Banda Music

[Dan Schultz]

Anyone know where I can purchase 'Banda' sheet music? It's sort of like Mariachi only different!

[Ace]

Dan,

Try this link.

http://www.bandaelrecodo.com.mx/

The Sousaphone player in this group is really terrific. There are some audio links on their site, and maybe some information about purchases.

[Dan Schultz]

Dan,

Try this link.

http://www.bandaelrecodo.com.mx/

The Sousaphone player in this group is really terrific. There are some audio links on their site, and maybe some information about purchases.

I've edited my original post. I probably should have said "where can I purchase 'Banda' SHEET music".

I tried looking for Mariachi music a couple of years ago and turned up nothing. I'm thinking there may not be any written music for 'banda', either.

[TubaRay]

I don't know where, or if, you can purchase banda music, however it is possible to purchase some mariachi music(yes, sheet music) from RBC Music Co. here in San Antonio.

[Steve Marcus]

Not exactly Banda music, but could you imagine what a print transcription of Nat McIntosh's work with Youngblood Brass Band would look like?

[jacobg]

I have done about 10 transcriptions of Banda for Slavic Soul Party, a 9 piece brass band. These charts can be expanded or contracted for various ensembles. The original recordings were bandas of about 20 pieces.
I also have a dozen or so charts of Balkan Brass Bands.
PM me for details.

[sc_curtis]

While I was down in Mexico, I was on the cusp of getting into a banda. They were in the process of writing the music out for me, because all of the bass players just played by ear. The other brass parts were written out half-assed, with hard to follow cuts and sections that just didn't make any sense unless you were used to reading that stuff.

I would say the best way to do it would be to just sit down and listen to it and try to write it out by ear.

Good luck!

[threedognate]

Try Richard Obregon at the University of Arizona - he coordinates the Mexican Studies in Music program (search for his email at www.arizona.edu). A real authority on all mexican music.

For a number of years he also taught the tuba/euph studio there - although trombone is his primary instrument.

[jacobg]

Playing a banda tune by ear may be practical for a small group, but recreating an entire arrangement with 10 or more people would be difficult and cumbersome without sheet music at least in the learning stage.
Slavic Soul Party learned repertoire from my transcriptions on paper, which we then proceeded to memorize.
Although there are many standard tunes which I'm sure have loose, variable arrangements, most modern bandas play sophisticated arrangements as complex as any American big band chart. I don't know what the learning process is, but I doubt very much that the top bandas are illiterate. If someone from Switzerland was interested in playing a big band chart of Count Basie, would you suggest to them to learn it by ear?
I don't know if older, standard tunes such as "El Sinaloense" have published sheet music or are simply common knowledge in Sinaloan bands. In the musicological book "Banda" by Helena Simonett she recounts how early bandas played not only folk dances but also entire concerts of classical music including Wagner, Bizet, etc. Surely they were literate musicians playing arrangements. Maybe from marching band folios?
Interestingly enough, many Balkan Gypsy brass bands also have arrangers and DO learn by ear. The arranger plays each part for each player, I'm guessing usually on synthesizer or accordion, until they learn them.

[jacobg]

As far as I know Youngblood is published by Warner Bros. You shouldn't have any problems trying to find that music.
I believe one of their tunes was played by a marching band at the Rose Bowl Half Time Show and they made a bunch of dough.

[jacobg]

hey Doc,
I'm totally with you. I love learning things by ear so much that I made these arrangements by transcribing them, by ear! There is much about banda which is untranscribable, and anyone serious about trying to play it is going to have to do a lot of listening, unless you grew up in Sinaloa.
For this type of music, tuba/bass parts should definitely have chord changes, although most of it is simple enough that a good tuba player doesn't need to see a C chord symbol above quarter notes C E and G. And I agree that the tuba players in these bandas probably read chord changes when they are learning a new chart, along with a rhythmic indication such as "cumbia", "polka", or "waltz", and whatever breaks and hits the rest of the band was playing. A chart like that would look pretty much like a bass part for a big band or a salsa band. I can imagine the alto horns have the same type of chart, since they play almost exclusively upbeats.
However, the rest of the band certainly would have a chart, because they are playing intricate figures in three and four part harmony divided between a clarinet section, a trumpet section, and a trombone section. We're talking 9 distinct parts here. Memorizing a melody after hearing it a few times is one thing, but doing a recording session with 8-10 new tunes and having to memorize a third valve trombone part comprised of rhythmic hits and lines answering the trumpets, is no fun. However, the bands obviously do memorize their material eventually, since music stands are not in the videos I've seen.

