Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • September 2013
17
We all want a cool marching
band production. We want a show
that will be loved by performers
and audience members alike.
However, in an effort to do so,
we, as a band community, have
created a variety of new issues
that have increased the demands
on both the individual performers
and the ensemble as a whole (not
to mention, the directors!). While
this article won’t fix all of your
problems, we hope to address some
of the most common issues faced
by today’s marching bands and
provide several methods by which
to address them. As you encounter
some of these road blocks, just
know that you are not alone.
Our goal is to share with you
a few solutions we have learned
along the way. While there are no
“quick fixes” for these issues,
there
are three ways for dealing with
timing problems: avoiding them,
re-writing them, and working on
them
. All three methods involve
understanding, musicianship, and
a fair amount of effort.
Avoiding timing problems comes
from a combination of clever
staging and writing on the parts of
your drill writer and arrangers. A
design team focused on both the
content and execution of the show
can help eliminate or alleviate many
problems before the performers
ever step foot on the rehearsal field.
However, when a designer presents
you and your students with some
great ideas that
end up being too
lofty, you have a
choice: re-write it
or rehearse it to
death?
Sometimes the
wise thing to do
is to “pull the
plug” on a great
idea and settle on
cleaner achieve-
ment scores. Only
you and your staff
can determine
this tipping point.
Ask yourself this:
“Will 30 more
minutes fix this,
or will we end up tired and
frustrated and 30 minutes behind
on learning the closer?” Maybe
there are some drill and music
re-writes to be worked out over a
pot of coffee. An hour or two of an
adult’s time might save an entire
band four hours of rehearsal time,
countless headaches, and improve
the overall performance.
More often than we would like,
clever writing and re-writing are just
not enough. This is what we get for
attempting to run around playing
Hindemith, Bartok, and Stan
Kenton charts,
right? Often, we
just have to work
through the prob-
lem. We’d like to
tell you that
“working smarter,
not harder”, is all
you have to re-
member. In reality,
you have to work
both smarter and
harder. We are
all willing to
put in the sweat
and the time to
make it work;
knowing how to
spend your time
and what to tell your students to do
is the real challenge.
To “Experience” is to “Know”
Knowing how to teach and how
to perform only comes through
wisdom; wisdom comes from the
application of experience, intellect,
and artistry. For many of us,
it’s been quite awhile since we
performed a field show. Some of
The Unique Demands on the
Marching Musician:
When to watch, when to listen, and how to make it work
Some of us never
performed a
show qui te l ike
the shows we
are asking our
students to
perform.
. . .we invi te you
to come down
from the tower
and experience
a port ion of the
rehearsal from
the f ield level .
Michael Reed and Scott Ward