This episode is part 4 of the Building a Band Program series on the Rock School Proprietor podcast, hosted by John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com).
In this episode John shares tips on how to select songs for band programs. He covers the importance of matching song difficulty to student ability, structuring songs predictably, and maintaining variety to keep students engaged and confident.
Included:
- How to select songs for different band levels that will highlight their abilities and minimize areas of struggle.
- How song structure and predictability can play a major role in a band sounding great or mediocre.
- How to balance the level of challenge and confidence in student performances when choosing songs for groups.
If you’re interested in starting a band program in your music teaching studio or looking for ideas to enhance or grow an existing program, this series is for you! In it we will cover how a band program can create a strong community in your studio, increase profit margins, and lead to greater student retention.
Interested in the Building a Band Program webinar?
We’re planning a free live webinar to accompany this series on Friday, July 24, 2026. John will go deeper on these topics and answer your questions directly. If you’re interested, send an email to info@rockschoolproprietor.com with the subject line Webinar and we will be in touch with details.
Rock School Proprietor is a podcast for independent music school owners and lesson studio operators. New episodes drop Wednesdays at RockSchoolProprietor.com and on all podcast streaming platforms.
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Episode Transcript:
(Please note: This transcript was generated by robots. There may be errors. For the best experience, please listen to the podcast episode.)
John Kozicki (00:01.042)
Welcome back to the building a band program series of episodes on Rock School Proprietor podcast. My name is John Kazicki. So just last week I spoke with music school owner who said that they got a phone call from a prospective family. And they were planning to leave School of Rock and they were looking for guitar lessons in a similar experience.
And the school owner actually reached out to me asking how hard would it be to put together a band program? So that’s exactly what this series is about. If you’re thinking of offering a band program or looking for tips to elevate your existing band program, then this is the series where I’m sharing my experiences building my school and having those band programs as the central focus to what we do.
The topic that I’m going to talk about today is how to choose songs for your groups. This is a pretty common question that I hear. Do students choose the songs that they’ll play in band? And in fact, I get that from other school owners. I get that from my instructors. I get it from the parents of the kids in our band program. And
The answer is no. For the most part, and we, you know, we’ve got this, we kind of have this system in place where essentially we have different levels, we call them levels. So different levels of bands at my school. And in those earliest levels, the lowest level or the beginner level, absolutely not.
the students do not get to choose, the instructors choose. As students progress through the levels, they start to get a little bit more say. So in our next level, what we’ll do is we’ll take suggestions. We call them suggestions from the students. And in fact, it’s really helpful to get those suggestions from the students because it gives them insight into what their interests are. Of course,
John Kozicki (02:25.695)
Oftentimes the students have no idea what the band collectively is capable of. They simply view their choices based on what they like to hear or what they like to play through the lens of their own instrument. again, early stages, instructors choose. That next level up will take suggestions, but ultimately the instructors are still choosing their songs. Then that next level up
Generally the the kids are pretty capable, so oftentimes it’s more of like a curation of those suggestions. So the kids will bring suggestions and with the instructors help, they will choose songs based on those suggestions and then all the way up through our adult bands. Oftentimes adult bands are able to choose what they are capable of playing, but.
that band coach in there, the instructors, they always have the final say. They essentially have veto power to say yes or no to any of these choices and for good reason, because they’re able to look at things from above, like 10,000 feet up and see, is this going to be a good choice for this group? Are they going to feel confident playing this song? Is it gonna sound good? Are there any issues that we need to address? So again,
instructors are really going to be the people to make those choices. Now, in this episode, how to choose songs, I’m not really giving, what I’m going to do is I’m going to give more my top tips more than anything else. Some of the previous episodes in this series, I gave almost like instructions on what to do. This is more, I guess, tips that I’ve learned over the years.
Because there’s just so many songs and so much variety out there, think just like I empower my band coaches to be able to navigate this and to figure out what’s gonna be best for their groups, any individual school or studio is going to be best able to figure out what’s gonna be good for their program. So again, these are just my tips. So tip number one.
John Kozicki (04:52.031)
choose songs that aren’t at the top of the ability level, that collective ability level of the bands. I talked a little bit about how in a previous episode in this series, how important confidence is for the kids in your band program. And what’s
What I love about these kids in the groups is they want a challenge. They want to feel challenged. They take ownership of playing a challenging song and it feels good for them to accomplish that. But I always advocate for like figuring out well, is the what is the collective top ability level of any individual group? And then bump it down a notch or two. Because again,
when they get on stage, we want them to be confident. We want them to feel good about playing the song. So that confidence is going to come from not being so hyper-focused on playing the part correctly in the live setting, but it’s gonna come from just feeling good about knowing that they can play that part and so that they don’t have to focus so intensely when they’re performing.
but they can actually enjoy that experience. yeah, tip number one, choose songs that are not at the top of the band’s collectivability level. Tip number two is kind of about song structure. A predictable song structure is actually a huge factor in the success of the band getting a song together. And by predictable, I mean,
even number of measures in a verse. Like, you know, you’re to play this verse four times, then you go to this chorus and play that four times. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus. That’s a really predictable song structure.
