Competitive Marching Band and Indoor: Who Benefits?

It’s an age-old debate – is competition for scholastic music ensembles helpful or harmful? The correct answer is simple: it depends upon the community your school serves and their expectations. Large affluent suburban school districts have the resources to hire the best staff, recruit the deepest talent pool, provide the best equipment, and create a rehearsal environment that minimizes distractions and allows students to hyper-focus on their competitive show. Anyone else without those resources who tries to compete with that are doing their students a disservice. That is not to say that a smaller school can’t strive for excellence, but directors need to keep their egos in check and keep their choices student-centered. Does the community support that kind of aesthetic and artistic elitism? Do the students really understand and connect to the repertoire and skills that they are investing so much of their life on?

I know what it’s like to spend three months, 24 hours a day, focused on a 10-minute presentation as a member of a championship-winning drum and bugle corps. The life-lessons learned there were invaluable, and I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. There needs to be a place in the world for that kind of activity. Where I diverge from this, however, is when high school bands and other competitive scholastic programs become a snobby, egotistical display of extravagance with a poorly-contrived attempt to be innovative or gregariously artistic.

Over this past weekend, I watched video of several of America’s top competing high school bands as part of our judge’s clinic for the Cavalcade of Bands Association. There were two presentations that stood out of the lot for two very different reasons. Both of them were large, affluent suburban programs with more in common with each other than not. The results of their efforts were also comparably excellent in execution and performance quality. The differences, however, were literally night and day in an odd, backwards and upside-down fashion.

The first band’s show was technically challenging (but not overly so – which is what probably cost them the championship), visually stimulating, and extremely emotional. The energy and emotion pouring out of the students was palpable, even on DVD. As the finale of the show was in progress, you could see tears of pure emotion on the faces of students in the band.

The second band’s show quite possibly cost the school district and parents over $100,000 to put on the field for the season. It had an extravagant amount of props, staging, and costumes. The faces of the students is this band was one of disengagement and rote regurgitation. There was little or no emotion communicated from that show.

Both bands had a product and a season that would leave long impressions on the students and families involved. Both bands had student musicians who spent countless hours invested in their participation. Yet, what would the students in those bands come away with from the experience? On paper, just about anyone would rather be a student in Band A than Band B. And yet, Band B is an all-too-common sight on the competitive field.

When design teams sit down to design a program for their competitive season, I believe that the guiding principle behind the decisions they make should be “who benefits?” Every decision made, from repertoire to color choices, should be made from a student-centered point of view rather than a mature music staff’s personal need to display their artistry. All of the arts are about communication. If the show designed does not communicate to the student, it will communicate nothing to their audience other than a sense of “what was all of that?”

Here is another example of a staff decision that was not student-centered from that same Band B from above. Part of the band’s show involved costume changes. The front ensemble (percussion pit) were not involved in the color change, but were garbed in a unitard that matched the theme of the show. From an artistic standpoint, the costume choice worked. If the looks on the faces of the students in the pit were any indication, there were students who were not comfortable wearing the unitard. Yes, part of the lesson of being involved in a music ensemble is that you have to sacrifice personal tastes and preferences for the benefit of the ensemble. But, there is something to be said for taking the age and maturity of the ensemble’s participants into account. For how many of those students was wearing that uniform a barrier to being able to completely invest in the show? Again, who benefits?

Repertoire selection is one of the most important decisions that a music teacher in any scholastic performing setting has to make. In the case of designing a competitive music presentation, repertoire selection is only the tip of the iceberg. Drill design, choreography, staging, equipment, and transportation all take a part as defining factors, to name but a few. Unlike many other scholastic performing settings, students involved in the competitive arena spend a significantly higher amount of time and attention on a comparatively smaller and more focused musical product. They eat, sleep, and breathe that work for months. If anyone is going to spend that much time and effort, it needs to be something they can intellectually and emotionally buy into. If the students fail to grasp the content of their competitive show intellectually or emotionally, it will take a large amount of extrinsic motivation on the part of the staff to get them to perform, and the end result is a student ensemble that performs an emotionally flat, over-rehearsed show with the demeanor of a group of prison inmates. But, the staff will have the artistic vision that they labored for.

Who benefits?

Thanks goes to Thomas J. West Music for letting us use his blog!

Thomas J. West is an active music educator, composer, adjudicator, clinician, and award-winning blogger.
thomasjwestmusic.com

Keeping Your Eyes (and Ears) On the “Prize”

Around this time of year most high school programs are in the thick of their competitive marching season. Rehearsals during the week are intensifying and weekends only exist for Saturday rehearsals and competitions.You’ve spent months preparing for your band’s 12-minute time slot to perform your show for an audience and the judges. The band performs its best show of the year but does not earn the score that you think they deserve. What now?

