Westhill High School Virtual Band - Steel by Randall D. Standridge

This production of Steel is a result of twelve weeks of effort by the students and faculty of the entire Westhill High School Band program in the Spring of 2020, during the time of Distance Learning. The Westhill student-musicians who performed in this video are part of our three large concert ensembles: Concert Band, Symphonic Band, and Wind Ensemble. All WHS Band students were offered the opportunity to contribute to this experience as a part of their Distance Learning.
When we realized that we would not return to in-person schooling this Spring, we decided to develop our at-home curriculum in a way that would continue to fulfill the mission of the Westhill Band program. We decided that continuing to cultivate a culture of Band Family and connection was paramount and structured each of our lesson plans with that tenant as a central focus. We brainstormed ways to create an experience for our students that would continue to inspire their love for music while providing opportunities for connection and self-expression, and would allow for individual music making in a way that would encourage practice, continued skill building, and progress as a musician.
Though absolutely nothing will take the place of in-person collaborative music-making, we believed that creating a virtual ensemble would be the best approximation while we were distance learning. We spoke to the students and they were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about focusing our at-home performance efforts on the piece Steel by Randall D. Standridge. Steel is a piece that the Concert Band was preparing for NYSSMA Major Ensembles Evaluation, and a piece our Seniors worked on when they were Freshmen. Steel provides challenges and featured melodic and rhythmically intricate lines for every instrumentalist in the ensemble; it is an outstanding piece in the wind band repertoire.
We made sure each musician had their instrument at home and in working order, assigned a part to each student, disseminated music, and then began building the piece, bit by bit. Through Google Classroom, we assigned small sections of the music each week, held virtual band lessons and sectionals (learned to teach virtual band lessons and sectionals!), asked students to submit their practice and performances of those small sections, provided individual feedback and ideas for improvements to each student, and then moved on to the next section of the piece. As this ensemble would never actually be able to make music together synchronously this Spring, we created a click track for our students in lieu of having a conductor. You will notice that our musicians are wearing headphones or earbuds in this recording. As they played their parts, they were hearing the click of a metronome and a backing track with which they played along. We taught students how to set up a listening device and recording device, align their parts to the backing track, and presented information to them about the recording process each week in our lessons.
Our student-musicians’ final project of the year was to submit a recording of Steel, played from start to finish in one take with the most beautiful tone and technique possible, with accurate notes, rhythms, articulations, and dynamics. Our students worked SO hard to produce the most flawless takes - some made in excess of 80 recordings until they found the one they felt most proud to submit.
This recording is not a performance, but is a production. The magic of live performance is that an ensemble works together synchronously to create music all together in a single moment in time. This video is the result of each student’s tremendous individual efforts then combined with the efforts of all of the rest of our students asynchronously. It is not what our students know as Band, but it is a different take on the ensemble experience.
This Virtual Ensemble would not have been possible, in this way, without the serendipitous award of a 2019 Grant from the Westhill Educational Foundation. Mr. Riley and the Music Department were awarded an incredibly generous grant that allowed for the purchase of a computer that can handle this type of Pro Tools session, audio interfaces, studio quality microphones, and a host of equipment necessary for recording the various instruments in band, all which were utilized extensively in this production.