Butler University’s Brass Techniques and Pedagogy (2nd edition)
2026 Library Publishing Showcase Week: Making Music
Brass Techniques and Pedagogy (2nd edition)
Published by the PALNI Open Press (Author: Brian N. Weidner—also see author profile here.)
Brass Techniques and Pedagogy is intended to serve as a guide for the band music educator. The text is written with the non-brass playing music education student in mind and focuses on developing beginning levels of brass technique alongside a more expansive understanding of brass fundamentals and pedagogy.
Why library publishing
The PALNI Open Press’s most popular OER is Brass Techniques and Pedagogy, and it is an example of an author-led project utilizing multimedia. The author Brian N. Weidner— see author profile here-—remarked that “PALNI made the publication process simple through the PressBooks platform. The OER community makes soliciting feedback easy, as those who use the materials are able to comment on them and provide public transparency to that feedback. Best of all, I have continued to edit my materials based on that feedback, so the text continues to become stronger and more effective with time.”
Is there anything that you could do through library publishing that you couldn’t if the program was elsewhere?
The author continued, “The community that is forming around OER was not something I expected. I appreciate the ability to get peer review, just as I would if this book was traditionally distributed. The benefit here is that the materials remain easily accessible for further editing and redistribution. Within six months of first publishing this book, without any significant promotion, it had been adopted at numerous large programs in music education and I received feedback from their faculty, which has in turn improved the text and made it even more useful for other programs.”