Marching band is harder than football. (High School)

You are really only half correct when you say it follows a script. Saying that a marching band show follows a script would be far too simplistic. The script of which the show is based off of is just that, the base. During a show there are dozens of factors that change all the time that other scripted activities such as theater do not have. As mentioned before temperature is an extremely important factor. you must be aware of how much you need to change your omature in order to correct the pitch based on how the temperature changes. Say it is cold outside, like in the 30s or 40s, which is not uncommon in shows later in the season. You not only must adjust for the beginning temperature, but as your instrument gets warmer you must then adjust to the new temperature which can change drastically. After a long rest the instrument can become cold again. On top of this there are many notes on every instrument that consistently come out either more sharp or flat than other notes so you must also be adjusting for that. If you do not believe this can be heard then I would like you to watch one of our shows for this year. It was about 35 degrees and the mellophones and saxophones had not adjusted to the temperature. This was a season where our show suffered severely because of many problems that affected our director and staff. This is an example of what a bad marching band looks like. And I will make further references to it during my argument. And this is only one example of quick thinking. As you move around to different parts of the field you must make sure you're either ahead of, behind, or in front of the beat in order for the entire band to stay together from the audiences perspective. And throughout the performance the drum majors or percussion may get slightly off tempo and the entire band must adjust to that while still staying on the correct part of the beat, and do it quickly or risk getting off beat, which is noticeable. Also what most people don't know is that the individual marchers rarely lad exactly where they are supposed to during a performance. what keeps it together is every person watching everyone around them and keeping the intervals perfect. you may hit your set perfectly but if the rest of the band is half a yard off then you are the one that is wrong. The choreographed/scripted part of the show only tells the marchers where they are supposed to be at the beginning and end of each set. Getting there is up to the marcher. As for precision, I don't see how I am incorrect in saying that if a play only gains yardage 3 out of 7 times it is acceptable. You did not even really argue the point. You just said I was wrong and moved on. Now if you remember the show, you would see that the show generally looks pretty sloppy. This is because this was one of the first times we had put on the entire show at once, and everyone was more worried about where they were supposed to be rather than how they were getting there. Even in that case though you could look individually at most every marcher and they would probably have 97% accuracy in nailing the "script" and yet the show suffers drastically. This brings up another point. As a football team you guys play your first game in the first month of school or so. By that time the marching band only has maybe half of the show put on, and the majority of what was learned was learned in band camp. It takes another month and a half to even put on the entire show. There is absolutely no way we would be ready to play the entire thing by the time the football team is ready to play their first game. Even with the similar practice times it takes far longer for the marching band to prepare it's performance which is fairly clear evidence of its increased difficulty. You compare the miscalculation of a throw with the miscalculation of a missed key. While they both may be caused by just a fluke in the brain or muscle they do not compare. A throw from a QB is never perfect. In fact he has a fairly large margin of error with his throws, because it is up to the receiver to position himself to catch. No one in the audience ever notices if the ball is thrown a few yards off as long as the receiver catches it. It takes far more of a fluke to throw it out of the area where the receiver can catch it. A missed note is far smaller, yet in some cases just as noticeable. If the trumpet section is blasting along and one of them blasts an Eb instead of an E, you can hear it very well. And there is no margin of error for missing a note. you either miss it or you don't. And you say everyone is all doing the same thing. That is completely false. As I mentioned earlier every section is playing a unique part, and every part is heard. this breaks the band down into sections. Each section has different types of instruments in them, which can also all be distinctly heard. And even if the band was playing a part in unison the note can still be heard. if it is supposed to sound like one note and someone is playing a different note the entire sound is tainted. You say that the feeling of missing a step off is like the feeling if you don't have enough practice with a game coming up. There is no pressure if you are in the team with less practice than you should have. There is a bench. Not much pressure is felt there. And lack of trust seldom exists because any untrustworthy player would again be on the bench. And you say we aren't true competitors. That is 100% false. Everything we do with our show is so that we can be competitive during competitions. The football games are just a way we can get everyone used to a performing environment. entertainment is generally our second priority. And you say losing a football game is harder because we aren't true competitors. Wrong again. The average football player hasn't given his all in any football game. He is sitting on the bench watching half the game. He doesn't have the same connection to the game as a marcher does to a show, and the loss isn't as bad because he hardly even contributed to it. In a marching band show. Every person on that field is equally important for the final show. if someone is missing you can see it the entire time, as I'm sure you are able to in that video. Each person knows how important they are and they know that every mistake they make hurts the bands score at competitions. So there is nothing worse than knowing you and everyone else gave everything, and then hear the other band in your class get called out as the winner, because you know you contributed to the entire performance, and that you nailed everything you should have. It just wasn't good enough. Marching competition winners almost always come down to half a point or a point out of 100. And the winners always score near perfect scores, because marching band is about perfection. There is no margin of error at competitions because while an audience may only be looking at the ball and not caring about everyone else, the judges see everything. they hear every wrong note and that is what sets marching band apart. A football player can make loads of small mistakes during a game and no one notices or cares. A marcher cant. You say every dad knows what's going on. So? Most everyone at a high school football game are highschoolers. Parents only come if their son/daughter is in the marching band or the football team. So that is a very small part of the audience that actually knows what's going on. Most of the highschoolers are too busy chatting with friends and see it as a social event. But while it isn't hard to ignore a football game if one team is getting destroyed, you can't really ignore a marching band. as was stated it is a work of art. Eyes are drawn to it. And every single person in that stadium can tell what a straight line looks like. They can tell if one person is out of the form. For you to say they cant is ridiculous. Every instrument has metal on it which loves to reflect light. That is why it is so easy to tell if horn angles are off and if people are off on their movements. Once they miss a step off that horn lets everyone know what happened and if you see a perfectly curved line and one person isn't so perfect, it sticks out like a sore thumb. You say it is everything that we accept anyone. That only further proves my point. A marching band has to work so much harder because of these people. Anyone could also be on the football team as well. The football team would just then have to practice more to build up the muscles in little jimmy so he can sit on the bench half the game. Anyone can build muscle and learn to throw and catch a football, just as anyone can learn an instrument and be in the band. And either way the marching band does limit its players, just in a different way. A rising freshman cant just say, hey I want to be in the marching band band but I don't know how to play. Most everyone in the marching band has been playing since Elementary school, and that kid would have to take a year of concert band classes in order to join, just as everyone else has to be in concert band to stay. And you say a marching band member can leave whenever he wants. There is the exact same amount of dedication because as said everyone feels important to the show because they are. Little Jimmy on the bench ever game doesn't feel important. He can leave when he wants and no one will miss him, but if any marcher leaves there is a hole in the show for the season. Friendship is also unrelated to difficulty. Now, you may say that I made a mistake saying that. All I needed to prove was that there was physical difficulty involved and I have. YOU made the mistake in saying it was 90% mentally. I don't need to prove physical difficulty based on that, because football isn't even on the comparable level to marching band mentall. And according to you that's Where the majority of football difficulty, and argument is.