Selecting Literature for Your Band
Take best practices into consideration when selecting literature for your band; never select your music and then teach to the music.
Try Sight-reading
When selecting the right literature for your band, look at your strengths, weaknesses, possible soloist, or feature sections. Take into consideration the instrumentation, number of parts per instrument, rhythm and articulation demands, and instrument range. Select several pieces that you might consider, pass out the music, and start sight-reading. If your students can get through it with a little struggle, then it is probably a good choice. It the students struggle so much that you are stopping to teach or spoon feed, then it is most likely not the best choice. If you don't have the right instrumentation or enough players to cover all of the parts in a piece, you might not want to consider it
Developing Individual Musicians
Remember, your goal is to develop independent players. If you are doing this, your students will get more enrichment from the experience and end up becoming a partner in the process rather than feeling overwhelmed and defeated. Literature is a good way to inspire young musicians and to apply the skills that you are developing; but not so if the literature is far beyond their capabilities. Once again, the goal is to facilitate excellence and the desire for excellence.
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.