musical jump start that you can use to kind of help your students as you
get going.
Great, great teaching tool.
We are currently playing this at my school in 2024.
And it has been such a great piece with a younger band.
I cannot say enough about how much I have enjoyed it and the students have as well.
It is faster at 144.
So you want to make sure you teach it a little bit slower at the beginning just to ensure
that we don't have the rushing effect as you get faster in your preparation.
There are no stylistic things in the piece other than accents.
So that's great because the students can learn from the beginning that we're just going
to use a normal articulation.
And on this piece for percussion, if you don't have enough players, you could drop the bells
as it does double the flute and trumpet part throughout the piece.
It is important to have a timpani player because it does help beef up your low brass and your
low sounds in your band.
And of course, all the accessories are important to just add that texture.
So starting off at the beginning, we have melodic sounds in the trumpet and then the
horn and the clarinet and sax are all needing to play underneath the trumpet since they're
not moving around on their instrument.
So this is already a great moment to talk about balance and why we do it and who we're
going to balance to.
So you do have to have a good trumpet section that can play in a really great range on their
instrument, but they can play stronger overall.
The low brass have these hits and then they're going to rest and then more hits.
We want to make sure that they don't play it too loud when they come in at measure four.
Also, I'm sorry to interrupt, but also just keep in mind in those first few measures,
you don't have any percussion to help with the pulse.
So the students need to make sure that they're internalizing pulse and that they can stay
together without the aid of that percussion section.
We have a lot of entrances on beat two and measure three and then measure four.
So it's important when you're going through your parts with your students to draw breath
marks in on beat one.
So that way they'll be sure to enter on beat two.
Lauren and I both believe in writing considerations on students parts and then copying them before
we hand them out.
So that way it makes our teaching process easier because we already know what the students
have had written on their parts.
Trumpets have a lot of D's in this piece, so continue encouraging them to be sure to
kick when they have anything that's longer than a half note or a half note.
And then at measure five, make sure your triangle player is properly holding the triangle, not
just keeping it clipped on the stand.
They should be holding it up, making sure they're looking through it and they're using
proper technique with their beater and not playing it too loud, but just adding nice texture
to the band.
At eight, we have another cool accessory with the suspended cymbal kind of leading us into
measure nine, along with timpani, again, as I mentioned, being important and snare drum
now.
All right, again, Katie mentioned lots of these entrances on beat two.
I think it's important for students to put a breath mark on beat one when they have an
entrance on beat two like that to help them take a rhythmic breath and be really confident
about that entrance.
You have these half notes on beat two and the melodic line, so we want to make sure I would
put like an energy line underneath those half notes so the students don't decay those half
notes.
We think about intensifying that air through there.
Your low brass, low reeds have an opportunity, a little moving eighth note line that's going
to be really, really important there and make sure that it goes in time with what's happening
in the percussion section.
Again, all of this continues with the same idea in mind.
Now, at tempo, when you get to the performance tempo, your students should be able to play
in four measure phrases pretty easily.
When you're first learning it, you may have to mark some things to consider.
If you need, like if your trumpets, for example, if they couldn't make it all the way to the
quarter rest, you may let them sneak in a little breath and measure 11 between the A
half note and G half note right there.
Once we get up to tempo, they should definitely be able to make that in a four measure phrase.
We want the trumpets to be balancing to the woodwinds here.
This is something new, a new idea for them.
We want the trumpets to be balancing to the woodwinds.
We have our low brass sitting on some low B flats.
Those notes can be kind of sharp if the students aren't opened up.
Make sure that you're teaching those students to open up, keep those teeth nice and open,
like they're hiding cookies from their parents in their mouth.
Yes, nice.
Love it.
Then, as she was mentioning, this is a great opportunity to make sure you think also when
you're marking parts for students about where they're going to breathe.
For instance, maybe your flutes might need to take a breath in 14 after the half note,
but then you need to mark in your clarinet and oboe parts that they're not going to take
a breath there so that way we don't have a big gap in that line.
It's just really important.
Then, again, in this piece, we have a lot of rest on beat one.
Make sure that students are always constantly moving and keeping their sound going till
the rest.
Like at 15, one, two, three, hit the rest.
That's really important.
Then we have some nice accents here.
Again, that's the only different articulation.
Just teaching them to make that beat different than everything else.
We have a big timpani leading into measure 17.
Right there at 16, you'll notice it's unison rhythm, but some of the instruments have notes
that stay the same.
Some have notes that change.
We want to make sure that we're hearing the notes that change.
If they play an instrument where their notes are descending, clarinet and trumpet, we want
to make sure that that is the predominant sound that we're hearing.
Yep.
Then another D in trumpet.
Again, make sure you're talking to them about kicking.
Then at 17, we're all on the same note.
We want to make sure that this sounds not only in tune, but also that it's balanced
well to the low B flat and the tuba.
Again, making sure everybody goes all the way to the rest.
Percussion get to be the moment of glory here.
They get to be the moment in the sunshine.
Big percussion break with timpani.
You may even want your timpani player to try different types of mallets to make sure that
you can hear the articulation better.
That's up to you, but that is something important just to note in your parts for your percussionists.
At 21, we have a little bit of a different style section here.
