Band and Choir

A.H.S Band/Music Philosophy

The A.H.S band is an organization of students and staff who pride themselves on excellence- excellence in our personal performance, our section’s performance, our band’s performance, and in the way we represent ourselves and our school. Excellence is a choice people make, just as mediocrity is a choice. Excellence is not a gift you’re born with, but something you strive for out of the conviction that being as good as you can be is what life is all about. We know that the road to excellence is not always going to be an easy one, but if we work together then excellence is an attainable goal. Our policies are necessary to achieve the goals that we set ourselves- to have pride in ourselves and others, to always perform as winners, and to work together to be truly excellent in everything we do. Excellent bands differ not in what they do, but how they do it.

Band and Choir

Course Description

The band/choir class is an unique experience in that each student is given the opportunity to participate in three distinct musical arenas within one class. The band/choir class focuses on earning and performing symphonic works from a variety of time periods. Students will be given the chance to perform at festival performances, as well as school concerts. The pep band gives the students the opportunity to explore unique arrangement of pop/rocks classics. The band is committed to supporting sports teams and enhancing the experience of our school events. The marching band has a rich tradition of cohesiveness, musicality, and strong competition results. Both groups plays at various community events and competes in several band reviews each year.

What You Can Expect Being in A.H.S Band/Choir (Overview)

The first few months of school will seem hectic as we all adjust to new schedules and time commitments. The fall band season is short, but can feel overwhelming. During football season we will rehearse and perform pep band, several half-time field shows as well as parades. At the same time we will be working on our winter concert material. The second half of the year will include a performance in the CCS Large Ensemble festival, a spring concert, and finish with a graduation performance.

The following is a peek what you can expect over the band seasons.

Fall

Memorize three to four pieces of music.
Attend Saturday Band Camps and weekday evening rehearsals until the first week of November.
Perform three to four different field shows at football games.
Perform pep band music at home football games and select away games.
Perform in the Homecoming and Veterans’ day parade

Winter

Perform winter concert
CCS honor band
Music theory
Scales, scales, and more scales

Spring

Band trip
CCS band festival
Spring Concert/Graduation

Guitar

Course Description

Guitar is a performance-based techniques class offering introductory experience in, and opportunity for development and improvement of fundamental skills in guitar. Topics covered include basic guitar playing technique tuning, instrument care, and basic maintenance learning note names on the guitar fretboard and how to find them reading music notes, rests, music symbols, and guitar tablature from the printed page reading melodies, chords, and scales identifying different music forms, structures, and styles basic strumming and picking patterns/techniques performing a mixture of different song styles (including traditional, pop, rock, folk, and blues) as a soloist, with a partner, and as a group

Guitar Class: Course Essential Learning Outcomes

Students will learn

to properly tune a guitar to the standard open string tuning pitches of E A D G B E, as demonstrated by tuning a de-tuned guitar to proper intonation
to read standard music notation (notes, rests, chords, symbols, rhythms), as demonstrated by results of written quizzes/ and performance evaluations of selected melodies and chords written in standard music notation
note names and common chord fingerings on the guitar fretboard and how to find them, as demonstrated by results of written quizzes and performance evaluations of selected melodies and chord progressions written in standard music notation
how to read and perform chords and basic music scale and chord progressions in common keys, as demonstrated by results of written quizzes and performance evaluations of chord progressions in the indicated keys
to perform individually and with others for an audience, demonstrated by results of solo and ensemble performance evaluations conducted by the teacher and playing demonstrations for the class