Vibraphonia! Support the BCCS Band!

Hello! My name is Brad Beyer. I direct the bands at Byron Center Charter School, I'm a completely normal individual,** and I'm here to ask for your support in raising money for the benefit of the BCCS bands. Specifically, we'd like your help in purchasing a vibraphone for our percussion section.

A vibrawhatsawhosit?

Fair question. Not everybody is familiar with what a vibraphone actually is, but it's a very important part of every band's complete percussion instrumentation... well, except ours, of course. A vibraphone is similar to a Xylophone or a Marimba. It's unique, however, in that it has a pedal attached to the bottom which, when pressed, allows the player to sustain pitches, much like the pedal on a piano. It also often comes with a small motor attached to it that spins specially-made disks inside the resonators (the long pipes underneath) to create the effect of vibrato, which is pretty cool for a mallet instrument. Here, take a look!

                                             Oooooo... shiny...

Vibraphones are used in lots of concert band music, creating a warm, resonant tone quality that really adds to a band's sound. They are even more widely used in jazz ensembles, where they provide harmonic reinforcement and soft coloring to a traditional jazz rhythm section. Currently, the percussionist from our own BCCS Jazz Combo is only able to rehearse on our old, low-quality xylophone in class, which is of course neither the right size nor proper sound quality, and we must borrow a vibraphone for every performance we do. We would like to change that!

Having a vibraphone would allow our band program to explore new types and genres of music and to add greater depth to the music we already play, but on a purely practical level it would also provide for another mallet instrument in the room for our percussionists to work with. Often when we do warm-ups in class, our percussionists are all cramped around the same small, run-down xylophone I mentioned earlier. There are just not enough keys for them all to be able to practice their mallets at once (See below ;) ). Having an extra mallet instrument like a vibraphone would fix that problem.

                                    Too many percussionists!

It would mean a tremendous amount to all of us here if you would consider helping our cause financially.

Support on any one of these donation tiers!

$1 – Flute Followers
$2-$15 – Clarinet Cohorts
$16-$30 – Saxophone Supporters
$31-$75 – Trombone Trustees
$76-$150 – Tuba Teammates
$151-$500 – High-Brass Benefactors
$501-$1000 – Partners for Premiere Percussion
$1001+ – Conductor’s Cream of the Crop

All donors will be listed next to their tier amounts in the spring band concert program (unless you choose to donate anonymously).



                                               THANK YOU!!!


Sincerely,

Mr. Brad Beyer and the Byron Center Charter School Bands

**That statement is patently false.