I tell my students this is more flowing here because we've added in some slurs.
We want to make sure that flutes do not play piano here and probably oboes as well because
that tends to make the flute players go flat.
Just make sure that they're playing.
There's nobody that they're fighting against.
They need to just play with a good sound and with the right articulation.
We're going to have slurs over bar lines here.
Tongue, slur, tongue, tongue, slur, tongue, tongue, tongue.
That's important that they get that articulation straight away.
At the end of their phrase right there, they're going to play softer with good vibrato or pulsing
leading to the bar line at 24.
But they have to get out of the way for the trumpet to have something of importance here.
Because all of this is written dynamically to be soft here, you've got to make sure that
you stress with your students air speed.
They have got to make sure that they're using fast intense air.
I tell my students it's like a whisper yell.
If their mom or dad has ever yelled at them in a whisper, like, Katie, you better stop
that right now or I'm going to, okay.
It's that type of thing.
It's an intense whisper.
Even though it is softer, it doesn't mean that the air speed isn't fast.
That's going to help with some of that tuning stuff but also tone quality.
Then at 23, you're going to see the opportunity for you to teach students about cues.
I do tell the students if they're going to play or not.
In their part, we wrote trombones do not play or yeah, I'm sorry, not trombones.
Trombones are going to play tubas.
Do not play at 23.
You could have them play if you wanted to.
In our band, we have a good bass clarinet player.
He's going to take over the color choice right there.
We're leaving the tuba part out so that when they enter at 25, it just changes the timbre
of the band, which I think matches our band well but you do whatever works for your group.
Then again, everybody's coming in at 25 and the saxes have what the flutes had before
along with horn.
Again, making sure you're writing in the tongues and slurs for them.
T-S-T-T-S-T-T-S, softer.
Making sure that every time they have that long note that they're playing underneath
because now we have the trumpets coming in again at 27 and they're the focal point.
We do have a heart like a quote unquote more difficult rhythm at 25 for the low brass.
It's the hardest one in the piece.
They have to tie over a bar line in low brass, low reeds and trumpet.
Just making sure you write in the counts for them and even practice clapping and counting
that so that that way they don't get off.
Then when they come out of the tie at the end of 26, making sure that they articulate
really firmly because those are repeated notes.
Young bands, the tendency with this pattern that you see here is going to be for them
to clip the second note of the sara t-y-a-ta, t-y-a-ta.
We want to make sure they do not do that.
They need to make sure that they're using air follow through on all of that so the second
note of that slur does not get clipped short.
When we get to measure 27, the trumpets are kind of on an island by themselves so their
part is really important.
There's going to be, I call it a little crunchiness in the chord in the whole notes because we've
got a concert E flat, B flat and F happening at the same time.
Just teach the students that that's okay.
Lean into it.
Yes, absolutely.
Then trumpets are taking the lead with the melody here.
Anyone who has moving notes out those when they come in, we want to make sure that the
moving notes are being brought out in this part.
Clear articulation when you start a note after a rest.
Again some more crunchiness in the clarinets where we have those dotted half notes.
Just kind of lean into that.
It's part of a cool effect.
Yes, the chords are really nice in this piece.
Then more of watching that two note slur, making sure that we're not clipping the second
note of the slur too short.
Again, kind of this waterfall effect where it moves through the different lines until
everyone is coming back in at 33.
Make sure that again your percussion are not playing over the band when they enter because
it is having, like Laura said, this waterfall effect and we're adding in more voices.
You want to make sure that it's not startling that your percussion have started again at
measure 31 and that they just kind of sneak in.
Then nobody should be taking a breath between 32 and 33.
I am literally preaching that in my band hall right now.
Just mark it in their part to begin with.
Put a little micro crescendo going into 33 and just remind them that they get to take
a breath in the low brass right there at 33.
There's no need to take a breath right there on the bar line.
This is just like the beginning.
Everything we've already talked about, you're going to get a chance to just review with the
students, make sure that they're continuing to copy and paste all the same concepts.
At 39 we do have a dynamic change.
Everybody comes down.
But again, don't let your flutes play piano.
They're going to be flat.
Just make sure that they play with a full sound because they are going to be the melody
here.
Then they get to crescendo a little bit coming into 41.
Make sure again that low brass don't over crescendo on top of the woodwinds here.
Let's have a cool little chord change at 40.
Make sure that they tongue firmly on 23 going into 41.
Percussion gets to help out a little bit there with texture as well.
Then at 41 we all have accents again.
We want to make sure that we're aligning this and not having low brass miscount.
That is a common thing here.
Just making sure that they have their counts written in and that they're really confident.
Play it on a concert F first to make sure that you're aligning it throughout the band.
Then you can go into the notes.
Then a big timpani feature at 43.
Make sure that they're playing that really, really strong.
Again, you may even want to think about a different type of mallet.
They're the ones that push us into the ending.
The low people can add a little crescendo going into the last note as well.
Make sure the last note is the word tone.
So that it has not a clipped ending.
Then you will want your timpani player to make sure that they dampen on the last note.
All right.
Well, we hope that you enjoyed getting to hear more about Wings to the Mind and that you
might consider programming this in the future for your band.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Band BFFs.