Jacob "who plays in Slavic Soul Party, with a repertoire of 50 tunes from memory"

[sc_curtis]

I would say the best way to do it would be to just sit down and listen to it and try to write it out by ear.

Good luck!

Why not just PLAY it by ear?

Hmmm.....I guess you could do that, too. Though some of those charts sound a little tricky, perhaps with more complex rhythms and progressions than your standard run-of-the-mill pop music here in the States.

The key factor would be (obviously) to listen to a lot of music in that particular style before attempting.

[sc_curtis]

Ok, after reading Doc's rant above, I wanted to chime in a little.

Most tuba players that I have encountered would probably feel a little awkward just showing up and playing something by ear. (We can't all be as good as Doc!) There just isn't as much emphasis placed by many of us on playing by ear (maybe there should be more emphasis, who knows...), especially in this genre.

But if I wanted to put a group together like that, I would probably feel more comfortable about our first few sessions if we had some music to read off of (if not for any other reason than to get used to the style and sound) before attempting playing it by ear. So, I would sit down with empty staff paper and pencil, and break it down. I would probably learn a lot from doing it as well.

In high school, I remember listening to Canadian Brass CDs and learning the parts by ear. Then I would write it out, mostly because I had a boring life in HS, with nothing better to do. At the time I thought I was just being a dork, but I really learned a lot from doing that, and I feel my ears developed quite a bit during that time as well.

Of course, if you are capable of just showing up and doing it, more power to you. For those of us who haven't harnessed that power yet, I don't think there is anything wrong with writing it out.

[Dan Schultz]

AFter reading all the rants, I tend to agree with some of you guys IN PRINCIPLE. It must be nice to be able to just pick up a horn and get with the program without music or rehearsals. This might be just fine for a small group of four or five seasoned musicians.

EXCEPT

With a ten or twelve piece group of amateurs it would be downright impossible to even find a starting point without some form of written music. That's not to say EVERYTHING would have to be written out note-by-note. I know it's impossible to write style and intricate rythms into charts. With the Dixie and German groups I play with, we ALWAYS start with real music. After 'getting the feel' of it, we stray off a bit and add in our own stuff.

[Donn]

With the Dixie and German groups I play with, we ALWAYS start with real music. After 'getting the feel' of it, we stray off a bit and add in our own stuff.

Right, what counts is where you end up. Written notes can give you a head start. I play in another band a little like the one Jacob G mentioned, and none of us had an adequate background in Eastern European music to do without written parts (well, we don't write out drum parts.)

But it's like training wheels on a bicycle. Riding the bike the right way is a totally different thing, and training wheels don't teach you that, they just keep you from falling over early in the learning process. I don't know what the answer is, for our band. I think learning pieces note by note is probably going to continue to account for most of our repertoire for the foreseeable future, but we also need to develop the music past that point. Not necessarily adding our own extra notes (other than solo breaks), more like getting a feel that isn't adequately described by the notes.

[TubaRay]

Was I lucky? Sure. I played and sang by ear at home growing up, and, when I was 15, my first paying job on tuba was all by ear. I had to listen instead of read.

I wasn't so luck at such an early age. I did sing a lot, harmonizing by ear.

The first band I hired on with had chord charts for about 50% of their tunes. The rest required you to listen and play appropriately. You have to listen to the changes, listen for style. You might have to listen to that kind of music outside of playing situations to grasp the music and what you need to do.

This sounds like what I have been learning to do recently. Playing entirely by ear on some tunes is a relatively new thing for me. I have now played gigs with a group in which there is NO music. If I'm lucky, they call the key before we start. This hasn't been easy for this old guy, but I'm learning.

