Compatible Duets for Winds

Description

Horn in F — In my experience as an instrumental music teacher, I found that having students play insmall chamber-music groups was a very beneficial exercise to improve the student’s overallmusicianship. The simplest form of chamber music is the duet. It is an opportunity for thestudent to play with a teacher or to play with another student of similar abilities. Aspectsof playing such as tone quality, intonation, technique and ensemble skills can be developedduring the process of studying duets.These duets are different in that they have many different performance options, sinceall of the books in this series are compatible. As a former middle-school band director Ialways had students that wanted to come to the band room during lunch or after school;eager students who simply wanted to play music with their friends. However, that was notpossible at the time, since there was very little duet material available that was compatiblewith all of the wind instruments. This book takes care of that. A student can now grab afellow musician, no matter what instrument they might play, and have hours of fun playingduets together. Most importantly, they will learn a great deal about music-making in theprocess.The duets have been generally arranged in the book in order of difficulty and cover arange of keys that are appropriate for this ability level. Special care was given to makesure that both of the duet parts were on a similar ability level and that each line was givenan opportunity to play a lead role at some point during the arrangement. Also, most ofthe musical markings are attached to both systems and the point size of the music wasconsidered for ease of reading.It is my hope that this collection will help to stimulate and enhance the musicianship of theperformers. It was a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to put together this collection.I hope it is a useful tool for you for years to come. These invaluable collections contain 31 duets in a variety of styles (classical, folk music, new original pieces) that can be played with any combination of two wind instruments. Students can develop their chamber ensemble skills while playing with their friends, no matter what instruments they play. Ranging from grade levels 2-3, Compatible Duets for Winds is perfect for band directors to buy for use in the classroom, and its flexibility makes it a must-have for any wind player.