Eric Combs
Special Notice: I recently switched jobs. Well, careers actually. All of my stuff was housed on the school server. I have had to remove it, and I have transferred it to my own personal drive. That being said, most of my links no longer work. I will be fixing that in the next couple of weeks. Until then, here is a link to my personal Google Drive folder that has the majority of my documents, including the Rank System Book.
Bio:
Eric Combs is the Director of Bands at Richland County Middle School in Olney, Illinois, where he teaches 6th-8th grade bands. He is the 2020 Illinois Teacher of the Year, and a 2021 NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence winner.
Mr. Combs holds a Masters in Music Education from Eastern Illinois University, where he is a "distinguished alumni" award winner. He is the creator and administrator of "Band Directors Share." He also maintains the following Facebook pages: "Sound Beginnings Beginner Band Series," "Thoughts From a Beginning Band Director," and "Illinois Band Director Job Openings." Mr. Combs is currently working towards a second masters in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Springfield.
Mr. Combs' band program has been awarded five times through the NAMM Foundation's "Best Communities for Music Education" program. Under his direction, his rural school has been recognized twice by the US Congress. Mr. Combs is also a 2019 Golden Apple Award winning educator.
For ALL of Mr. Combs' free materials, visit his personal site.
Contact Info:
www.facebook.com/eric.combs.1981/ - feel free to friend me and message me on Facebook. If I can tell from your profile that you are a musician, I will accept your request.
Contributions:
Three part series called "Teaching Rhythm," which goes into detail about David Newell's rhythm learning books, "Teaching Rhythm," and "The Simple Rhythmatician." David Newell helped collaborate on this project.
Part One: A discussion of the theories behind Mr. Newell's ideas of teaching rhythm, based off of the Gordon Music Learning Theory.
Teaching 6/8 literacy in about 15 minutes with very little talking. This was a college project. Check out the end of the video to see the end result (sight reading a full piece).
Adobe Spark is a free internet based application that you can use to make virtual online concert programs.
Click HERE to view the webpage made in this video!
Click HERE to view a sample movie concert program using Adobe Spark.
Virtual Ensemble Tutorial.
Example #3: The video Eric made in the tutorial:
Website about recruitment, and feature video about recruitment.
Contributor: Eric Combs
RCMS instrument tryouts: 150 kids in the 5th grade, and all of them try out the major instruments in groups of 5 students for 45 minutes to find the right fit.
Band Games: A 10 minute video demonstrating different “games” to play with the full band.
Giving a trumpet a bath:
Ensemble tone quality. This is a video of a small, first year beginner band. The concepts can be used at any grade level to instantly change tone quality.
Clarinet tonguing using a straw.
Organizational tips and tricks.
Practice With A Purpose: A summer lesson practice incentive that involves raising money for charity while practicing.
The RCMS Band Curriculum, featuring the RCMS Rank System (a play-off system).
Pass-off system explanation.
The schedule at RCMS: A middle school on a block schedule with a pretty sweet set up.
Actual footage of the first day of beginner band class, teaching the kids the routine (when to talk/play, and when not to).
What do kids need to master to sight read a grade level .5?
Part 1: Informational
Part 2: Demonstration. This is a beginner band's FIRST ever attempt at a full ensemble arrangement. Note: This was filmed on Halloween (which is hopefully obvious).
Flashcards - Contributed by Eric Combs
Saxophone cleaning and maintenance:
Clarinet cleaning and maintenance: