welcome to the secrets of college planning on the host today we're going to get some insight into bands at the college level my guest today is todd nichols he's the director of athletics for bands at rutgers university  had known that i wanted to do music from when i was a late middle school early high school so i got real serious about looking at schools probably like junior year ok you know i always wanted to play an instrument always wanted to be a pro musician but really focused on school choices towards the middle of  school ok so did you did you play an instrument in high school oh yeah i did i played all kinds of percussionist drummer and played classical and jazz percussion and played professionally all the way up until this job actually i taught public school for nineteen years in new jersey and freelanced as a drummer at the same time someone overly so so you go to school graduate how does one go from graduating college to director of athletic bands  well for me the process was a lot of stepping stone i had when i was in school and i was in college i had really gotten into teaching and really had started think about what do i want to do when i finish this degree and i had desired to someday be a college band director but in order to get to that point you need multiple degrees and experience what have you so i started working with a lot of high school marching bands and i was a drum line instructor for many many different places became like an assistant at some schools in the system marching band director did that while i was in college to gain experience and then landed my first teaching job right after i got out of school spent six years there at edison high school worked really hard to build the program then was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to teach in roxbury high school where i have been for the last thirteen years and that one thousand years was able to develop a program you know international and national performances and be able to use that to kind of get ready to go up to the college level ok so then double position at the university so on the director of the athletic bands which means i organize administrate and run the marching band and oversee all of our basketball bands our pep bands they play for men's and women's basketball as well and in addition to that what they call the associate director of university bands i work in the music department as well i conduct one of the concert bands oversee a second concert band in the spring and in the spring teach a course for students who are preparing to be music educator so it's a prep course for you know going out to teach well that's fantastic so what's the process of students from high school going to college for bed well what they need to do is they need to take a look at different schools that they're considering and put them into a hierarchy and i always tell students when they're looking for where to go you need to look for the ensemble experience what schools offered numerous bands numerous orchestras do they have athletic brand program marching bands what have you do they have chamber music and small ensembles and the second biggest piece of the puzzle is the teacher who teaches their instrument and going to these schools and visiting and taking a lesson with these teachers the those are the two most important things every school is going to offer music theory music history and different things to you know be your base core knowledge but the very specific things of a private teacher and how many ensembles you have and how you know establish those ensembles are makes a really big difference so i always tell students and their parents that's the first thing they should look for the for a comprehensive program that has which you're looking for you know does every level at the college level have a band this is the vision three level compared to a big division one level write it all depends most all schools depending on their size in their division are going to have some kind of concert band and orchestra in our situation we're very fortunate being in the big ten where the only division one school in new jersey that has a full fledged marching band there are other pep bands in the state many  some of the d one d sorry d two d three schools they have pep bands but as far as like a full fledged collegiate marching band we're the only game in town well now protests like so know those it works similar to sports at the college level of scholarship money available that most people don't know is the large majority of the members of the marching band rockers are non majors so the ability to to reach out to engineering majors and or  business majors is is great because we can bring in you know some very qualified and very talented musicians who play their interest who maybe don't do it as their vocation but we're able to have them still be part of our university program and then on the flip side some of our very very talented musicians who are doing this for a career they're going to school to either be a music educator or performer it gives us the ability to reach out to them as well and have some scholarship money for them so it is a broken up into different amounts for scholarships similar to like the lower sports like baseball or or you know field hockey or something like you know we have a we have a couple a couple different avenues the endowment covers a wide range of things so we have  some stipend awards for those who are multiple year participants of their in for two three or four years it depicts the pen's on how many years we have for music education majors is a different line and then we have some additional funding for scholarships that is just based on merit well you know is it similar to sports as well where you're recruiting the kids you know they have to play a certain instrument because somebody is graduating that is a work most  definitely i'm very new to the position having just started in july and one of my goals is to enroll meant is to grow the enrollment and have our band become a lot larger than it is it's big right now it's a little over two hundred members but for the size of our university and in line with what some other universities in the big ten are i would like to have us up around three fifty so recruiting is a very important thing you know getting out