Most brass and woodwind players start their musical career by joining their middle school band. Many string players begin their training way earlier than 6th grade however a majority of the owners of $500 violins also start in middle school in their string orchestra program. The separation of Strings and Brass/Woodwind begins at the beginning for obvious reasons. First off, the knowledge base of the teachers is quite different between the string methodology and brass/wind methodology. There are some teachers out there who are sufficiently proficient in both areas, but honestly there are very few.
As the young musicians grow older and make their way through their respective school programs, perhaps somewhere in high school, the program tries to combine the two programs to make a full orchestra and put on a concert of some kind. Also, there are many youth orchestra programs that students can join in order to get this combined experience. However, the main source of instruction comes in the form of BAND for the brass/woodwind players and STRING ORCHESTRA for the string players.
If these musicians go on to a university or college to pursue music for a degree, this probably stays the same. The majority of the brass/woodwind musicians continue on in band, and the strings participate in FULL ORCHESTRA with a few of the brass/winds supplementing the parts. However, if the music major was going to a Conservatory, you would be hard pressed to find a band anywhere in sight. There are some conservatories that still have a wind band program but the majority of them focus on full orchestra as the source of large ensemble experience.
Regarding Brass/Woodwind players, this means that there are quite a number of college/university programs that are focused on wind band for their main large ensemble experience, and very few that will allow them to only focus on playing in orchestra. String players will simply get a different experience of the orchestra ensemble based on where they go to school. Just about every music program in the country has an orchestra. The quality will differ greatly depending upon the school.
The trouble in my mind arises regarding Brass/WW players. The majority of professional jobs for these instruments are in the form of ORCHESTRA positions. So the picture that I see is that so many Brass/WW players are gaining their ensemble experience in BAND at the college level, but their main sources for performing jobs are ORCHESTRAS.
You might be saying, “Well since almost all college music programs have orchestras, that should help give the experience to the Brass/WW.”
The response is: NO.
With there being 2 clarinets in orchestra (possibly 1 or 2 more depending on the girth of the piece of music), that leaves potentially 40 sitting in wind band ensembles at a large university. Maybe more. I beg to disagree with the thought that this would be sufficient for all of those clarinetists to get quality experience in an orchestra. The same ratios may apply to flutes. There are generally only two flutes on each piece. Tenor trombone as well. In my undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina, we had about 18-20 people in the trombone studio, considering about 4 of those were bass trombonists, that left about 15 tenor trombones, 2 of which would get to play in orchestra. So the others really wouldn’t get sufficient experience playing in orchestra.
So how are so many Brass/WW players being taught to become professional musicians when their job market screams ORCHESTRA and their university/college program shoves BAND down their throat?
tbonetimmons 