What Makes Alfred FLEX and Belwin FLEX Unique?

We spoke with many teachers about their experience with flexible instrumentation music, and did our best to address their concerns in order to create the ultimate easy-to-use and flexible resource.

Solutions:

Varied Repertoire

Alfred Music's Alfred FLEX and Belwin FLEX titles include a variety of styles, including original compositions, arrangements, and pop, so that they can be programmed for any time of year. These newly reimagined pieces are available throughout the Belwin and Alfred Concert Band Catalogs, written by a variety of composers and arrangers, such as Michael Story, Vince Gassi, Douglas E. Wagner, Michael Kamuf, and others.

Varying Grade Levels

Alfred Music's FLEX titles include a wide variety of difficulty levels, from grades ½ through 3+.

Teacher Guidance and Balanced Writing

We have designed a teacher map with each piece that will help to not only guide you to instrument choices but more importantly, provide a way to document who you assign to which part. We provide Flexible Options, Suggested Instrumentation, and Teacher Part Assignment spaces. When this part is lined up with the left score page, the teacher assignments will generally line up with the 4 or 5 parts in the score, so you can refer to them throughout rehearsals or performances.

We recognize that while the 5 part score looks balanced on paper, it often is not in the band room. Parts 3, 4, and 5 often have the fewest students, so their parts are often not well represented, making pieces sound unbalanced. To help address that, we added a 4-part model for younger bands to help support the lower parts—having 4 parts will allow more strength in numbers for the sections that are usually lighter in enrollment. We've carefully considered this issue while writing, ensuring balance and reinforcement between parts.

Ranges That Work

We examined each part extremely carefully to ensure the best possible solutions to range issues for various scenarios. For example, some divisi is used so appropriate clarinet parts wouldn’t go over the break in the easier levels.

Play With as Few as 4–5 Players

As seen in the video below, Alfred/Belwin FLEX options provide opportunities for making music with like-instrument or mixed-instrument ensembles. Most grade .5–1.5 pieces can be played by as few as 4 players, and grade 2–5 pieces can be played by as few as 5 players.

Clean Layout

We maintained a clean and clear layout with our 4- and 5-part scores and tried to reduce as much clutter as we could to provide an easy to follow score. In addition, the Teacher Map will help you keep track of who is playing what and where! This is how the Teacher Map can line up with the score for ultimate clarity:

MakeMusic Cloud

In addition to addressing teachers' concerns, several of our FLEX titles are available in MakeMusic Cloud, with more being added soon! Now you can transform your students' practice from passive repetition to active learning, and keep tabs on your students while remote teaching. Students will be immediately shown what pitches and rhythms they hit or miss so they know what to work on, and they don't learn their music incorrectly. They can play along to the accompaniment, encouraging at-home practice, while helping you track their progress while teaching remotely.

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