John Kozicki (07:02.839)
kids start to inherently just know how these things work. Now, again, going back to we choose songs based on ability level and skill, take that into consideration too. Yeah, you wanna find challenges, but a really complex song structure for a less experienced band, that’s just gonna lead to bumps in the road.
all along the way trying to get the song together. So similar song structure, but with a little caveat. I’ll offer an experience that I had with a very young group of kids. And when I say very young, I’m talking like eight years old, nine years old. And this was back in the days when I was very active in coaching groups. I thought
These kids are super beginners to their instrument. Let’s choose a really easy song. And I chose a warning by Green Day. And if you’re familiar with warning by Green Day, it’s a very cyclical song, very repetitive. What I found was that was actually hard for the group, not because they couldn’t play the parts, they could play the parts, but it was almost like without…
real difference in a verse and a chorus, they just sort of meandered playing the same thing over and over and over again and sort of got lost in the repetitiveness of the song and they couldn’t navigate through it. So we ultimately had to choose a different song with decidedly different verse and chorus parts. Those sections that were different were almost like road marks or landmarks in their path when they’re putting the song together.
Yeah, tip number two, consider song structure. I think we often focus on the parts and can kids play them based on their own ability, but ultimately when we’re working with these kids in bands, they have to put the song together and song structure is big part of that. Tip number three, look out for songs that seem simple on one instrument, but maybe…
John Kozicki (09:26.06)
pretty challenging on another. I’ve encountered this with some other Green Day songs as an example. Green Day songs are really great for guitar players. Pretty simple. They’ve got most of those elements of song structure that I was talking about. But there are some really hard drum parts in some of those Green Day songs. There are potentially some really hard bass parts in some of those songs.
comparatively to the guitar parts, right? So in a previous episode of this series, we talked about how to group students into bands, and we focused a lot on age range and ability level, right? So if ability level is sort of this common denominator amongst your group, can’t choose songs where, yes, super simple on one instrument.
and really complex on another instrument. It’s just not gonna come together. Unless of course the individuals in your group can handle that. But where I see this coming up, at least in my studio, is with the lens of the band coach working with the group. So as a for instance, if the band coach is primarily a guitar player.
they might not be as tuned into what’s going on with the drum parts or vice versa. If the band coach is primarily a drum instructor, they might not be as tuned into guitar parts or keyboard parts or something like that. So when you’re choosing songs, look out for that. And then tip number four.
John Kozicki (11:10.48)
Over the course of your lifetime doing band programs, you want to add some variety into the program. This became really important in my studio when I started seeing more and more groups and they would request the same songs over and over again.
We want to avoid those comparisons, especially if you have a situation where maybe a much more inexperienced group plays a song and they go for it and they work hard and they perform it and it’s great.
Imperatively like relative to their experience and then maybe you have a much more experienced group of say 15 16 year olds and they want to play the same song It’s not gonna be as challenging for them and they’re gonna kill it and it’s gonna sound amazing now Number one, we definitely don’t want those two songs being played in the same concert or the same song being played by those two different bands in the same concert We also want to avoid
potential comparisons of the same song being played at one concert and then your next concert. What it’s doing is we’re taking care to let those bands have ownership of that song for a certain amount of time and feel good about what they accomplished with it. So we actually have an off limits list and
What that means is once a song has been chosen by a particular band and performed, it goes onto an off limits list where no other band in our school can play that song for two years. It’s completely off limits. It can’t be done. What that does is it puts some space there. It means that we keep our program fresh. We keep the songs interesting and
John Kozicki (13:18.624)
We’re not hearing the same songs over and over again at these concerts. And we avoid those comparisons. So, I mean, if it were up to the students and we didn’t have this, we would be playing Seven Nation Army at every single concert that we do. you know, I don’t want to hear that. Our instructors don’t want to hear it. The parents are going to get tired of it. The students would even get tired of it. So that’s just one thing that
we do to make sure that variety is an important part of what we do with our band program. All right, so those are my little tips on how to choose songs for your band program. If you’re enjoying this series, be sure to go back and listen to how to structure your band program, choosing instructors to lead band classes, how…
how to group students into the bands, all of these things, and more to come in the Building a Band Program series of Rock School Proprietor podcast. We’ll wrap it up for this one. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.
