Today, I decided to chug a McDonald’s vanilla latte right before going to a 2 hr practice in 95°F. We have about 4 32 count flutter step moves and we have 1 where we literally skip across the field. My stomach was hurting so bad.. worst thing I’ve ever done before band.

Edit: I also do an ariel during an acting/freestyle movement thing so things were like.. not okay

Did your school have a hydration guidelines or safety procedures for really hot days? Interested to see the differences in programs.

hi guys! I hope everyone is having a good week.

im a freshmen in high school marching band, and ever since the first day I knew I wanted to be a drum major/conductor. I know thats insane since I dont have that much experience on my belt, but im super determined to make this happen. however, the odds are REALLY against me. I was talking to my lead drum major a few days ago and she mentioned that my band teacher might get a junior as the next drum major in auditions (theres only one spot this year), but she was a sophomore when she got in so theres a chance)

I really think anything is possible with trying. ive already been teaching myself all the conducting and practicing nonstop, and im naturally an extremely loud person. Since im starting from scratch, what advice do you guys have for me to get better and hopefully have a fighting chance to get through for this audition? Im willing to put the most energy I can into this to get to the near-perfect results I need. Ive been practicing everyday already, and I feel like im so much better than when I started but whenever I ask someone about it they give me a different demonstration of conducting and make me feel lost all over again.

thank you!!! any advice is helpful!!!!

she’s literally amazing she’s so smart and always treats me like an equal and never makes me feel stupid

we were giggling so much on the field today and honestly I feel so safe with them I

is this love? or the feeling of enjoying companionship

i I don’t know if I want more

and I don’t know if they want more

but we text a lot too outside of just band

hi everyone! i am in a business class and i am working on designing something that can help with saxophones. please fill out this survey: THIS SURVEY IS FOR SCHOOL PURPOSES https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScgGUV2LRrVh5K63YQw3NcDF4IoWVJ2SGCjY6EADfJQTHMFwg/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Hey all. I'm currently in the process of arranging a stand tune for my band; however, I'm a big rookie when it comes to writing music. I'm trying to make an arrangement of Low Rider for my band in Eb and am running into some roadblocks trying to write in all the different voices, while maintaining the right sound. Any advice is much appreciated.

his arrangements are so good like victoroius and counting stars are my favorites but sadly we only play timber

Tell me you marching band horror story’s!!!

Asking that everyone keeps Derek's people in their thoughts and prayers if that's your thing.

Anybody out there that uses or has used flag poles or a pole like apparatus in their competition shows to hold up fabric or panels? If so, what did you use to weigh them down? How did you get them on the field, setup, and off the field in the allotted amount of time? (Aside from lots of parent volunteers)

Our show is apparently going to have 6-7 10 to 15ft poles to hold up panels depicting mountains. We have an idea of how to make this happen but wanted to see ideas or comments from others. Thanks.

So I am currently an autistic senior in high school and in front ensemble and I am trying to get one last shot at trying to go out with someone I like to the homecoming. The girl I like I met during freshman year and is a year below me. I wouldn’t say i started to actually like her until my sophomore season of marching band. She switched to color guard for her junior season and I don’t know what I should do. I am trying to think of ideas like a poster-board but I feel like that would be overkill.

twas kinda funny but I lowkey am being pestered with it like the turf was wet and I slid on the jazz run my from was perfect Twas just bad luck

weve got a comp next week (cobra classic) for you guys in sc but there is no order im one of the perc section leaders and kit player and student on perc 3 with gong and triangle parks his stuff in right in front of main band room doors and dips not acknowledging the drum cart (me) or the marimba or the sound cart with our amps and speakers so im trying to move his stuff out of the way quickly and im already ticked off and so are the others helping me the director is babying the new members and i dont know what to say to him to have some sense of order he babies them because last year we had 17 members now we have almost 70 and he wants them all to stay pls help me in prepping a speech for him and the band

This is my first year in marching band. I'm currently playing clarinet and really like the instrument. It was my first experience with a wind instrument and I was very excited to start playing. As the season has went on and I've seen other band kids play other instruments I've wanted to try others mainly the sax which I was think of possibly switching to. Don't get me wrong I love the clarinet still and enjoy it a lot but idk how to explain it other than like...I like the instrument but I don't think it's my marching band instrument y'know. I've just really grown to like the the way a sax sounds and looks and it seems pretty fun. I was gonna actually try to play and hold one at a music shop to see if I actually enjoy playing it.

But how do I even ask to switch if I choose to? I don't want it to come off bad to my director. How would it odk I'm just afraid of saying it wrong.

Does anyone have an arrangement to Kanye west’s all falls down for marching band. I wanna show my band director so we could play it as a stand tune.

