- - Please visit: Legacy Horn Experience - -
We are doing something different than normal this semester for brass chamber music at Arizona State.
During the summer our large ensemble directors began exploring an online DAW platform called Bandlab. We were having weekly brass meetings through the summer as well, and the idea that came up was to organize all of the ASU brass students into brass quintets that would record works using Bandlab, and to also as much as possible develop videos as the final product. By the end of the summer we made this video to test the concept:
All the audio was recorded and edited in Bandlab. The overall project was designed to use technology available to students for free through ASU. What you see on the video for example is pantomime done separately on Zoom in front of a green screen. Trumpet professor Joe Burgstaller did the final video production.
With that video launched, we went forward with the students, putting them all in groups of similar ability. Then we did a further tweak of the concept and moved all the groups to focusing on works by BIPOC composers, arranged by Luther Henderson. This also included having composition and musicology faculty speak (on Zoom) to the brass area about the music of the era and Luther Henderson and his career. Wednesday this past week all the groups shared their audio, and this has exceeded our expectations. The next step is for groups to make videos to go with the audio they have recorded.
For another viewpoint on our project, from a bigger picture, see also this article:
From the article,
Burgstaller and his colleagues spent the summer figuring out how to fully leverage the technology and use it to their students’ advantage. As an example, the brass faculty released a video of their virtual performance of the “Love Theme to Cinema Paradiso, ” produced using only resources that are free to ASU students, such as BandLab and Adobe Creative Suite.
“COVID is not decelerating your learning process — it’s reordering it,” Burgstaller said. “We’re in this situation where we can make a lot of difference in helping students learn technology skills that are usually acquired later or once musicians are out of school. In my era as a student, these are all skills I learned on my own and use intensively.”
This has all been part of a larger push since 2019 to revitalize our brass chamber music program, and again it has been exciting to see the results obtained by looking for opportunities rather than looking at the difficulties presented by COVID. Around the end of the current semester there should be a whole group of videos from ASU brass students
Going forward, next semester the plan is a similar project, but all the quintets will be playing and recording movements or works by women composers. Ultimately I believe that after COVID we will continue with a robust live quintet program, yet another reason to consider ASU highly for brass study. For more information visit:
