Colors, Pyramids, 3-D Movies, and the Mona Lisa; Teaching for Understanding - Blend, Balance, and Calrity Joel L. Denton

COLORS, PYRAMIDS, 3 - D MOVIES, AND THE MONA LISA; TEACHING FOR UNDERSTANDING – BLEND, BALANCE, AND CLARITY

BY JOEL L. DENTON

The following is a reproduction from an earlier article written for Conn-Selmer.

Much has been written about creating balance, blend, and clarity in the band /ensemble sound, but the evolution of newer orchestration methods, the addition of electronics, and the virtuosic development of all the instruments have required us to think differently, at times, about all of the above music making ideas. In fact, it seems many times they are thought of as being the same, when in actuality all three are uniquely different and important in creating a memorable musical performance. Since most people are visual learners (approximately 75%), I like visual examples that are easily understood by students/musicians to explain these concepts, thus the title of the article. I also like formulas that help to create those images. Here are some thoughts on teaching the differences to your students and in the process creating a much stronger understanding of how, when, and what they should be listening for in each. out to some friends with whom ideas concerning these concepts have been shared through the years. Their ideas have provided great insight into my thoughts concerning these concepts and the methods I now use to teach them. I am choosing to begin with the concept of blend. As Scott Rush, Retired Director of Fine Arts in the Dorchester District 2 (SC) and author of the Habits of a Successful Band Director/Musician series, states, “In my experience, there has to be either one unified sound coming from the section or one blended color in texture before you can decide its ROLE within the texture or apply the various teaching strategies for balance that we use (percentages, etc.).” I might add this is one of the fundamental reasons why matching tone and tuning is so incredibly important. Since each instrument has a sound color, then we may assume that at times composers choose to blend two instrument colors to create a new sound color for their composition. As an example, we might take the sound color of the Horn and the sound color of the Alto Sax to create a new sound color. To help students understand this, we could use red for the Alto Sax sound and blue for the Horn sound. Combined together we would have a purple sound color. This would work equally well in creating a new sound from the yellow of the Flute and the red of the Alto Sax or the red of the Clarinet, which is different from the Alto Sax, to create an orange sound or the different red of the Clarinet and the blue of the Horn to create a different shade of purple. To further support this effort, we can create new instruments – Hornaphone, Flutaphone, or Clarihorn as opposed to Saxahorn, Saxalute, or Horninet. While the students/musicians will laugh at this, the mental picture is

Mr. Joel L. Denton served as Director of Bands at Ooltewah High School for thirtyseven years. He currently serves as an adjunct instructor of Instrumental Music Education at Lee University. Mr. Denton is an elected member of the East Tennessee Band and Orchestra Association Hall of Fame and the Tennessee Bandmasters Hall of Fame. He currently serves as President-Elect of the Tennessee Music Education Association and as Tennessee State Chair of the National Band Association. He is very active as an adjudicator, clinician, and consultant.

Colors, Pyramids, 3-D Movies ..., Joel L. Denton, cont.

firmly in place. Both the colors and the new instruments work for creating strong visual pictures for your ensemble. This is also an opportunity for collaboration as we can decide how purple or orange the color should be. In the South, I might ask the ensemble to listen and help decide if we want Tennessee orange or Auburn, Florida, or Clemson orange? In the Southwest, you might choose between Texas and Oklahoma State orange, and in the Mid West you could use Illinois for one of the orange colors. Your ensemble members will be very aware of how those colors look and consequently understand how dark or bright the new color should be blended. I have heard Roy Holder, Retired Director of Bands at Lake Braddock High School (VA), use soup as another visual example of blend. In a great soup, the ingredients are perfectly blended to create the wonderful flavor of the soup. This is just like a wonderful ensemble sound that is produced when all the instrument sounds/textures are perfectly blended.

When we think of balance, many think of the concept of the pyramid of sound. Francis McBeth explains this concept in great detail in his text, Effective Performance of Band Music. He presents the idea of the double pyramid of sound with the instruments divided by families – woodwind and brass are assigned in the balance from highest to lowest with the lower/larger instruments representing the bottom of the sound and the higher/smaller instruments representing the top of the pyramids. Due to changes in orchestration, he would later discuss the need for a more singular balance using one pyramid with the instruments being assigned the same position in the balance based on range and size. This is still a common practice in thinking about balance. A visual example of this is how Roy Holder often presents balance as a beautifully created salad with the appropriate amounts of greens, other vegetables, cheese and possibly meat or croutons. I have also found ideas of instrument group percentages from Richard Saucedo, Retired Director of Bands at Carmel High School (IN) and prolific composer, to be a great resource in helping students to develop their listening and understanding. Richard provides these instrument group percentages for balance:

• Group 1: Tuba, Bari Sax,

Bassoon, Bass Clarinet (45% of total ensemble volume) • Group 2: Trombone, Baritone,

Euphonium, Tenor sax (30% of total ensemble volume) • Group 3: Horn, Alto Sax (15% of total ensemble volume) • Group 4: Trumpet, Clarinet,

Oboe, Flute, Piccolo (10% of total ensemble volume)

When we train our students to listen with this idea of balance, some would say vertical listening, we create a darker sonority for our ensemble. I would also challenge training to listen as we do for tone and tuning to create our most vibrant sonority. That would be individual, trio, section, family, and ultimately to the ensemble. By doing this, we have the opportunity to immediately improve our tone, tuning, blend, and balance which will produce the desired sonority for the ensemble. I will interject that we must not confuse balance with clarity, which we will discuss next in the article. These require two different skills of listening.

