From: dci@cs.washington.edu (Donald Chinn)
Subject: College/HS Marching Band Quickie Survey
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 18:40:03 GMT


I am basically a college and HS band "illiterate" in that I
do not know what the trends in college and HS bands are these days.

The intent of this post is get a feel for the kinds of shows/music
college and HS marching bands are performing.  Here's a list of
questions cover various aspects of the field show.

IMPORTANT: Please give specific organizations when answering.  That is,
please do not generalize to all bands.

This post is not intended to start a "My band is better than your
band" flame war.  Please answer objectively.  Thanks.

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.

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)?

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.

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)?

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?

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?

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)?

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).

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?

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


Thanks again!
-- Donald
Newsgroups: rec.arts.marching.misc