|
|
|
 Beyond the Beat
Music Newsletter for the USA Southern Territory
|
Greetings! Welcome to "Beyond the Beat," where you will find Salvation Army music news and tips for you and your corps. This follows in a long line of Music Department newsletters, dating back to 1948 when Frank Longino published "Upbeat." Roberta Simmons-Smith has been publishing "Backstage Pass" featuring the Creative Arts programs of the Southern Territory since 2008, and "Beyond the Beat" will supplement this by focusing on the music programs in the South. This is a completely electronic newsletter, that will be delivered directly to your email inbox. If the electronic format unnerves you, please click here and read this first! To get distribution off the ground, I started with the mailing list for "Backstage Pass" and some from my email contacts. If you do not wish to receive further editions of "Beyond the Beat," simply unsubscribe. If you know anyone who might be interested in "Beyond the Beat" (or "Backstage Pass") please forward this email along, so they can subscribe. The subscription link at the bottom will allow you to sign up for either or both Music & Arts Department newsletters! Please write or call if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Robert Snelson Territorial Music Education Director |
A Vision of the Future
By now you should have heard about the Territorial Music Department vision for the next 10 years - Vision 2020: To have live music and arts in every corps in the Territory by 2020. It is a bold vision that will take a great deal to accomplish. There are many corps in our Territory that are solely reliant on CD players, or DVD's to serve their worship needs every Sunday. While these resources are undoubtedly great and forward-thinking, there is clearly no substitute for live music.
Have you been at a corps Sunday morning service where there are no musicians in attendance? It can be rather cumbersome and awkward to be under the auspices of the CD player when it comes to the appeal at the end of the meeting. While the Devil does not always live in the sound system, and the Lord can obviously use canned music, there is a greater flexibility and spiritual receptiveness to a live guitar player, piano, or brass band accompanying a song of commitment or dedication.
Our goal at Territorial Headquarters is to give the Divisions and the Corps of this Territory the tools to encourage the gift of live music. The Southern Territory already produces graded instrumental music that can be played by 1,2, 4, or more instrumentalists of limited ability. If you are able to play the C scale, and have some knowledge of note lengths, it would not take long to learn a Grade I selection from the AIES Series. Solos are also available with piano accompaniment.
A huge gap in our Sunday morning Worship resources exists with vocal music. The Territory produces annual volumes of choir music that could be sung as solos, with a group of three teenagers, a home league choir, all the way down to a few elementary school children. All our vocal music is produced for live performance, or with CD accompaniment. This is a great way to get young people, or anyone, involved quickly and with immediate results.
Remember, music ministry is not only about providing support to the Corps Officer on a Sunday. It is sometimes the most fertile ground for evangelism. Many people (young and old) have come to the Lord (not just the Army) because they were invited to Band practice, or invited to an after school music program. Music is still a way of engaging young people, and keeping them at Church during the turbulent teenage years.
Marty Mikles has done a phenomenal job at producing "cutting edge" Praise and Worship music for the Army. I believe it to be some of the best in the Army world. He has included songs on transMission CD's that can be played by someone learning 3 or 4 chords. All the charts are contained in a convenient CD ROM resource. The advantage of Marty's transMission project is that he updates old Salvation Army songs, so we hold on to our sung theology (and the beautiful text) - while presenting it in a new, attractive, and vibrant way.
What if I don't have a Marty Mikles at my corps, or a decent piano player, or 5 good brass instruments that have seen the light of the 21st Century?
I encourage our Divisional Music Directors and Corps Officers to seek out ways to invest in one music or arts group at the corps. This could be having three young people learn a song from Children's Praise (with CD accompaniment). Or perhaps you could invest more, like the Arkansas Oklahoma Division did recently when they gifted every corps in Arkansas and Oklahoma with a guitar. They then held training sessions at camp to teach one identified musician from each corps. Learning the guitar is one of the easiest ways towards success, as learning three chords on a guitar can mean you can play hundreds of praise and worship songs and accompany singing by yourself.
Corps with some money may want to expand their evangelism through an after school music and arts program (SPA) or Conservatory. My home corps currently hosts over 200 young people from the community every week, teaching them how to play the clarinet or cornet, how to dance, or to sing. While this takes some investment, imagine the rewards? We could have music and arts in every corps in the Territory in no time.
There are nine years left to achieve this huge goal. How can you help?
~ Nick Simmons-Smith
|
Vocal Publications
 Our vocal music publications are getting a face lift. Beginning with the latest release of Children's Praise, you will see quite a few changes. The easiest change to see is a remake of the artwork to new and colorful design. Another improvement is the binding of the books. All vocal books are now spiral-bound, making it easier to turn pages - especially for the leader and accompanist. Sing Praise, Volume 16, which will be released in the spring of 2011, will also include updated artwork and the switch to spiral binding.  For subscription orders of both vocal publications, a change in policy began in January instituting a minimum order of five books for a subscription. After reviewing subscription orders for the past few years, it was found that many groups were ordering only one copy of each book and making photocopies.
