Welcome to our podcast, Band BFFs.
The podcast where we make your music selection less complicated.
On today's episode, we will be discussing Great Beginnings by Michael Kamuf.
Cheers to starting the conversation.
This piece is a fantastic grade one piece that would be good for a beginning band or
a young band as well.
It's in the key of concert B flat throughout.
Has a one octave range and is 4-4 throughout.
Simple rhythms, no dotted rhythms, just quarters, eighths, and associated rests.
This is also a great piece because you don't need a lot of percussion.
You need about three players minimum, but you could even make it work with two, which
makes it again very accessible for younger bands.
So right off the bat, the tempo is just a nice easy 120 Allegro.
And as Laura already mentioned, the rhythms are simple, but also what I like about it
is that the articulations are more long and connected through the piece.
Yes, we've got some accents thrown in every once in a while, but that is pretty much it.
There's one spot where it's staccato.
There's a little staccato section, but it's perfectly manageable.
And so you're really teaching those young players to keep their sound going.
You're teaching them not to clip notes and things like that.
That's really important for just any time of the year fundamentals.
I also love that this is available in a flex band arrangement, so it is good.
Even if you have kind of unique instrumentation with your ensemble, there are options for
you to put this together and make it sound really good.
Yep.
So straight off the bat, it starts with the lower voices and it has this accented, non-accented
rhythm.
One, two, and three, four, and one, two, and three.
And it's building up more and more voices all the way up to the top.
Everybody has 2D rhythms at the beginning, so that makes it even easier.
Then we have the melody at five in clarinet as well as a saxophone.
And the lows have just a really easy rhythm underneath them, which is very accessible
to anybody.
And again, 2D, so there's basically two lines.
You have the melody and then just this 2D accompaniment.
Yep.
It continues on until the next rehearsal number and at 13, the flutes and the oboes add in.
And they're still playing half notes, 2D together on the middle voices line.
And again, everything is very accessible, just half notes, whole notes in the low people.
We do have some slurs, but it's nothing crazy.
It's just like two quarter notes slurred together.
I like in the melody that the melody, each bar ends with more often than not with quarter
notes, which kind of helps to train the kids not to breathe on those bar lines.
We don't have in the melodic lines, we don't end on a whole note or a dotted half note
and a rest, something like that.
So you're kind of really helping to teach the kids phrasing over the bar line.
And then again, a good teaching opportunity in the accompaniment parts, which are more
half note based, just foundation like that.
You'll have to work with those kids not to breathe every bar line.
Yes.
And it's written really well where the melody line does overlap correctly with the next
part, again, with that pickup note on beat four.
Then we get to a section where everybody has basically like a rest at measure 20 on beat
four, except the low people.
And then it's their moment to or no, it's not their moment.
It's the horns moment of glory at 21, along with the saxes.
This part is, I've adjudicated this piece several times.
This part is usually where the band may not sound the most mature because the horn part
does go up to an upper C. So you would probably want to only think about programming this
for your group if you have like a pretty good solid horn section or at least that you have
a horn player who could play it and maybe a saxophone.
And then support it with alto.
And again, if you play the flex band part, you know, then you could pick your favorite
kids to play the melody part or whatever here.
But it does go up a little bit higher just than, you know, a normal range for the horn.
Then we have the this goes on for a while.
The lows have the same melody like Laura already mentioned.
We have like a tiny little crescendo.
So the dynamics are not changing either.
It makes it really easy to balance because there's just two lines basically.
And in the accompaniment part, a lot of quarter note, rest, rest, quarter note, one rest.
So you get to play it long.
Yeah, you're teaching that.
Good opportunities to teach four to one, making those note lengths match each other.
You know, young players will tend to go four one.
So making those note lengths match in the accompaniment.
At 29, we have low brass melody finally.
And then the upper voices have some staccatos for the first time.
And they're just playing an accompaniment behind them.
One, two, four, one, two.
So it's really easy to teach that to sound good.
And then I would even approach it more lifted.
Oh, for sure.
More lifted.
Yep.
The low brass do have to be able to play like a concert G in tune.
But it's again, it's not like they're moving around a ton.
It's half note, quarter, quarter, half note, quarter, quarter.
Not a lot of technique involved at all.
Yep.
Then we go back to the upper people having the melody.
And now we have a little bit more variety.
I think we have like three parts going on.
Then we have a trumpet little part where the trumpets have to play higher up in their range
all the way up to like a B and a C. So that's kind of important because again, as I mentioned,
I've adjudicated this piece.
That's one other measure, which that's measure 36, where I kind of felt like, oh, the trumpets
may not have sounded their most mature there.
Because again, they're going up a little higher into their range.
And then of course that's right.
That flat partial on the B.
So making sure that they're supporting.
Yep.
And so just make sure you're kind of looking at that and having the right player on that
part.
There is like a really fun little percussion break at 37.
The timpani gets to be kind of important.
So again, as I mentioned before, you could get by with three percussionists.
Definitely want to make sure you have a timpani player.
You could cut the bass drum part if you had to because the timpani part is in there and
kind of doing the same rhythm.
There is a lot of accessory, a fair amount, I should say, of accessory percussion, but
it's something that could be played by one player.
They could cover all of those parts.
Yep.
It's all in the percussion two parts.
So that's easy.
Then at 41, we have just whole notes from most of the mid and low voices and the upper
woodwinds and the bells.
If you have enough players to have them get the melody and they're playing again, it says
mezzo piano, but I would encourage them to play confidently since it's like a little
slowly.
Then they have like a little, they continue on in there slowly and everybody else just
has whole notes underneath.
And that accompaniment is marked piano.
So that I think is a really good teaching opportunity for ensemble dynamics and control.
It's not super easy.
I mean, they're just like Katie said, they're sitting there on whole notes.
So it would be easy for them to overplay and overbalance the melody, but it's a great opportunity
again to teach that their roles stay in your lane.
And then at 45, some of the mid voices add in and some of the upper brass come in with
the upper woodwinds on the melody.
Then everybody is crescendoing up and 49 we're all tutti again with upper people having the
same melody again, lows go, this is a recap from the beginning, lows go back to having
that same lifted rhythm, but now they actually have some eighth notes, one and two, four,
one and two.
They have a little bit of a different harmony line.
And their eighth notes, the thing I like about the eighth notes, it's good articulation practice
for them, but they're not moving around on the eighth notes.
They're on the same note.
Melody and some of the mid accompaniment here is accented style now.
But again, you don't need to have any separation there, just teaching firm articulation.
Yep, then as we get into 53, we've changed and now we have a tambourine voice in that
percussion too.
It's kind of light sounding and now everybody is accenting.
So again, just a great opportunity to teach correct accenting.
Then we have the tutti rhythm just like the beginning.
And then we have the final finish, everybody's accenting again, we're staying on the same
note even when we're accenting on like eighth notes and then everybody ends with a...
I love this little back and forth thing here.
Upper voices on one and three, mid and lower voices on two and four, this column response
for a couple measures.
Yep, and then everybody ends with cha-cha-cha at the end.
That's always my favorite ending.
So it is a very accessible teaching piece and I think that you could make a band sound
really great on it for sure.
Absolutely, we love this one.
We hope you'll consider programming this in the future and thank you for joining us on
this episode of BAMBFFs.