Wouldn't more comprehensive ear training help developing players? Or is it that winning contests and trophies has taken the place of a more well-rounded music education? I digress...

Don't even get me started....

[tubatooter1940]

Great rant by Doc. He refered to "Nashville Notation", chord charts by numbers so a key change could not confuse. I attended a session with some Nashville "greats" where the progression was jotted on the back of a matchbox and shown around once and then the group nailed it on the first take.
Experience helps, but lack of funds and the need to learn lots-o-tunes caused me as the leader of a low paid house (barroom) band to borrow recordings or tape off the radio to get enough material. Lyrics were jotted down, usually, with chords in red over the syllable where they hit. We took no music onstage.
This process took hours, at first, but later on I could write words, figure chords on guitar and get the jist of the arrangement in 30-45 minutes.
(Chicago's "Saturday in the Park" took me 3 one hour sessions and the band 5 rehearsals to clean up.)
We played 6 nights and rehearsed 3 afternoons a week. I kept the same 5 guys together for 5 years or more (we were all married and in debt). We had tune list of 650 tunes. It got to where if one guy knew the words, we could "wing" a new request with all instrument parts and three part vocals as soon as we agreed on what key. Some of those "wing-'ems"turned out so well, we put 'em on the list.
Of course, some sounded like car wrecks-but we would warn the crowd in advance that this could happen.
This ear playing thing gets shaky when a tune is called that the the band hasn't played for some months. With no charts, lyrics and/or the arrangement may have slipped away for some or all of us.
Dennis Gray
tubatooter1940
www.johnreno.com/

[lgb&dtuba]

I came up through 50's and 60's public school band programs and the name of the game was "see the note, play the note". No ear training of any kind. The Pavlovian training method was applied to get us kids playing enough together that the band director could keep his job and field a marching band for half time. Theory? Only enough to read the music.

Later I taught myself guitar, banjo, bass and madolin by learning the chord fingerings and just playing along with records and others. I pretty much play those types of instruments by ear and don't really need to see any music written out. For that matter, if you wrote out a C chord I probably wouldn't recognize it as such. Tell me its a I IV V7 progression and the key we're in and I'm set to go.

But to this day I cannot break the Pavlovian conditioning on the tuba and just play it. Electric bass - no problem. Tuba - just can't seem to do it. I hear the changes but it doesn't translate on that instrument.

Part of my brain knows how to do it and can. In fact I catch my attention wandering sometimes during a song and find I've been playing on autopilot for a while. Soon as I realize that and the rational side of my brain kicks in there's going to be a train wreck while I scan the music for where I'm supposed to be.

Frustrating.

Jim "where's my kibble?" Wagner

[eli]

... But to this day I cannot break the Pavlovian conditioning on the tuba and just play it. Electric bass - no problem. Tuba - just can't seem to do it. I hear the changes but it doesn't translate on that instrument.

Part of my brain knows how to do it and can...

Fascinating POV. I'm primarily an electric bass player who just got a sousaphone 6 months ago, 30 years (!) after I last played for 6 months in high school. Not having been hammered hard in my (very short) tuba education, I play tuba like I play bass -- primarily from chord charts with the occasional written part. My advantage was that I learned music theory before learning to play either instrument, so I'm not stuck with the Pavlovian conditioning. Wonder if I'd have the same issues if I'd learned tuba as a musical neophyte like you did.

btw, I'm having a heck of a time making it through the "TubaChritmas" songbook... indicating my tuba reading abilities.

[lgb&dtuba]

...I play tuba like I play bass -- primarily from chord charts with the occasional written part. My advantage was that I learned music theory before learning to play either instrument, so I'm not stuck with the Pavlovian conditioning. Wonder if I'd have the same issues if I'd learned tuba as a musical neophyte like you did.

btw, I'm having a heck of a time making it through the "TubaChritmas" songbook... indicating my tuba reading abilities.

Maybe if you think of it as playing lead instead of rhythm?

One of the advantages of the Pavlovian conditioning is that sight reading is pretty easy, at least on those instruments I've been conditioned on.

And thanks for the reminder about Tuba Christmas. Time to dust that music off.

Jim Wagner