Other tweaks to vocal publications can be heard in the recordings. Beginning with Children's Praise, Volume 13, the entire CD was recorded in-house (including the accompaniment and the vocals). This was done in part to save some money, and it also helps to keep the style fresh. Instrumental accompaniments for Sing Praise are already done, and vocals will follow soon. |
|
Marketing Initiatives
USA South music publications have gained wider distribution in recent months due to several marketing initiatives developed jointly between the Music and Trade Departments. Leon Kirkpatrick has spearheaded these initiatives that should greatly increase the opportunity of ministry for these publications both inside and outside The Salvation Army. Two specials began last year to make it easier to get our music out to the corps. The first is the Music Subscription Order Incentive Program. This program allows corps that do not have a current subscription for our publications to get three years for the price of two. To date, 20 new three-year subscriptions have been added as a part of this incentive program. The Music Subscription Order Incentive Program concludes April 18, so if you are interested, please contact Leon Kirkpatrick as soon as you can! Read this flyer for more details. The second special that happened last year was the Instrumental Music Liquidation Sale, which resulted in sales of 216 AIES pieces, 32 AISS solos, and 10 solo collection books. Be on the lookout for a new liquidation sale that will begin this spring for USA South vocal and piano publications. Details will follow in the next edition of this newsletter, as well as on the Music Department website. USA South music publications have also made great inroads into the "external market" with a renewed association with J.W. Pepper. All of our publications are now available at www.jwpepper.com, which is one of the largest sellers of school and church music in the country. Christmas Spirit was also featured in J.W. Pepper's Christmas music catalog. Salvation Army units should still order music through Trade, however, because Salvation Army units will likely get a better deal! You may notice an increase in list price for our publications beginning in 2011, but by ordering through Trade, you should receive the same discounted price you are currently paying.  The latest Sampler CD of all of our publications will be available in April. This includes several different ensembles playing AIES music to show its flexibility, including Boston Brass, the University of Kentucky Wind Ensemble, a professional string ensemble, and a "churchestra." It also includes our two vocal series and Piano Offerings with voice-overs describing each publication. We are continually striving to improve our publications as well as our market. Publishing music is a unique ministry, and everything we do is for the glory of God. |
State Music Educator Conferences
Are You a Member?
As a part of a continuing effort to expand the market of USA South Music Publications outside of The Salvation Army, Leon Kirkpatrick is making his way to several state Music Educator Conferences around the territory. In November he had a booth at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference in Winston-Salem, NC. At the booth, he was able to expose music educators to Army publications and sell music and CDs. In the spring, Leon visited state conferences in Texas and South Carolina. For those of you who are music educators, are you a member of your state MENC chapter? If not, you should consider joining your state's MENC chapter. Links are listed in the side bar for MENC and the state sites. You can gain valuable resources through membership such as the MENC periodicals (Teaching Music and Music Educators Journal). Attending your state conference can also be a great resource for you where you can attend clinics (both vocal and instrumental) and build relationships with music educators in your state and vendors who can help equip your program. |
|
Finale Tips
Many of you may use Finale in your teaching to arrange music, create transpositions, simplify parts, or create exercises for your group. If you have used Finale, you will know that it is a very powerful program that may sometimes be a bit daunting to learn. In each issue of "Beyond the Beat," I plan on including a small column with tips on using this valuable software. If you ever have any questions about how to do anything (big or small) in Finale, please give me a call, and I will be happy to help.
When you first start working with Finale, the first place to start it the help materials included with Finale, especially the Finale Tutorials and Quickstart Videos (both found under the Help menu). The tutorials include Finale files that you can edit yourself to learn many skills and shortcuts step-by-step. The videos are also helpful as an easy way to start. After you have worked your way through these, the User Manual (included as an html file) is an excellent place to look for specific items because of its search function. For further study, see the Links in the right column.
I also want to make you aware of the extremely helpful Music Educator Tools available in Finale. The first of these is the Exercise Wizard, which has thousands of exercises you can use to create custom exercise sheets in minutes for scales, intervals, rhythms, and more. To get there, you simply select "Exercise Wizard" from the Launch Screen or go to File >New>Exercise Wizard. From there, you simply select the exercises you want, key, articulations, and instrumentation to get completed exercise sheets for your entire ensemble.
One very helpful feature of Finale is the inclusion of hundreds of pre-formatted music education worksheets and flash cards on topics such as
There are many more worksheets available, and all you have to do is open and print them. But because they are built in to Finale, you can also customize them in any way you wish.
