contest

SBO Essay Deadline December 31

SBO’s 2015 Essay Scholarship Contest deadline is fast approaching. Music students in grades four through 12 can enter by answering in 250 words or less this question: How does your music class prepare you for life?

2014 Hit Like A Girl Contest

Contest Promotes Female Drummers Of All Ages And Musical Styles

With the official, January 24^th start of the 2014 Hit Like A Girl female drumming contest just days away, drummers, fans and the general public can now visit www.hitlikeagirlcontest.com to view videos of past winners and learn about this year’s sponsors, prizes and celebrity judges as well as how to participate in the popular, international drumming contest for women and girls. The new site also features a selection of free, downloadable “Groove Essentials” play-along tracks courtesy of Tommy Igoe and Hudson Music.

Percussion Performance: Sight-Reading

Sight-Reading Contest Success and the Percussion Section

One of the most daunting aspects of getting your band ready for contest is preparing them for the sight-reading room. With so much to consider, from the actual music to your preferred procedure for how your band should approach the experience, the percussion section can get lost in the mix. On a good day, the percussion may hardly even be noticed. On a bad day, the percussion section can be a real liability and can potentially create pitfalls that the rest of the band will fall into.

Fortunately, this can be prevented when successful band programs actively apply the saying “plan your work and work your plan.”

Being from Texas, I wrote this from my experiences at UIL Sight-Reading Contest as a band director and as a percussion specialist. It can be expected, however, that many of these strategies will work in other sight-reading Contest formats. Here are eight strategies that will make sure everyone knows their role, has a job to do, and can reasonably understand what to expect when they set foot in the sight-reading room.