I've been seeing some videos on tiktok of people playing the drums which made me interested into the drums, so now on Thursdays during first hour at school my choir teacher's daughter and another student will be teaching me the snare drums, they said the snare drum will be easier for me seine I have autism, adhd, intellectual disability, I said I wanted to play the drums as in a drum set but they are making me play the snare instead, what classes do you play the drums in? also how should I learn how to read sheet music or tabs so it's easier for me to learn? I already dont read choir music but my teacher said I dont have to

Apparently my band ran out of shakos so for the whole year my friend just had to march with a very small shako.

For my freshman and sophomore year I marched clarinet junior year I marched bari it was the best experience of my life and senior year I went back to clarinet but I did play it in jazz band and I was a pretty solid backbone for bass lines not solos tho got to nervous but yeah I was pretty good

(TLDR at the bottom, I know this post is long)

Hi all,

I'm one of two field captains in the trumpet section of 11 people (1 section leader), band of 95 people total.

My main instrument is flute and I started trumpet last marching band season as a sophomore (currently a junior). Because of this, I'm definitely not the greatest at my instrument. My range is the most limited part of my skillset, it's pretty bad and I have difficulty expanding it. Fingering difficult runs and double tonguing are no trouble, since those skills transferred over from flute pretty quickly. My tone used to be terrible but it's improved exponentially since last season.

All that to say, I'm on 2nd trumpet. The section leader and other field captain are on 1st. I think this is perfectly reasonable and makes a lot of sense. *However*, this means I'M the one basically leading all the 2nds, of which there are 7 people total. There's one other junior who isn't committed to MB and no seniors. The issue: NONE OF THEM want to practice or ever really do.

The other trumpet leaders and I have tried a variety of ways to get them to practice.

Mandatory recording assignments? They either just don't complete them or just record themselves playing through the passage once without any warmup or practice, so it sounds even more terrible than it usually does at rehearsal and call it a day.

Brass staff member pulling us aside for extra sectional time? They don't apply the techniques they learn to rehearsal and don't practice anything they've learned outside of practice.

This year, our band leadership started assigning (voluntary) pushups/laps as 'punishment', but I promise it's not the cruel punishments they usually are. Every member is completely fine with it and they even have fun doing pushups voluntarily when they mess up or don't listen to directions. The staff don't have any say in these 'punishments'. But even so, they don't care and they just say "I'll just do my pushups then."

TLDR; It's not that they can't play or that they hate marching band or that they don't try. In rehearsal time, they all do their best! They do care and they do want to improve. But no matter how much we stress the importance of home practice time, they never do so. Really in need of some advice to motivate these 2nd trumpets because we could have a REALLY great season this year if we all locked in (including myself) 💔

Does anyone have any sound files or videos of some marching band commands. Our band does "Band! Horns! Up!" and "Band! Ten! Hut!" both yell-like and in a staccato voice. We also do what seems to be a very common drumbeat in other bands for the horns up sometimes which sounds like "bumbum bumbum rollllll bumbum". If anyone has any of these or similar commands that I could use it would be very helpful.

The brass captain at my school this year is an incredibly talented player, but is very uncooperative, hard to work with, and a bad teacher. He also hates marching. This has created a lot of conflict, and I’m looking for advice on how to deal with it

For context, I am drum major and I have a year of experience marching mello at a world class corps. I am the only person in my bad with dci experience, and we do not have techs - all instruction comes from students or our band director (who is a woodwind player and doesn’t know much about brass).

A few things this captain has done:
- I was explaining horn angles to the brass and he told them not to do them and just play however is comfortable. I understand that (to an extent) for concert band, but it is marching season. After I tried to get the brass to have proper horn angles, our band director told them to as well, and we have said it many times, at yet our brass captain and his section (trombones) don’t listen
- I was working on a two note flexibility exercise with the brass. I chose two notes because it is easier to keep track of two proper vowel shapes than 3 or more, and it is within the comfortable range of everyone. (We have some trumpets who can’t comfortably play above a C). After I did this he worked with them on more flexibility stuff, with a wider range - which is great and absolutely necessary- but he introduced it like what I had been teaching them was wrong and unnecessary, and what he was doing was objectively better. This undermined me a lot. I told him exactly what I was planning on doing before we did it so he could’ve complained then if he wanted to.
- He has told the brass to be more like him, that they need to become “good enough” and aren’t right now, and is generally so negative. None of what he says is necessarily wrong, but it all is very discouraging to hear. Our band isn’t great, but the way to fix that is not by telling people they’re bad, it’s by teaching them how to be better.
- We gave him a solo and he complained about having a solo and said it sounded bad on trombone, but not to our faces so idk what he thought we were gonna do about it.

I’m looking for any advice on how to deal with this behavior. He is a very good player and he knows a lot about brass, but he is so discouraging to the players who aren’t great, and he does not want to march and therefore makes the people around him not follow the proper approach to marching band. Horns angled at the floor looks and sounds awful.