If we think of balance as vertical listening and blend as listening into the ensemble, then clarity is our listening horizontally or dimensionally forward through the ensemble. Our listening creates dimensions that produce clarity for our listeners in the audience. This concept is often missing in performances that most times produce a wall of blurred sounds making it difficult for the audience member to understand exactly what they should be hearing or listening for. A great visual example of this is attending a 3-D movie and forgetting to put your glasses on. As the movie begins, our viewing is blurry; however, everything is exactly where it is supposed to be we just don’t have the lenses to produce the clarity of the three dimensions. When putting our glasses on, the lenses then create the three dimensions and the wonderful and exciting clarity of the moving parts. Is this not how music should be heard? Yes, except in music we often have more than three dimensions of sound occurring at the same time and they should be moving and changing places in the sound making the music come alive. These dimensions represent Melody, Counter-Melody and Harmony, Accompaniment – both chords and rhythmic, and Long Tones – most times low tones. Dr. David Vandewalker, Coordinator of Performing Arts in Fulton County (GA), uses these percentages for creating this clarity: • Melody – 40% • Counter-Melody/Harmony – 30%

• Accompaniment – Chords and

Rhythmic – 20% • Long Tones – 10%

When using these percentages, the ensemble creates listening dimensions or clarity that as I like to say, “Keep the important things important!” Another fantastic visual aide for this is Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. David and I are both fascinated with this picture and use it to demonstrate clarity. Here’s a little history on the Mona Lisa. da Vinci carried it around for sixteen years and never really finished it, yet it is the most recognizable portrait ever painted! When he finally turned it over to the gentleman who commissioned him to paint it, da Vinci had accomplished a technique no one else before him had used – multiple dimensions on a 2-dimensional canvas. When you look at the Mona Lisa, she appears to be coming forward in the picture. As a matter of fact, there are four dimensions created in the picture and they are almost perfectly sized to use David’s percentages. The Mona Lisa represents the melody and is almost 40% of the painting.

The ground and water right behind her are about 30% of the picture and represent the Counter-Melody and Harmony. The trees behind the water are approximately 20% of the painting and represent the Accompaniment. The sky behind all and at the top of the painting is about 10% and represents the Long Tones. Now, what is interesting about music is that it is not stationary but alive and moving, so these different parts are always changing dimensions. The ostinato accompaniment may be in the front dimension for a while and then move back for the melody that may then move back for the counter melody before soaring through to the front again. Think of this as an air battle in a 3-D Star Wars movie where the fighters are constantly changing positions. This is what makes 3-D movies so exciting and what makes music so enjoyable and memorable for listening! Since much published music often assigns an ensemble dynamic, I have found that using the 3-D and Mona Lisa ideas and assigning priority for where each part should be is a great way to teach, understand, and ultimately produce clarity in the ensemble. Until the students fully grasp this idea, this process may be a little time consuming, but the process will be musically worth it. Once the students understand this listening concept, they will begin to recognize where their parts should fit and start to adjust and make decisions on their own. Another visual aid is to have students think of longer notes (longer than a quarter note) as listening lenses to help provide clarity just like the 3-D lenses do in the movie. To do this have the students listen for and move out of the way of moving parts anytime they are playing longer tones – open notes. This will allow the moving lines/rhythms to help the music move forward while creating more interest and better clarity for your audience.

In closing, it is paramount that we that we develop beautiful blend to produce the amazing colors the composers have asked us to create and that we perform with great balance to create the wonderful sonority of the band sound. But for our performances to produce lasting musical memories for our audience, we must perform with incredible clarity that allows the music to be alive and to emotionally and intellectually move our audience without requiring them to listen through the blur to hear all the excitement and energy of our performance.

Colors, Pyramids, 3-D Movies ..., Joel L. Denton, cont.

This quote on Emotion by William Sloane Coffin in his book “Credo” is a constant reminder of why we work so hard to perform with all these qualities: “The longest, most arduous journey is from the head to the heart.” When we can produce this, our performances will be most memorable.

A special thank to my friends: Roy Holder, Scott Rush, Richard Saucedo, and David Vandewalker for agreeing to allow me to use their thoughts in this article.

Best of luck in all your musical endeavors!