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Welcome to our middle school band program. If you are new to our program, I’d like to extend a special welcome! If your child was in our fifth grade band last year, we enjoyed working with them and are excited about their potential this year. I wanted to send this letter to make you aware of our equipment requirements at the middle level.
In order to guarantee that students will always have the equipment necessary to perform their parts, we ask percussionists to come to class each day with their own stick bag. This bag should be labeled with the student’s name and should contain all of their sticks and mallets also clearly labeled with a permanent marker. Each student should already have a pair of wood tipped snare drum sticks and a set of hard plastic bell mallets (either purchased or from their percussion kits.) Students should continue to add to this stick bag with required and optional equipment through their middle school and high school years. They will get used to the “feel” of their own equipment, which will be valuable at performance time.
As students enter middle school, they can opt to return their percussion kits as long as they have a practice pad or drum to practice on at home and a piano or keyboard to practice mallet parts. However, if you decide to return this kit, you should purchase a set of hard plastic bell mallets (such as those provided with your kit) in addition to the equipment bundled in the stick bag. We hope that the lack of rental fee would offset the cost of the bag.
Please take a moment to look over the attached list of required equipment. There are several options for putting together this stick bag. You can order the entire package (best value) or purchase the sticks individually through the music store of your choice. Brass Bell and White House of Music (Germantown location) both offer special package pricing for our students. There are also online sources.
MTSD Required Equipment/Recommended Brands
Stick Bag Any Brand
Concert Snare Stick Vic Firth SD1 (or other matched pair- wooden tip)
Xylophone Mallets Yamaha ME104 (or like)
Yarn Mallets Yamaha ME203 (or like)
Timpani Mallets (general) Innovative IP (or other w/cartwheel head)
Hard Plastic Bell Mallets Yamaha ME101 (or like)
Please contact our music stores to arrange purchase and/or delivery
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