This happens all too often in this sport called marching band. That’s right, I said it, marching band is a sport. Hours and hours of rehearsal time are spent practicing and perfecting a drill set or a musical run, all for everyone to end up disappointed at the competition. We have to remember why we do marching band or music at all for that matter. It’s not for the thrill of winning a trophy, or taking the top score. Music is fun. It’s fun to listen, dance, sing, and play. And not to mention march to!

Art is subjective
Unlike other sports, where you have more control over whether or not you earn enough points to win, marching band is a judged competition. You can tune every chord, align every form, nail every transition and still not get the score you were hoping for. Music is an art form. Art is not created to be judged and/or critiqued.That being said, I do believe unbiased feedback is essential in getting the best out of your students and staff to help them improve throughout the season. It’s ok not to win. Competition is a great way to motivate students to do their best and to encourage them to learn how to deal with the end results, no matter what the results may be. But the most important thing is: If you perform your best, you win!

Take pride in your work
In a high school setting, playing music for fun isn’t quite enough. We have to help the students take pride in the work they are putting in. Yes, music is fun, but you know what’s even better? Sounding and looking your very best. The hours and hours of rehearsal time should not be geared at winning the competition or beating the cross-town rival. The goal should be to perform the best show of the season every time the band steps on the field. One thing or another will most likely go wrong at a show, but if the band takes everything the staff has given them and plays and marches their very best, that is a successful show and season.

Most students will not remember what score they received, place they took, or what trophy they won (which will most likely be covered in dust on a shelf in the band room), but what they will remember are the times they spent learning, practicing, and performing music with their friends to the best of their ability. That is something to be proud of. So as you are starting to go to competitions this season, and with championships on the not so distant horizon, try to remember why we learn (and teach) music: It’s fun!

Do you have any “fun” ways to motivate your students? In what ways do you motivate younger musicians to do their best? Please share your thoughts and insights below!
Good luck and have a great season!

Danny Ursetti
Music Caption Head, Royal High School
composer/conductor/educator

The New “Super Heroes” Are Band Directors!

By Victor Lopez

Due to the significant changes in public school instruction system in America, it has become extremely challenging for a band director to have an outstanding band program. The changes mean students will have more customized options tailored to their particular needs and interests.

The amount of challenges affecting the band program is overwhelming. Let us consider some of the most recent ones: Academic achievement was set as a priority in public education with stricter attendance rules; adoption of a no-pass, no-play rule prohibiting students who were failing courses from participating in sports and other extracurricular activities for a six-week period; and national norm-referenced testing throughout all grades to assure parents of individual schools’ performance through a common frame of reference; school choice programs; grade level configurations; and, the push to increase the number of students enrolled in advanced placement courses. Additionally, many band directors work in high poverty area schools where they experience the following: high student mobility rate; diminished pool of talented students; lack of equipment; limited feeder programs; declined attendance at performances; and, the shift of program funding from the school to other sources, just to name a few.

These challenges, one way or another, have been in existence for several decades and many band directors continue to face them on a daily basis. It does not take long to realize that it is a tug-of-war between the band program and the rest of the school, not to mention the personal life of students. However, year after year, these new ‘Super Heroes” manage to have quality programs despite the hurdles they face. Above all, they have a passion for music and the band program, provide musical direction, find scholarships for the students, accommodate special needs students, implement differentiated instructional techniques, support district mandates for raising student achievement and closing achievement gaps, are responsible for fund raising activities and yes, in many cases have become community leaders.

Overcoming all of these challenges is certainly not an easy task. We must continue to be strong advocates fighting to keep music alive in our schools.  We must continue to promote music and communicate to policymakers the value of what music education can do for a child — whether it’s academic, whether it’s social, whether it’s emotional — so that they understand the benefits of music education.”

To our Super Heroes, I say … keep the music playing!!!!!

Are there ways that you are advocating to keep music alive in schools that would be helpful to share with others reading this?

Magical Travel Tips: Traveling Efficiently

By Elizabeth Geli
Posted June 2011
Courtesy of Marching.com

Traveling with hundreds of marching band students can sometimes be a headache, but with proper preparation and communication, your trip can go smoothly and without hold-ups. Band Director Matt Lovell from the Burlington (Mass.) High School “Red Devil” Marching Band shared some of his tips for efficient and speedy travel.

