Lab Band: Student Leadership and Informal Learning
Electric keyboard played by Sofia Solari-Parravicini ‘23. The keyboard is able to mimic many different instruments through various effects and the ‘phase pad,’ a blue touch-pad that mimic’s drum and cymbal sounds.
William Ju ‘23 playing the electric guitar. William contributes to the band in the roles of an electric guitarist, acoustic guitarist, and lead singer for certain songs.
William Ju ‘23, Campbell Lee ‘23, and lead guitarist Christian Sun ‘23 circle together while playing guitars for the song The Only Exception by Paramore. These guitarists focus on establishing a singular sound, trying to work on simultaneous strumming and accents.
Campbell Lee ‘23’s acoustic guitar resting on the dojo floor. As the band experiments with different musical genres and sounds, electric and acoustic instruments are often switched in and out throughout the set.
Sofia Solari-Parravicini ‘23’s sheet music for the song Violet Hill by Coldplay. Lab band musicians use sheet music, often in the form of virtual PDFs depicted here, as a tool to learn chords and lyrics.
This drumset is used by both lab band and the greater instrumental ensemble. Music Department Chair Heather Fortune often jokes about the aged, beaten state of the drumset, as it has been around for many years and is now covered in dents.
Alex Ginsberg ‘22’s electric bass lays on the floor of the dojo as the band gets ready to warm up and play. The bass acts as the backbone instrument for the set; bassists are tasked with maintaining a steady rhythm without rushing or slowing.
Friends Select’s ‘lab band,’ a subsection of the Upper School instrumental ensemble consisting of nine students, rehearses every Tuesday afternoon in the ‘dojo’ – the school’s basement music room – to gain musical expertise and prepare for concert performances.
Lab band was first established about five years ago. After many years of percussion ensemble being the only formal subsection of the instrumental ensemble, with a few informal rock bands forming and dissolving over the years, the Music Department “decided to expand into formal small ensemble programming,” says Music Department Chair Heather Fortune. The instrumental ensemble is now split into three sub-ensembles: lab band, percussion ensemble, and chamber ensemble.
What distinguishes lab band from instrumental ensemble is that it is largely student-run. “I’m here in a coaching capacity more than a directing capacity… there’s a lot of student musical leadership in evidence during each musical practice,” says Heather.
Students are responsible for their own progress, both in the duration of singular rehearsals and throughout the months spent preparing for performances. Lead guitarist Christian Sun ‘23 describes the process: “When we first pick a song, we usually play it to the studio track. After a while, we stop looking at sheet music. A week or two before the performance, we set up differently, as if we were on the stage.”
Additionally, setlists are decided on by students. Usually, 2-3 new songs are added at once. “We mostly play pop, rock, R&B, and a bit of hip hop,” says bassist and singer Alex Ginsberg ‘22. He names the most important aspect of rehearsal as “full engagement and effort from everyone. It doesn’t matter how naturally gifted you are, as long as you put 100% into not just what you’re playing but also the group sound and group synergy.”
“There are a lot of important but not physical things that happen,” says Heather. She emphasizes the value of channeling and exchanging good energy between musicians and with the audience. The group “gets in the zone” through lots of repetition and “marshaling the energy that [they] want [to have] on stage.”
This casual musical teaching style is more intentional than it may seem. Heather references new research looking into informal music education: “You give students the tools to teach themselves and to make their own qualitative decisions about how things sound… [this] overlays really nicely with innovation of thought in music education.”
Lab band’s next performance will be in the US Winter Concert on March 18th. Be sure to see them perform their self-selected and well-rehearsed setlist next month.
