Duniway Elementary School

Dear Band Students and Parents:

I am honored to be teaching band at the Duniway School. Learning to play a musical instrument is exciting, yet challenging. All of the finest performers I have met have acquired their musical skills through patience and hard work. Our goal is to have fun while we provide Sellwood and other schools with musicians who have a good basic knowledge of their instrument and discipline that will help them be successful in everything they do. Here is what we need to do to help achieve this goal:

1. Choose an instrument that is in demand in the middle school and high school band programs, for example: drums are the most requested by students and in the least demand by band directors, but flutes, clarinets, trombones, etc. are in greater demand.
2. Acquire the instrument either through the school rental program ($50 per year) or through a local music company. Going through a music company is highly recommended due to the district’s limited resources for providing and maintaining working musical instruments.
3. Purchase the band method book we will be using in class at a music store (example: Portland Music Company). The book is entitled Essential Elements. You need to get the book for your child’s instrument.
4. Students should take the instruments home and practice at least 30 minutes for at least 5 days per week.

A 5th grader at Duniway will be in band for only about 100 minutes per week. Little will be accomplished on the instruments if that is all the time that the student spends practicing the instrument. I will send home practice record sheets so that each student’s practice time at home can be documented and the effort can help determine the student’s grade in band. If everyone works hard, we can through the method book quickly and work on material that is more challenging and fun for everyone. I have many easy jazz arrangements, introducing improvisation, which my past beginning students have performed. Improvisation helps teach students about being expressive on their instruments, but they must be able to know some basic scales on their instruments in order to be able to improvise.

I also recommend that students take private lessons if time and money allows. A private teacher is a specialist on the student’s instrument who can give quality one-on-one instruction that cannot be accomplished in a short class period among 25+ students playing different instruments.

Remember, our goal is to have fun while preparing for the future. The better everyone is playing, the more fun we will have.

Very Truly Yours,

Dr. Bob Price