Evaluate Your Students 

Before he even starts to pick a trip location, Lovell carefully evaluates that year’s band — including the students’ level of maturity, behavioral history and the strength of the student leaders.

“That’s the key to it: the first thing is you have to make sure that the band you go with is a band that can take the responsibility of a trip,” Lovell says. “I know them at their best, and I know them at their worst. The question is not how they are at their best but how will they be at their worst. If I know that they will fulfill their responsibilities even when they’re not ‘on,’ that’s a group that can go.”

Find a Travel Planner

Once Lovell has decided to go ahead and take a trip, he looks for a good travel planner or student tour operator related to the trip location, in this case, one with personal contacts at Walt Disney World and Boston Logan Airport.

“Travel has gotten a lot more complex since 2001,” Lovell says. “We used to be able to be pretty happy with putting the trip together ourselves, but now we go with a travel planner who works specifically with bands, and it was much more successful.”

To read the full article, please visit Marching.com.

Cool Tips

By Vince Gassi

 

You’ve made it. You’ve reached the end of another busy, productive school year and it feels good to be on a well-deserved break. As you wind down during the summer months, you may find yourself occasionally thinking ahead to next year. It’s ok…just breathe. However, the ideas that occur to you are worth remembering, so be sure to keep a mobile device close by so you can record them immediately. It’s good to think back over the past year and assess: what worked well, what needs improvement, etc.? Are there any initiatives you need to implement or things you want to include next year? Your projects don’t need to be epic; they just need to be worth the time to implement. This article is meant to offer two ideas that you may wish to consider. Perhaps you’ve got the engine running smoothly and are ready to try just one new idea to up your game.

 

Cool Tip #1 – The Long and Short Game

Choose your performance repertoire by asking yourself all the usual questions regarding the number and types of performances (festival, holiday, etc.)? Then, for the long game, choose one piece that will be an all-year project. A few years ago, in September, I introduced a piece to my young band that was just a step beyond their ability. In fact, at the time, I was afraid it might have been too difficult. I certainly didn’t want to discourage them but at the same time, I didn’t want them to become too complacent. To reassure them, I told them that we were just trying an experiment and that we weren’t necessarily going to perform this “challenge” piece. It was just to see how much progress we could make on it by the end the year.

Each week we would just play through sections of it that I thought were “attainable”. Since we weren’t really going to perform it, there was no pressure. After two months, I began to notice that much of it was sounding fairly good, but it still wasn’t ready for performance. Besides, we had other repertoire that was definitely going to be performed. Their progress by December was amazing and, to my utter astonishment, we performed it at our Christmas concert. I’m not one hundred percent sure why they took so well to this challenge. Perhaps it was the non-threatening way in which I introduced or it was simply fun to play; whatever the reason, I was grateful. We performed it again at a festival in March at an even higher level. Even if my band had never performed that piece, they still benefitted from all the hard work.

Now for the short game. Consider selecting a number of pieces from your music library that your students haven’t seen before. Any style will do, in fact, the more variation the better. Introduce only one new piece each week. You are only going to play it once. Keep forcing your ensemble to read new material. Their sight-reading will improve greatly and they won’t be bored. Your rehearsals can consist of a warm-up, then once through the “new piece”, and then finally the remainder of the rehearsal could be spent on rehearsing the music you’ll actually perform (of course if you are playing “the long game” you can run through the challenge piece as you see fit). The rule should be that, as an ensemble, they have to play the sight-reading piece from beginning to end without stopping, NO MATTER WHAT!! Even if some or most (or even all) students get lost, keep conducting and count every bar aloud as if they were still in the right spot. It may not seem productive initially, but if you do this every week your students’ musical awareness will improve greatly. Eventually your students will be able to sight read all the way through a new piece with fewer mistakes. At the end of the term, your music folders will be really thick but your students will have far better sight-reading “chops”. As a bonus, you may actually move some of those pieces from the sight-reading column to the performance column. But that’s all cool stuff for next year. Now go have a great summer, rest up, and see you in September.

Stay Tuned for…

Cool Tip #2 – The Mini Road Trip

Boot Camp for Bands Builds Strength, Stamina, and Confidence

By Michel Sorrentino-Poole
Runonheart Personal Training
Courtesy of Marching.com

Although the concept was relatively obscure just a decade ago, today you’d be hard pressed to find a professional sports team or elite athlete who does not use the services of a functional trainer.

Functional training works to strengthen the body by using movement without machine assistance. The exercises are integrated and utilize muscle groups rather than isolation because the body works and moves in an integrated fashion.

But how does functional training translate to the field where marching bands compete?