into the public schools that's one thing that i'm looking forward to now in the off season is getting out and speaking with my colleagues and visiting a lot of schools and seeing you know if there's interested students if they're coming to rockers you know getting them to join the band to be part of the program and also on camp this is well you know having forty five thousand students on the new brunswick campus you know there's a ton of great musicians who just haven't necessarily realize that we have a great band opportunity for them so now that you comb the country you know like big time sports where you're going all over the place to fin these people not not exactly but we do attend my colleagues and i attend some conferences we go to a major conference in chicago which happens every year the midwest band clinic we have a booth there and we're able to meet students over two or three days from all over the all over the country and be able to talk to them about the opportunities that we have and will travel to some regional events and some you know state wide things as well but most of the students who are in the program come from the tri state area  student at the high school level need what are some of the requirements to come to college and play band well for them for the marching band and for the athletic bands they basically just need to be able to have a requisite you know playing level but there's no audition right now because the marching band is primarily non majors it's basically just the ability to play your instrument and play move the formations that we teach which we rarely have anyone who's not able to do that we have enough you know staff and teaching professionals to help them and basically just have a great attitude and be able to you know participate in what's asked of you and that's it so do you look at the grades do you look at film is there film that they send you will we can listen to the quality of the of the musician absolutely and do little prescreening but right now we're not in the business of cutting anyone we're trying to build a larger you know band family if you will and you know a stronger base for us to work with most of the students come from new jersey and they comes from very fine high school band programs so even kind of knowing where they've come from and having seen their groups we have a good idea of what the baseline is for the students coming in so know you doing all the work or do you have people that work with you that they go to different schools and listen to the different right we have we have a team a team of professors who you know there's three of us who are on the band staff and then we have a staff as well we have some guys who teach the percussion section some people who work with the color guard those guys especially they'll go out and throughout the winter in the so you know off months for us there are other things happening where they can go watch the schools perform and they kind of get an eye for where some good things are happening and then hopefully you know we tap into some students if they're going to come to wreckers in the hopes that they'll they'll join us so know is there some kind of grading system that you have for the schools in the tri state area being the those are where the majority now we pretty much work from the cent out and we know we know within central jersey where the larger schools are you know your division four or five schools just based on and roman and then you know for me working in the public schools for so long i have a very strong knowledge of where programs are and where students are you know where music is really a high priority but it's not just those schools that are the ones we're looking at you know we're trying to really look at also maybe there's some schools around that maybe don't have as strong a music program but they have some students in there who are really really terrific you know they could have you know strong individuals we look at the members who play in all state band a lot and really take a look at you know where they're coming from and it's not always from the super powerhouse schools you might have a smaller school somewhere and just one or two students get in from there and they're they're great contributors you know they could be wonderful so no i come to rockers university what's the process of the whole year is there a lot of practice is just the game what how does how does ben work well you're right we have we have pre season training sessions so in the summertime they'll work with what we call section leaders in the section  call music rehearsals and you know for students around campus and just kind of get them familiar with the basics of how we you know our warm ups and how we play our music basics of the drill formations and how to march that leads into what we call band camp and band camp is your typical hardcore pre season you know about nine days of you know nine in the morning till nine at night and we start slugging it out and learning everything we need to for for the season we come back from bank camp start the season and we were hers three nights a week it's a classic kids get a credit for it we were hers monday wednesday and friday for two hours each day and then we do all home games so on a game day game days a long day it's about a twelve to fourteen hour day for the students they'll be in early will have a two hour rehearsal on game day they have a lot of performance things they do before the game even starts then we do the traditional college pre game game itself post game and then you know need time to pack up and what have you  do some exhibition performances as well so we'll play at some local high schools as like invited feature group we host the state marching band championship at rucker so that's another recruiting thing as well we have about sixty eight to seventy five bands come so  best basketball with once we hit once we hit november we have what we call like the kind of the crossover time we are still in marching band season and depending on how the football season goes whether or not we become bowl eligible basketball men's and women's basketball starts at the same time so we'll be doing quite a bit in the month of november and then as marching band winds down depending on if it's november or december basketball band