Posted by ken k on January 29, 2002 at 22:23:19:
In Reply to: orchestra players in marching band posted by Tom on January 29, 2002 at 14:53:54:
I find it odd that they would make orchestra players be in marching band. But in our school if you are in band then you are in marching band too. That is what the band does in the fall. Now we do make it as painless as possible. We only do footbll games and 2 parades, no competitions and we don't march a whole lot. I write the drill and we only have about 12 to 15 pages of drill for the entire show. Most competetive bands have more than that in one tune. We run into kids who quit because they do not want to be in marching band, but for the most part most of those kids are just looking for an excuse to quit anyway. There are exceptions of course.
Anyway we still do stress proper technique in both marching and playing. One has to use proper marching technique in order to play properly while marching, otherwise the horn is all over the chops. It is not an ideal situation I will agree. I would much rather let kids choose, but in a small school such as ours, we would end up with a marching band of about 25, if that, and instrumentation would be hit or miss. Unforutnatley marching band is the most visible aspect of the music program. Like it or not, that is just the way it is. More than 10 thousand people saw our band last season and I mean 10,000 individual people, I am not counting Johnny's mom who was at every game 10 times. Where else are you going to get that kind of PR? The school does support our band with good budgets and this is our way of paying the piper so to speak. We do start concert band by mid October and the band does a winter concert, so marching isn't the tail that wags the dog.
ken k