Carter King

Dr. Dabback

REVISED Class Teaching Lesson Plan

Reflection
I believe that my lesson went very well, although I believe several tweaks and changes
can be made in order to fully realize my lesson objectives, which I believe was the primary issue
of my lesson. I believe I had strong ideas and a specific goal in mind for my warm-up lesson,
however the application of the procedures did not achieve this objective well. My failure to
explain some of the exercises in an effective manner led to students confused and not effectively
achieving the goals set for these exercises. Ultimately, the things I would change in the lesson is
create more clarification and whittle down some of the unnecessary facets of the warm-up,
creating a more honed lesson that isn’t so comprehensive but more focused on these main
fundamentals beginning brass players need to work on. Things such as the extensive stretch can
be whittled, the mouthpiece exercises can be expanded, and overall every aspect of the lesson
can be explained in a more efficient yet clear manner.

Objectives
This lesson’s objective is to properly warm-up students for playing their instruments in
class through a series of dosage-based exercises that are designed to warm-up key components of
brass playing while also building upon these concepts, ultimately producing a warmed-up
student who is also more versed in key fundamentals of playing.

Procedures
-The lesson will begin with the instructor asking the students to form a circle around the
classroom so that the students are more connected to one another and have examples of what
should be happening within the warm-up
-Next, a simple stretch routine will occur that focuses on the primary locations of the
body that are universally used in brass playing. This stretch will primarily focus on the face and
the upper body portion, warming up the upper abdominal muscles for breathing as well as
warming the face and embouchure muscles for playing.
-Breathing will be the next facet of brass playing that the instructor will warm up. The
Breathing Gym will be heavily used in this portion of the warm-up, focusing on two major
concepts of breathing: lung capacity expansion and air speed improvement. Two specific
exercises will be used, one will focus on lung capacity expansion by having students hold their
breath and sip for air, expanding their lungs beyond their normal capacity. The second exercise is
a simple in for x amount of counts / our for x amount of counts exercise, hoping to work on
filling the lungs to absolute capacity and sending this air all the way out in a certain amount of
counts.
-These two exercises will be explained in full before being performed in order to
give students the most amount of knowledge on what to do, specifically retaining
to the lung capacity expansion exercise.
 -After stretching and breathing is done, the instructor will ask the students to grab their
mouthpieces. This exercise on the mouthpieces is intended to find the students’ “magic buzz
point”, which is the point where the lips make the minimal amount of contact with each other to
form a buzz. The instructor will explain this and ask the students to find this “magic buzz point”,
and once they do they will immediately stop the sound. This will be repeated several times in
order to find the most minimal amount of pressure and air speed in order to form a buzz, training
the fine muscles to create a buzz more easily. The explanation to the “magic buzz point” will
lead to an exercise in tonguing as air attacks were entirely used up until this point in the warm-
up.
-Next, a buzzing warm-up on scaffolded on top of the “magic buzz point” warm-up will
be taught. The instructor will go through several air articulations, instructing the students to
begin their sound just with their air and not a solid articulation, similar to the previous exercise.
The instructor will then intersplice these air articulations with tongued articulations, warming up
the tongue and yet again making the students think about their embouchure.
-Next, the instructor will work on pitch recognition, having a process that will
theoretically be dosed every class period. This process will begin with students singing a note
given by the instructor on a piano or pitch wheel and then immediately buzzing that note,
working on audiation of pitch and settling on this pitch. This audiation point will be driven
further as the instructor will then play the same note again and ask the students to sing this note
in their head, audiating the pitch and then asking the students to play this note.
-This process will be repeated for several notes and intervals with the intervals
having a gliss in between them, working on numerous facets of mouthpiece
playing throughout the warm-up.

Assessment
The assessment of the success of this lesson will be viewed periodically throughout the
rest of the class period. If students demonstrate a warmed and honed sound within the other
lessons being taught during the period, then the former lesson has succeeded in its purpose. The
greater assessment of this lesson can be fully realized if this lesson is repeated each class period
in a dosage-like manner. These exercises within this lesson are meant to be repeated and
constantly dosed to the students in order to gradually improve fundamental brass playing
techniques wherein the exercises would be constantly assessed and built upon depending on the
improvements of the class.