Music News

Instruments of the Week

Learning a musical instrument provides a number of benefits for students, including:

· Improving memory

· Relieving stress

· Making you smarter

· Builds confidence and gives you a sense of achievement

· It’s fun!

With this in mind, I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce a couple of instruments each newsletter that we are looking for students to play. These will be available to hire from the school for the time the students is learning and will give the best opportunities for students to progress through to the more advanced ensembles quicker.

First up we have the most important band instrument, the Tuba. This is the biggest brass instrument which creates the strongest and deepest sound in all of our ensembles. The Tuba provides the sound that we build the whole concert band sound on top of. A good way to think of the tuba is like the bass guitar of the band, as it plays very similar parts but uses a much warmer tone. If you are a particularly short person, we may start you on euphonium first and switch you to tuba once you have grown enough.

Next we have the French Horn. This is for students who have a good ear and can hear the difference between pitches easily. The French Horn often gets important melodies (or tunes) in both orchestras and concert bands. It’s also featured in some of the most famous movie themes like Harry Potter, Jurassic Park and Star Wars.

Upcoming Performances

Below is a list of performances to keep an eye out for, coming up during Term 2:

- Victorian Schools Music Festival, 30 August at Hawthorn Arts Centre

- The Symphonic Band, along with some students from Mid Level Band, will be attending this. Details are available on Compass for the students involved.

- VCE Music Night, 12 September

Further information about these will come out closer to the performance dates.

Instrumental Music Program

We still have vacancies on a number of instruments in the instrumental music program, particularly on brass and woodwind. If you are still interested in learning an instrument but have signed up yet, come and see Liesl on Level 1 of the Enterprise building to collect some forms.

Lachlan Gallacher

Director of Music