From: fath@mbcrr.dfci.harvard.edu (Michael Fath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.marching.misc
Subject: Re: College/HS Marching Band Quickie Survey
Date: 11 Dec 1992 19:53:26 GMT
Organization: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: mbcrr.harvard.edu

In article <1992Dec11.184003.12136@beaver.cs.washington.edu> dci@cs.washington.edu (Donald Chinn) writes:
>

Donald,
	My college band (Miami University), was about 280 strong.
We performed a new show for every home game.  Usually, this meant 
that we learned two challenging shows with real drill and conceptual
design elements such as a drum feature etc.  One of the two was our
away game show.  And we _always_ memorized our music  :-)

>1. Marching style.  What style does the organization march?  The
>main styles are traditional (high step, Big Ten-like), corps style
>(glide step), and "other" (no particular style, scatter).  And, of
>course, you could have a mix of these styles.
>
Our pregame was Big 10 style, march to formations high-step then play a
song.

Our half-time was corps style "real" music that varied from showtunes
to jazz to even classical at times.


;>2. Drill style.  This is to be distinguished from marching style.
;>What kinds of forms and movements does the organization perform?
;>Block forms are popular, but "state-of-art" tends to consist of
;>freeform, rotating forms, curvilinear forms.  Traditional movement
;>consists of straight-line movement.  Contemporary drills tend to
;>have forms that require guiding.  Also, during the halftime show,
;>does the band play to a concert side of the field, or does it try
;>to play to everyone in the stadium (or, one part of the stadium
;>for one song and another for another song)?
;>
Pregame, big geometric forms like a star-burst shape, an Ohio state
outline, and long company fronts.

half-time, lots of great curva-linear stuff.  Our band director was
good at writing fun, cool looking drill (corps-style) for Big
college bands.
;
;>3. Perceived motion.  How fast do the drill forms evolve?  This
;>is not a question of how fast the performers are moving.  Rather,
;>this asks how fast does the drill go viewed from a spectator's
;>point of view.  This one is a hard one to describe, since there
;>is no quantitative way of measuring perceived motion, but give it
;>a go.;

For our real show, the drill evolved pretty quickly -- we had probably
16 sets in our openers, then concert number with about 8 sets and
a closer with about 8 sets.

;>
;>4. Music.  What kinds of music does the organization tend to play?
;>Broadway musicals?  Top-40?  Sousa?  Symphonic?  Jazz?  New Age?
;>Fusion?  Is the atmosphere generated by the repertoire more of a pep
;>rally or of a concert (or both)?;

No Sousa, a lot of musicals, not much top-40 though we did do a Beach
Boys show once.  A fair amount of jazz and classical mixed in.

;>
;>5. Instrumentation.  About how many brass, woodwind, and percussion
;>players are there in the band?  What is the typical formation in the
;>drill (are the brass in the front, percussion in center, and woodwinds
;>in the back [which is typical]) ?  During the drill (i.e. in motion),
;>what is the typical placement of these elements?;


280 broke down to about:

24 dance line
16 flags
30 percussion
110 woodwinds
100 brass

usually, trumpet in center, woodwinds to the sides.


>
>6. Percussion.  What is the percussion arrangement?  (e.g. 5 snares,
>2 multitenors, 4 bass drums [tuned], 2 cymbals)  What is the most
>interesting lick/passage the percussion section has ever done?

8 snares, 4 quads, 5 basses, 4 cymbals, 10 pit.
The percussion fols were serious.  The grad instructor and several
players marched Garfield.  They competed in the Percussive Arts Society
stuff.  My favorite (though I'm a euphoniumist) was God Said, from
Bernstein's Mass.  They did a nice job with that!

>
>7. Repertoire balance.  How much of what is played by the band (either
>at halftime or in the stands) is "football music" (fight song, other
>football-related songs designed to get the fans excited about the game)
>and how much of it is purely musical in nature (theme songs, fun songs,
>etc. would fall into this category)?

In the stands = football, pep music
Half-time = concert music

>
>8. Color guard.  Does a color guard exist in the band?  If so, what
>kinds of things do they do?  Do they do anything interesting with
>their flags?  Do they dance?  How many different pieces of equipment
>does a typical show use?  We might as well throw in baton twirlers
>and drill teams in this category (for the purposes of this question).

24 Shakerettes = pom=pom and dance team - babes only need apply
16 flags - no rifles or other
oh yeah, there were 1-4 baton twirlers and 2 DM as well

>
>9. Organization.  Who writes the drills, selects the music, and
>runs the rehearsals.  I know there are a lot of student-run organizations
>(Stanford, Cal, etc.).  What is annual budget of the band?

Marching band director is Jack Liles and he is full time - music professor
he also teaches drill design to music majors and conducts the concert band.
He's a great guy.  He writes the drill, very well I might add.  We have
a former grad who is now a professional music arranger (Dave Shaffer) who
did most music arrangements.  Also two Master's degree grad. students
helped - one for brass and one for percussion.  They did some music
arrangements too.  A lot of corps connections with our band.

>
>10. Rehearsal time.  How many hours a week does the band practice?

Band camp 1 week before school started all day
then 6 hours or more during the week with a two hour practice game days.

>
>
>Thanks again!
>-- Donald

That's quite a list.  Hope my answers help.


-- 
MM   MM FFFFF 	Michael Fath		fath@mbcrr.harvard.edu
M M M M F	Dept of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
M  M  M FFF     Harvard Medical School         
M     M F       Boston, MA 02115	Merry Christmas Everyone!
Newsgroups: rec.arts.marching.misc