Rehearsal Efficiencies (Part 2)
In the military we always touted the phrase "train the way you expect to fight." Well, what's implied in this statement is that there should be a clear understanding of what certain battlefields will look like so as to train accordingly.
Quick story...
In high school I used to look forward to going to the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow, Idaho every year. And one year in particular I got to chat with trumpeter Paul Mazzio (I'm 99% sure it was him) after his performance with some all-star big band where I'm pretty sure they were backing trumpeter Arturo Sandoval. And the reason why this interaction stands out is because after hearing them execute what seemed to me at the time to be a flawless performance of some hard ass music, I asked how many rehearsals they had, by which the reply was "one three-hour rehearsal" (which at the time completely unraveled my understanding of reality).
Here's the point of this story...
Unless a kid (or even adult for that matter) is observing how professional musicians navigate the terrain of the musical battlefield's they're going to have to eventually contend with, then how is any kid to properly evaluate the effectiveness of their individual practicing and/or group rehearsals?
As a kid, I remember Mon-Fri 6:30-7:30am rehearsals where over the course of the entire school year we'd bang out less than ten songs in Jazz band (which goes for the other ensembles as well). So even if we did exactly ten, after you subtract Thanksgiving, Xmas, and Spring break (in addition to a few other Federal holidays), it would equate to just a little over 200 hours (i.e. 20 hours per song). Therefore, when you compare that to the rehearsals I used to watch my dad [Mel Brown] have with his band when I was a kid--where they'd bang out 10-15 slamming arrangements in ONE hour--this other model is highly inefficient and doesn't set a good precedent for what a reasonable turnaround time can be for learning music. And from what I'm being told by many students today, this same model is still in effect.
So again, if the goal is to "train the way you expect to fight," then my question for all music educators is "how are you ensuring that your training protocols are in fact putting your students on track to meet the demands of the world outside of school?"