Pretty well, according to the Lincoln-Way East High School Griffins, who have two Illinois state marching band championships in their pocket.

“The inclusion of core and strength training in the marching program at Lincoln-Way East has transformed our students in remarkable ways,” said band director Cliff Smith. “In addition to a significant increase in stamina, the students now have a far better understanding of the relationship between their own personal strength and their ability to move well on the field.”

As owner of Runonheart Personal Training, I began working with Lincoln-Way bands six years ago. In summer 2010 I will continue my work in a “boot camp” setting to share functional training techniques with more than 700 marching musicians from six different bands. Our objectives are to build basic strength from the core outward, correct muscle imbalances and build strength and endurance.

To read the full article, please go to Marching.com.

What Makes Teaching Music Worthwhile

I’ve been a public school teacher for 13 years, and 3 years before that, I served as an instructor on the staff of a community youth band. In that time, I have taught full-time in 4 school districts, taught in 2 different states, and taught part-time in an additional district. I also worked with that youth band for 10 years. I’ve taught in rural schools, high-achieving suburban schools, struggling metro schools, and with the youth band taught kids from all of these demographics. In all of those varied experiences, there is one great constant between all of them.

Fantastic human beings.

Music teachers get a special privilege that other subject area teachers often do not receive. We get to work with students over the long haul. I get to watch students come into my program in middle school and work with them directly as they grow up before my eyes. I get to have a small part in their long-term growth. And now, thanks to social media, I even get to see their milestones as young adults.

When I think of Muncy Junior/Senior High School, my first teaching job, I don’t think about what happened there, I think about Mary, Mark, Clayton, Alyson, Brianne, Becky, Kristi, and other students with whom I shared some great days in the band room and on a school bus.

When I think of Lindenwold High School in New Jersey, I think of Tyler, Mark, Matt, Andy, and others who played in Jazz Improvisation class and for a short time became LHS’s musical ambassadors.

And at my current school, I think of Paula, Sarah, Chloe, Julianna, Joy, Liz, Katia, Ben, and quite a few more memorable characters who help make the Center for Performing and Fine Arts the unique and special place that it is.

I pray that political bureaucracy doesn’t take away the opportunity for more young people to make a long-term relationship with their music teachers in the days to come. Public school music education is in danger in many states of being outsourced to private institutions or discontinued completely. It’s time for adults who value the experiences they had as a child in scholastic performing ensembles to speak to their elected representatives and insist on funding for public education.

It’s time for music educators to continue to uphold the traditions of our scholastic performing ensembles while taking a step into the future by giving students opportunities to become independent musicians capable of creating their own music rather than just play an ensemble part. Music education is marginalized in part because only our “best and brightest” (less than 1% of the total student population) go on to a lifelong active music performance or teaching adulthood.

Music-making has always been a social endeavor. People bond, grow, and build together by performing and creating music. I hope that all stakeholders in music education will not go quietly and allow music making to be cut from their communities.

Thanks goes to Thomas J. West Music for letting us use his blog!

Thomas J. West is an active music educator, composer, adjudicator, clinician, and award-winning blogger.
thomasjwestmusic.com

Marching Band: Flexibility Is the Name of the Game!

By Alfred Author Victor López

Given today’s stressful life for typical high school students, band directors must take into consideration the rigor of academic demands and jam‐packed extracurricular schedules that students have to juggle (and still be able to have a life!). This can be a tremendous challenge for adolescents. In today’s society, high school diplomas are no longer sufficient, and students understand that a college degree is of the utmost importance. Therefore, getting into college becomes the priority.

The “school schedule revolves around the band” mentality is long gone. Expectations at the high school level and college level have increased, and the global competition has not made it any easier. Balancing the curricular demands and extracurricular activities has never been easy. It can take a toll on the young students both physically and mentally, not to mention the self‐imposed pressures teens are under. And although many would challenge the thought of calling band programs extracurricular, the marching band program, indeed, is definitely beyond the scope of all other music programs and involves many extracurricular activities. If the band is involved in marching competitions, the many hours of preparation that it takes in order to have an effective performance can take its toll on the students (and the parents!).

The stress level and balancing act can also be said of the directors themselves. The current economic climate is making things worse as arts programs continue to face cuts, and band directors are being asked to take on more and more responsibilities. Recently, many school districts have taken away the marching band supplement, violating contractual agreements between school districts and teachers’ unions.

Some thoughts on how to ease the situation:
1) We must keep in mind that it is all about the teaching and learning of music. If some students become professional musicians or end up working in the music industry, that is great! However, we should strive to make them good consumers of music.

