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Welcome to our podcast, Band BFFs.

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The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.

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On today's episode, we will be discussing Great Beginnings by Michael Kamuf.

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Cheers to starting the conversation.

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This piece is a fantastic grade one piece that would be good for a beginning band or

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a young band as well.

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It's in the key of concert B flat throughout.

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Has a one octave range and is 4-4 throughout.

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Simple rhythms, no dotted rhythms, just quarters, eighths, and associated rests.

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This is also a great piece because you don't need a lot of percussion.

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You need about three players minimum, but you could even make it work with two, which

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makes it again very accessible for younger bands.

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So right off the bat, the tempo is just a nice easy 120 Allegro.

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And as Laura already mentioned, the rhythms are simple, but also what I like about it

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is that the articulations are more long and connected through the piece.

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Yes, we've got some accents thrown in every once in a while, but that is pretty much it.

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There's one spot where it's staccato.

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There's a little staccato section, but it's perfectly manageable.

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And so you're really teaching those young players to keep their sound going.

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You're teaching them not to clip notes and things like that.

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That's really important for just any time of the year fundamentals.

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I also love that this is available in a flex band arrangement, so it is good.

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Even if you have kind of unique instrumentation with your ensemble, there are options for

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you to put this together and make it sound really good.

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Yep.

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So straight off the bat, it starts with the lower voices and it has this accented, non-accented

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rhythm.

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One, two, and three, four, and one, two, and three.

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And it's building up more and more voices all the way up to the top.

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Everybody has 2D rhythms at the beginning, so that makes it even easier.

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Then we have the melody at five in clarinet as well as a saxophone.

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And the lows have just a really easy rhythm underneath them, which is very accessible

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to anybody.

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And again, 2D, so there's basically two lines.

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You have the melody and then just this 2D accompaniment.

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Yep.

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It continues on until the next rehearsal number and at 13, the flutes and the oboes add in.

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And they're still playing half notes, 2D together on the middle voices line.

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And again, everything is very accessible, just half notes, whole notes in the low people.

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We do have some slurs, but it's nothing crazy.

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It's just like two quarter notes slurred together.

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I like in the melody that the melody, each bar ends with more often than not with quarter

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notes, which kind of helps to train the kids not to breathe on those bar lines.

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We don't have in the melodic lines, we don't end on a whole note or a dotted half note

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and a rest, something like that.

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So you're kind of really helping to teach the kids phrasing over the bar line.

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And then again, a good teaching opportunity in the accompaniment parts, which are more

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half note based, just foundation like that.

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You'll have to work with those kids not to breathe every bar line.

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Yes.

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And it's written really well where the melody line does overlap correctly with the next

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part, again, with that pickup note on beat four.

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Then we get to a section where everybody has basically like a rest at measure 20 on beat

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four, except the low people.

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And then it's their moment to or no, it's not their moment.

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It's the horns moment of glory at 21, along with the saxes.

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This part is, I've adjudicated this piece several times.

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This part is usually where the band may not sound the most mature because the horn part

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does go up to an upper C. So you would probably want to only think about programming this

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for your group if you have like a pretty good solid horn section or at least that you have

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a horn player who could play it and maybe a saxophone.

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And then support it with alto.

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And again, if you play the flex band part, you know, then you could pick your favorite

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kids to play the melody part or whatever here.

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But it does go up a little bit higher just than, you know, a normal range for the horn.

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Then we have the this goes on for a while.

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The lows have the same melody like Laura already mentioned.

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We have like a tiny little crescendo.

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So the dynamics are not changing either.

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It makes it really easy to balance because there's just two lines basically.

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And in the accompaniment part, a lot of quarter note, rest, rest, quarter note, one rest.

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So you get to play it long.

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Yeah, you're teaching that.

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Good opportunities to teach four to one, making those note lengths match each other.

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You know, young players will tend to go four one.

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So making those note lengths match in the accompaniment.

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At 29, we have low brass melody finally.

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And then the upper voices have some staccatos for the first time.

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And they're just playing an accompaniment behind them.

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One, two, four, one, two.

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So it's really easy to teach that to sound good.

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And then I would even approach it more lifted.

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Oh, for sure.

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More lifted.

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Yep.

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The low brass do have to be able to play like a concert G in tune.

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But it's again, it's not like they're moving around a ton.

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It's half note, quarter, quarter, half note, quarter, quarter.

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Not a lot of technique involved at all.

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Yep.

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Then we go back to the upper people having the melody.

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And now we have a little bit more variety.

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I think we have like three parts going on.

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Then we have a trumpet little part where the trumpets have to play higher up in their range

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all the way up to like a B and a C. So that's kind of important because again, as I mentioned,

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I've adjudicated this piece.

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That's one other measure, which that's measure 36, where I kind of felt like, oh, the trumpets

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may not have sounded their most mature there.

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Because again, they're going up a little higher into their range.

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And then of course that's right.

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That flat partial on the B.

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So making sure that they're supporting.

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Yep.

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And so just make sure you're kind of looking at that and having the right player on that

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part.

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There is like a really fun little percussion break at 37.

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The timpani gets to be kind of important.

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So again, as I mentioned before, you could get by with three percussionists.

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Definitely want to make sure you have a timpani player.

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You could cut the bass drum part if you had to because the timpani part is in there and

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kind of doing the same rhythm.

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There is a lot of accessory, a fair amount, I should say, of accessory percussion, but

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it's something that could be played by one player.

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They could cover all of those parts.

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Yep.

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It's all in the percussion two parts.

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So that's easy.

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Then at 41, we have just whole notes from most of the mid and low voices and the upper

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woodwinds and the bells.

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If you have enough players to have them get the melody and they're playing again, it says

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mezzo piano, but I would encourage them to play confidently since it's like a little

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slowly.

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Then they have like a little, they continue on in there slowly and everybody else just

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has whole notes underneath.

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And that accompaniment is marked piano.

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So that I think is a really good teaching opportunity for ensemble dynamics and control.

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It's not super easy.

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I mean, they're just like Katie said, they're sitting there on whole notes.

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So it would be easy for them to overplay and overbalance the melody, but it's a great opportunity

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again to teach that their roles stay in your lane.

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And then at 45, some of the mid voices add in and some of the upper brass come in with

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the upper woodwinds on the melody.

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Then everybody is crescendoing up and 49 we're all tutti again with upper people having the

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same melody again, lows go, this is a recap from the beginning, lows go back to having

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that same lifted rhythm, but now they actually have some eighth notes, one and two, four,

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one and two.

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They have a little bit of a different harmony line.

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And their eighth notes, the thing I like about the eighth notes, it's good articulation practice

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for them, but they're not moving around on the eighth notes.

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They're on the same note.

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Melody and some of the mid accompaniment here is accented style now.

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But again, you don't need to have any separation there, just teaching firm articulation.

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Yep, then as we get into 53, we've changed and now we have a tambourine voice in that

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percussion too.

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It's kind of light sounding and now everybody is accenting.

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So again, just a great opportunity to teach correct accenting.

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Then we have the tutti rhythm just like the beginning.

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And then we have the final finish, everybody's accenting again, we're staying on the same

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note even when we're accenting on like eighth notes and then everybody ends with a...

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I love this little back and forth thing here.

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Upper voices on one and three, mid and lower voices on two and four, this column response

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for a couple measures.

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Yep, and then everybody ends with cha-cha-cha at the end.

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That's always my favorite ending.

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So it is a very accessible teaching piece and I think that you could make a band sound

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really great on it for sure.

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Absolutely, we love this one.

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We hope you'll consider programming this in the future and thank you for joining us on

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this episode of BAMBFFs.