In Graham County Bands, we strive to encourage lifelong musicianship through high quality instruction, performance opportunity and by advocating mastery of a standardized skill set that includes both musical and social standards.
In Graham County Bands, we strive to encourage lifelong musicianship through high quality instruction, performance opportunity and by advocating mastery of a standardized skill set that includes both musical and social standards.
Here in Graham County we are blessed with a rich heritage of many types of music. Many of our prospective band students come from a very strong musical background. By the time they are old enough to join band, their lives have most likely been enriched with a mixture of bluegrass, church music, local music festivals in Stecoah, Knoxville or even Asheville and they may have witnessed a level of excellence in performance from our school's music program. Our primary goal is to utilize traditional band instruments and visual performance to allow all types of musicianship to flourish within our program and to offer greatest opportunity to foster and further our student's growth.
Our lives are saturated with music. We are listeners, performers, creators and students of music in many different contexts - most often from a very young age. We experience music in a variety of contexts as an integral part of our daily lives. Our musicians tests are formulated to optimize the strengthening of a variety of types of musicianship and to allow musicians of all types to showcase their strengths while working to a common standard of excellence.
Many pieces of literature investigate the effects of auditioning for seating placement and challenging higher ranked peers to rise in rank on the motivation and musical self-esteem of high school band students. Researchers suggest that the positive and negative impacts on students are mixed and based on a variety of factors including both social and musical attributes. We feel that assessment of our value in the context of the band room should not only reflect the value we bring to the group through skill mastery on our instrument but also through bringing integrity and exemplary citizenship to our lives in and out of the band room. Because an audition assessment may not thoroughly display the value of our musicianship both socially and musically, we have devised a system of assessment that promotes - what we feel - is a healthy balance of audition type requirements, musical skill mastery and social objectives. Therefore, we do not utilize traditional chair placement. Instead, our goal is to have all students strive to meet the standards required of a Masters Musician and challenge themselves to meet that standard rather than exclusively challenge the musicians sitting to the left or right of them.
They are not just important, they are imperative. Our band students are ambassadors of our program in and out of the band room and we have high expectations for their behavior as well as performance. In our musician tests we have carefully chosen requirements that will encourage not only superior musicianship but that will also:
PREPARE students for competitive scholarships at the university level. Did you know that there are music scholarships for students that plan on majoring in almost any subject a university offers? Participation in band at the university level allows them to continue their love of music and camaraderie with other students that share an immediate bond through band life. If a student chooses to continue to perform in university ensembles they have to opportunity to graduate from Graham County Schools with a skill set that will allow them that invaluable choice.
PROMOTE HEALTHY EGO. At times, we may be asked to perform a role within the band with intent to foster not only our personal musicianship but to fulfill a larger musical and/or social objective within the band. So, rather than being asked to "leave our ego at the door" in an attempt to equalize social objectives and tension within the group, we believe a more beneficial balance of leadership and skill mastery can be achieved by encouraging a healthy sense of ego, i.e. self worth, through transparent expectations and intent that are clearly reflected in our musicians tests and actions. The actions and choices of the directors and student leadership can be clearly observed and justified to students, parents and community based on the action the student has taken toward improving themselves by working through their personal musicians test requirements.
VALUE the whole musician. Valuable, personable qualities of integrity, attendance and seniority can be difficult to demonstrate through a ranking system where students are compared to one another through audition only, and where additional factors that influence ranking order may be unclear or objective. We strive to openly justify our choices of seniority through an assessment system that values transparent, clear and very specific goals and expectations. Our musicians tests are simply a tool to make our assessment process as clear and goal oriented as possible.