New in Finale 2011 is the addition of AlphaNotes. This font allows you to put the letter name or solfege syllable inside the note, which can be valuable for beginners. The solfege syllables are ideal for working with groups who are learning to use these syllables.
With this first issue, I wanted to make you aware of some of these lesser known but very powerful features of Finale that can transform the way you teach. In future issues, I will begin to delve into specific tips that well help you speed up your Finale projects and to make them cleaner and easy to read.
|
|
Ministry Toolkit
The Ministry Toolkit is your one stop shop for Salvation Army program resources! With music tracks, instrumental parts, lead sheets, and chord sheets, MTK has what you need to get your music program up and running. Interested in Creative Arts? Check out the Ministry Toolkit for drama curriculum, scripts, and dramatic scripture presentations. 
Still not sure what the Ministry Toolkit is all about? Short and simple, it's a searchable database with ministry resources from a plethora of sources. Youth resources, Images, Devotionals, Bible Studies, and so much more can all be found on the Ministry Toolkit. Anyone can download these resources from the site, provided they have access to the internet and can remember this address: www.tsamtk.org. The Ministry Toolkit is also a sharing site. This fact must be emphasized, because the more resources that are shared, the more resources that are available to be used! To share your resources, you have to create an account. But no worries there, MTK accounts are free and easy to create! ~ Lindsey Fleeman |
Tips for Technophobes
While you can certainly print out this email and read it, there is much more information easily available with a few clicks of your mouse. If this email doesn't display correctly, please click at the very top where it says, "Having trouble viewing this email? Click here." There are many links throughout the newsletter that will take you directly to websites, email addresses, or documents. If you see your cursor turn into a hand, that means you can click on the image or words to go to a related site. If you click an image, it will likely take you to a related website. If you see words that are underlined, they will take you to a website, document, or email. While there is a section of this newsletter dedicated to "Links," there are links scattered throughout the document, so click away. Don't be a luddite! Click a link and see where it takes you. If you click something on accident, you can always come back to the email. Back to Top |
|
|
New CD Release transMission
Another great transMission album has just been released. It follows the same format as previous albums, including 2 CDs (one without lead vocals, so you can sing along with your congregation). It also has PDF files with Chord Charts and Lead Sheets for all songs on the CD. It's more than just something to listen to; it's a tool to aid worship. If you would like to purchase a CD, please visit the transMission website or email Marty Mikles. |
ALM
Alabama
Louisiana
Mississippi
AOK
Arkansas
Oklahoma
FL
Florida
GA
Georgia
KT
Kentucky
Tennessee
MDWV
Maryland
West Virginia
NCV
Virginia
NSC
North Carolina
South Carolina
TX
Texas
MakeMusic Forum
Official Finale Forum (FREE)
Finaletips
Website with productivity tips & downloads (FREE)
The Finale Projects: The New Approach to Learning Finale (Tom Carruth)
Book ($39.95)
Notation Nation
Video Tutorials for Finale (Some lessons FREE. Full lifetime access $24.99)
|
Has your corps or division found a creative way to further the 2020 Vision? Share it with the territory!
In each upcoming issue of "Beyond the Beat," a corps or division will be featured with how they have caught 2020 vision. Are you teaching someone new to play the guitar or piano? Do you have any budding drama or dance groups? Have you started a Singing Company or Beginner Band?
Send your stories to Robert Snelson, and you might be featured in the next issue of "Beyond the Beat."
|
|
Territorial Band & Songsters
(Jun. 1-5) Atlanta, GA
Territorial Music Institute
(Jul. 23-31) Camp Hoblitzelle, TX
Territorial Band & Songsters
(Aug. 18-21) Lake Junaluska, NC
Worship Arts Retreat
(Sept. 23-25) Camp Keystone, FL
|
AIES 2010 Errata
Unfortunately, there was a mistake in the score to "Rocka My Soul" by Stephen Bulla (MUABE 1022) which was published in the 2010 American Instrumental Ensemble Series. The key signature was left off of some of the parts for the first few pages. For a corrected PDF copy of the score, please contact Robert Snelson in the music department. |
Contact Us
Music & Creative Arts Department
The Salvation Army
1424 Northeast Expressway
Atlanta, Georgia 30329
Phone: 404-728-1300 Fax: 404-728-1373 www.ussmusicandarts.org
Nick Simmons-Smith Territorial Music & Creative Arts Education Secretary
Bernie Dake Assistant Territorial Music Secretary/
Music Publications & Production Director
Robert Snelson Territorial Music Education Director
Roberta Simmons-Smith Territorial Creative Arts Director
Marty Mikles Territorial Music Evangelism & Worship Specialist
Leon Kirkpatrick Territorial Music Publications & Marketing Specialist
Evelyn Pulkin Music Department Secretary
Darryl Crossland Music Department Administrative Clerk
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
