United: a multi-tiered, adaptive composition for concert band
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Rhinehart, Jim
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Abstract
School band ensembles can be comprised of a diverse group of individual students, all with their own strengths and needs; often, provided sheet music parts that make up a concert band composition are not accessible to all students due to their presentation or content. The purpose of my creative project was to compose an original piece of concert band music that could include instrument parts presented at multiple difficulty levels to be more accessible to all students. I researched examples of multi-level concert band compositions and analyzed their structure based on instrumentation, rhythmic reduction, range reduction, additional flourishes and layers, and percussion instrumentation. I also researched effective accommodations for helping students with disabilities in the music classroom understand written music, including instrument choice, repeated musical ideas, simplified presentations, enlarged print, colorcoding, displayed reference information, alternate notation, rote and aural instruction, and peer mentorship. My original composition, United, has four tiers of parts: advanced, basic, adapted, and ostinato. This piece can be performed with the advanced parts or the basic parts, either together or independently. The basic parts have limited ranges and simplified rhythms compared to the advanced parts. The supplemental adapted parts use only one or two pitches and are further simplified in rhythmic demands; they also feature several common accommodations. Finally, the supplemental ostinato tier uses alternate notation to present a simple rhythmic or untimed pattern and instruct students on when to rest and play. This project demonstrates a variety of different accommodations that can be provided by educators or composers to help make music more accessible to all students.