Welcome to the BraeLincViniOak Beginning Band Blog!
We are the 5th Grade Beginning Bands of Braeside, Lincoln, Ravinia and Red Oak Elementary Schools from North Shore School District 112 in Highland Park, IL.
To contact Mr. Evan Canel (that guy who waves the pointy stick at the concerts), you can:
(*best response time) send an email to: ecanel@nssd112.org
or call: 224-765-3438
I can’t believe that it is already time for a concert! Please do your best to ready because that will determine how much fun you have and how excited you will be. The first concert of the year is always such an energetic, incredible experience. Here again is what you need to know:
Dress Rehearsal - this doesn’t mean you get dressed up, however I would love to see everyone wearing their band shirts and jeans on the concert day (don’t spill your lunch on it!). The dress rehearsal is our only chance to play together with all four school and to be on the stage before our actual performance. Details about this rehearsal that happens BEFORE SCHOOL AT EDGEWOOD ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8TH will be talked about in class and can be read on this nifty permission form that you can download if the copy I gave out in class didn’t make it home.
Your practice record has our concert music listed in the order that we perform it. You never want to find yourself at a concert asking, “Wait…what are we doing?” Students who are prepared spend their time having fun instead of panic attacks.
Finally, I want to give you a little hint as to what we are going to soon start for our NEXT concert. Shhh….it is a secret, so only you, me and the rest of the internet can know about it.
Hopefully everyone made some great noise at home this past week. Never fear, parents and siblings, because those honks, toots, squeaks and squawks that you’ve been hearing for the last week are soon going to be shaped into the stuff that symphonies are made of.
We have three goals this week:
Become comfortable recognizing the first 3 notes on the music staff, and quickly remembering the proper fingerings for those notes
Remember that YOU ARE AN ATHLETE IN TRAINING. This is one of those phrases you will hear from me time and again. It means that even though your brain may know what to do, your fingers and your face muscles need to keep working in order to gain the strength and the muscle memory to make you successful. TRANSLATION: Play the first few pages over and over and over and over again. A good rule of thumb is that if someone isn’t complaining that you are annoying, you are not doing it enough.
When you just can’t repeat pages 6 and 7 anymore, go to page 8 to learn 2 new notes.
Here is the practice record for this week. Now go and make noise!
Go ahead and do it! You know it is going to be fun and you are going to learn a cool skill along the way. It has been well documented that students participating in the arts do well academically, socially and emotionally. On top of that, you get to do great stuff – the bands perform both here and abroad. There is no telling where this might take you if you stick with it long enough. Fill out the form and see what happens next!
Sorry, but online registration is now over. If you missed all of the sign up hooplah and with to participate this year, please contact Mr. Canel at ecanel@nssd112.org
Well this answers two questions I had about our performance:
1. What happens when a wearing googly-eye antenna and holding a 3 foot long plastic neon colored tube says, “I better not see this on youtube!”?
2. Why did Mrs. Banas scream followed by audience laughter in the middle of the song? Ouch.
In order to protect the students from administrative retaliation, I will not mention where I got this video. In other news, I’d just like to say thanks to the Fox family for uh…that thing you did involving those people with the stuff and the other people.
