Music Institute of Chicago
The Music Institute of Chicago offers a variety of summer programming for brass players, including summer jazz camps for youth and adults and Quintet Attacca Chamber Camp. Among those options are several that offer a unique approach: Brass for Beginners® camp for youth and Brass for Beginners® classes for youth and adults.
The innovative Brass for Beginners®
(BfB) program, developed by Music Institute faculty member Chris
Hasselbring in collaboration with music educator Jack Hasselbring and
historian Kirsty Montgomery, uses the natural trumpet (an historical
trumpet without valves) to limit learning variables and jump-start the
development of fundamental brass and aural skills while stimulating
students’ capacity for creativity. A recipe for success, BfB has proven
to be an efficient and effective way to prepare students to play any of
the modern brass instruments.
The Music Institute talked with Chris Hasselbring about the method.
How did Brass for Beginners come about?
My interest in early music and the natural trumpet, coupled with my
desire to create a more meaningful educational experience for my trumpet
students, eventually led to the idea of creating a curriculum
for complete beginners.
One of the first things you realize when you pick up a natural trumpet
is, to get the “right” note to sound, you first need to hear it in your
head. This makes the natural trumpet a great first instrument because
students must focus on embouchure development (use of mouth and facial
muscles), aural skills, and more precise pitch production.
Unfortunately, historic replicas of natural trumpets are very costly, so
to make it possible for my students to experience the benefits of
playing them, I developed my own authentic-sounding “Frankenstein”
trumpet, something I called a “Hose Horn.” The instrument was accessible
and inexpensive, and, by 2006, word had gotten around at the Music
Institute about the strange-looking instruments my students were
playing. I received a call from then-Board Chair Kay Mabie, who had
heard I had students making their own instruments. She explained that David Dushkin,
the Music Institute’s founder, thought it was important for students to
understand how their instruments worked and provided resources for
students to make elements of keyboard and string instruments back in the
school’s early days. Kay was fascinated by the idea of teaching
students with a modern version of an historical instrument and offered
to fund outreach programs through the Music Institute’s Arts Link program.
Meanwhile, my brother Jack received funding to do the same from the
Mount Olive Education Foundation in New Jersey, and we were off, except
for the fact that we had no instruments for these programs! We scrambled
to find junk trumpets, bought a bunch of vinyl tubing and cable ties,
and got to work making “Hose Horns.” These instruments took a lot of
effort to produce, didn’t look beautiful, and were a bit inconsistent,
but they played quite well and students were intrigued. Beginning in
2007, we began running tuition-free enrichment programs for under-served
3rd graders to provide them a head start and increase their chances of
success in 4th grade band.
As you’ve continued to modify and enhance the program, where do things stand today?
Since we first launched, many institutions,
artists, and collaborators have supported the project. We developed and
tested six versions of a beginners’ method, resulting in the method
book we use today, Around the World in Twenty-One Trumpets: A Brass Odyssey.
In 2013, we incorporated as an LLC and formed a partnership with
Skokie-based entrepreneur Jason Wyrwicz to take on the challenge of
engineering a low-cost, user-friendly natural trumpet and make
curriculum and instruments available in a scalable manner. Since then, we have been sharing the program
at educational conferences in the United States and abroad and have
found that music teachers everywhere appreciate our work developing new
and creative ways to make learning music more meaningful. We are excited
to see the program taking off
in the UK, thanks to the Wallace Collection and the Mayor of London’s
Music Fund, and we are looking forward to increasing the program’s reach
throughout Chicago.
In the simplest terms, tell us what the Brass for Beginners method is and why is it especially successful?
BfB is an interdisciplinary method for learning the basics of brass
playing using the natural (valve-less) trumpet. The curriculum includes
notated music and a language-based (learn-by-ear) approach, much like
the Suzuki method.
There are three reasons this method is so successful:
- The lack of valves and slides (any moving parts) helps students focus on developing the fundamentals of brass playing—sound production, articulation, and navigation of the harmonic series.
- Its use of a learn-by-ear approach is particularly effective. Since the natural trumpet limits the available pitches to the harmonic series, it becomes easier to focus on and build aural skills. Players learn to hear and produce the correct pitch vibration at the embouchure to select “the correct note.”
- Finally, its interdisciplinary approach helps unlocks students’ technical and creative abilities.
Having
the chance to develop basic skills in a patient and nurturing group
environment can make the difference in whether or not a beginner is able
to stick with it. I have found that when beginners have the opportunity
to develop and discover their abilities in the early stages, they have a
more meaningful and lasting connection to the experience of playing and
learning.
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