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Teaching Mallet Instruments: Let’s start differently!

Technique Exercises
When teachers work on reading skills, it is also essential to teach fundamental technique exercises to students. For
example, exercises such as tetra-chords, scales, and green scales are great for muscle memory when playing stepwise
melodies. Patterns of skip exercises are often constructed upon scalar passages. Here a student can start with double stops
of these skips and then do variations based on it (Example 4). Note that the technical exercises should be transposed in
different keys. Another important figure of skips is the “arpeggio” which should be introduced as well.
Example 4

Some technical exercises are patterns of mixed stepwise motion and skips, and progress in a “sequence.” A few of these
patterns, like Example 5, are commonly used by composers. Teachers can create exercises based on the music students
are learning.
Example 5

One thing teachers should keep in mind: they need to relate these technical exercises to reading skills. If not, students
may fail to execute what is written or they may learn the music slowly, because they do not recognize the melodic
movements and patterns in the score.

Bandmasters Review • December 2018 19 Texas Bandmasters Association