2) Students have to realize that they cannot participate in everything. On the other hand, with some flexibility and planning, they may be given an alternate schedule that allows them to participate in various activities, including music learning.

3) Students are being stretched from all angles; consequently, long, prolonged rehearsals are tiresome, and after the attention span wears out, band directors find themselves kicking a dead horse. Short and focused rehearsals will do the trick. The more rested the students are, the better they will perform.

4) Schools must coordinate the amount of home learning with other activities at the school. Assigning three to four hours of homework on back‐to‐school nights is not good planning.

5) Based on the school/district calendar, school site administrators and band directors should agree on an adequate number of performance events for the entire school calendar year. Why? You may ask, because it is all about the teaching and learning of music. Recently, due to reduced school budgets, transportation to football games and other community activities have been drastically reduced. Consequently, many band directors see this as an opportunity to enhance the competitive mode of their program. That has translated to participating in fewer school‐sponsored activities and partaking in more marching band competitions. This often is not beneficial to the program as it adds more stress to student participants, making it tougher to get the community to sponsor a band that they never see.

In conclusion, most band directors know that the better the band becomes, the more demand for performances. The more performances, the more stress for students and the director. We all know that the marching band has educational values, which make it highly worthwhile. Additionally, we also know that there are many non‐musical benefits of competitive marching bands (Rogers, 1982). This article is not about doing away with competitions but rather focuses on the number of competitions and activities, and the well being of students, which should be a priority for all educators.

For a Better Ensemble, Give Your Attention to the Individual Student

Music ensembles in public schools are formed of students with varying degrees of musical ability and accomplishments. The ensemble, whether it be Concert Band, Orchestra, Jazz Band, Marching Band or small groups of like or unlike instruments, as the saying goes, is only as good as the weakest performer. Let’s think about individual performers and methods to improve the performance of each member of the ensemble.

Most schools offer instrumental music lessons in small groups of like instruments. It is possible for students to get “lost” in these groups and need individual attention, especially at the beginning level. You, the teacher, are completely scheduled and this individual attention is impossible in your availability. What do you do next?

Consider a “Buddy” Teacher, an older student playing the same instrument well, who can help the young student with basic musical problems (counting, fingerings, tone production, stickings for percussionists, etc.). Prepare the older student in basic teaching approaches and briefly view the two together during the first “lesson” to insure that the combination will work. This will be effective in two ways – for the older student who will take pride in helping another with his or her “expertise;” and the younger student who will look up to his “buddy teacher.”

On a broad basis, try a solo and ensemble requirement of every student in your program that will help all become better musicians. One teacher I observed had such a program and it was very successful. Each student had to perform in two recitals each school year, on one recital as a soloist and the other as part of an ensemble. The recitals were held in the school auditorium, sometimes in the evening after school hours or held during the regular daytime instrumental lesson classes. The performance materials were compatible to their ability and the older students were instructed to memorize their solo performance. Young students were given songs or exercises from their lesson books and performed them in class as a solo generally standing in front of the class.

Give each student in your program “individual” attention to their “individual” needs. Sounds tough for you? Probably, but it will make your ensembles better.

Hold On to the Marching Band

By Victor López,
Alfred Marching Band Composer

For many years I often heard band directors argue whether or not there was a real need for a marching band in their music program. They argued about the amount of time that it took to prepare for performances, the amount of money needed to fund the program, and whether or not the ensemble had any musical value. Some went as far as becoming advocates to convince band parents and school principals to do away with the marching band program at their school. This obviously was a no-brainer for administrators who were looking to cut liabilities, funding, and conflict in class schedules. They certainly welcomed the idea.

Eliminating the marching band is actually eliminating a very important marketing tool for your music program. In many instances, those who succeeded in doing away with the marching band soon experienced the negative impact of such programmatic change. They then wondered why their music programs were dwindling in student numbers, and why they were being asked to teach non-music classes.

As school budgets shrink, it is of the utmost importance that we keep our music programs alive by becoming creative and making certain that ensembles which give us the most visibility are not dismantled. That may take some sacrifice, but ultimately it will pay off. There is a unique and exciting aspect to marching band which young people seldom find available to them elsewhere. They develop a sense for community and responsibility, which are qualities needed for their adult life. The recognition and exposure from participating in the program is immense. Think of the amount of people who really attend school concerts or music festivals, as opposed to watching the marching band at football games, parades and other community functions. Yes, besides marketing your program, the marching band is prime visible evidence.

A former principal once told me, “the marching band is a shining window in this building and I keep it clean.” That says it all. So… HOLD ON TO THE MARCHING BAND!