Websites

I’m a school band teacher and am looking for a good website to refer parents to when deciding what instrument their child should play. If there’s not one out there, I’ll create one myself, but if there is … why reinvent the wheel?

What a great question! I’ve been answering the same questions over and over for years and have yet to find a great objective resource for this. Your question led me to surf a little, which I assume you’ve probably done, as well. I liked

http://webs.davis.k12.ut.us/rsiegel/AboutInstIndex.html

as a source of instrument information, including audio examples.

I found an interesting list of "ideal attributes" for each instrument on a cached page at

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:RxHquKLYE6cJ:www.mccsc.edu/~raustin/chooseobtain.htm+choosing+a+band+instrument&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

but I would caution parents not to put too much weight on these unless there is an extreme physical problem. I strongly believe that if a student has a strong desire to play a particular instrument, almost any "physical mismatch" can be overcome. On the other hand, if they don’t show a strong preference, looking at which might provide the best chance for "natural" success makes sense.

I’d be interested in knowing what you decide to recommend or create.