All Episodes

Help tuba students improve tone, breath planning, articulation, pitch, and valve coordination with ten practical checks for the band room. By Bill Stevens · The Music Educator Podcast · Season 8, Episode 12 · Audio: 8 minutes, 56 seconds A tuba student can have the right fingers down and still enter late, lose the end […]

Episode hosted by Bill Stevens · Season 8, Episode 11 Help baritone and euphonium students solve 10 common problems with tone, articulation, pitch, valve coordination, range, intonation, notation, and instrument response. Bill Stevens shares focused corrections to try in your next rehearsal. This companion teaching guide turns the episode’s ten problems into short rehearsal checks […]

Season 8, Episode 10. Identify common trombone problems, test a focused correction, and help students hear the difference. Trombone troubles can sound deceptively similar. A late note may come from slow slide movement, uncertain rhythm, or articulation that happens before the slide arrives. A wrong pitch may be an inaccurate position, the wrong partial, or […]

Trumpet students can struggle with everything from airy tone and cracked notes to excessive mouthpiece pressure, poor articulation, intonation, and sticky valves. In Season 8, Episode 9 of The Music Educator Podcast, Bill Stevens explores 10 common trumpet problems and practical ways music educators can diagnose and correct them. This episode covers tone production, embouchure, […]

French horn problems and solutions become much easier to teach when the educator identifies the cause before prescribing a correction. A cracked note, airy tone, unstable pitch, or weak low register may come from the student’s ear, air stream, embouchure, articulation, hand position, posture, or the instrument itself. Because several causes can create the same […]

Bassoon Problems and Solutions for Music Educators Bassoon problems can be challenging to diagnose, especially for band directors who do not teach the instrument every day. An unresponsive note, weak tone, growl, squeak, or crack may come from the reed, air support, embouchure, fingering, special-key technique, moisture, or the instrument itself. In this episode of […]