pep band as we call it goes into full swing and that lasts from now until about the middle march when it gets into tournaments time and then pretty much as soon as tournament time is done we're into sign ups and recruiting and pre season there will be a spring football you know for fun game that they do call the scarlet and white game is in april and then we're we're off and running we're on to the next season the race so no do you find you find students way ahead of time so you're you're looking at students while junior high school will say yeah we'll we'll talk to any students we're very fortunate a lot of students have started to hear about what we're doing and they've asked to come and visit and you know junior year is the best time to start talking about it and then actively really you know need a gritty details obviously a senior year when you're you know waiting to find out if a student has committed to coming to the university or not but we invite students all the time you know come and visit a practice come see a game we do a big band alumni and recruiting day so we have a day that we have dedicated just for our alumni to come back but then another day that's dedicated for future recruits this year i happened to put them both on the same day and i had like over seven hundred people participate at half time next year going to split it and do it differently but you know that day is the day for high school students to come and visit spend the whole day see what it's like to be a marching scarlet knight follow the whole process from beginning to end so now what happens academic wise is their study hall classes  e all about and and that's it how does academics get in they did this this is a one credit course regardless of their major so they basically fit it into their schedule along with whatever else they have it that is one thing  that is pretty inspiring actually of the students that rockers is because everything is so split up on multiple campuses you'll have students who will be finishing a course over on one campus hop in a bus to make it over to marching band practice doing their marching band practice hopping right back on another bus to go to a third campus you know because they went from you know engineering one o one to biotech six o seven to marching band back to astrophysics and it's pretty impressive what these students do so it's really time management that know no i mean out of the athletic bands we have i think fifty seven different majors so there's everything from mechanical electrical engineers to chemists to genetics majors i do have an astrophysics major pre med we do have music educators we have i mean pretty much any major you could imagine is represented in this organization so we talk a lot more about the the benefits of marching band sometimes are not necessarily musical you know the ability to become part of a team the ability to work together for a common goal your time management skills the ability to work well with others you know just certain life skills that no matter what they decide to do they learn about that while being part of the band which is kind of need so one thing i love about teaching the marching band is we're teaching them not just about becoming good musicians but also about becoming great people you know that's great so how  about how about the schools it's the high school students themselves to get into rockers it's the same process right it's the application to send then they need the requirements to get into the school right is there any other process that taking no for us right now as long as they get accepted to the university and they're part of the you know whatever program whatever school they've been accepted to then they're able to register for either marching band or pep band as an elective course so they get one credit for marching band one credit for pep band so it just basically is an elective that they can take that's open to any and all majors and that's a that's in every year one one credit yes so it's just an added credit every year for each one of the things of the deal and you'll find most of our students we we told them and tried to see some things for just for own demographics most of them take somewhere between eighteen and twenty one credits now how about the music's of the music itself  is it a wide variety of music or is it just orchestra type music and that's it to get the modern day pop music and the yeah definitely deficit all work it's definitely it's definitely a hodgepodge and there's a reason for that i take into account who attends these games and it's everyone from the student section in the you know the college students themselves to parents to grandparents to grand kids you know so you have such a wide age range and everything that we do from week to week you know i try to over the course of the season appeal to every age and every possibility that we can we do do a lot of rock and roll music it's very popular and you know widely received  but we've also played you know class of cool orchestral music for our american tribute concert you know for veterans we did a jazz show when the future we're going to do some broadway music things like that but we try to make whatever it is that we do super exciting very entertaining and something that's pretty well known so that even if you don't necessarily like the genre you like ok i know that that tune and you know that's kind of fun so is it too soon though how long does it take a student to pick up the music and just get so then they can play it you know was right it depends it depends on how many weeks we have that's one of the most challenging things about being in the big tent that there's there's an unofficial expectation that you're doing a different show almost every week and being that we only rehearse three days a week it could be pretty challenging if we only have a one week turnaround we have two or three weeks in between games then it becomes a little bit easier because we can kind of be a little bit slower so i try to make sure that i pace whether or we sometimes will repeat a show just because of that because we need a little bit more time to learn a brand new show but again i can't say enough about you know these these students are very intelligent and they pick up very quickly we also design in a way like we know how many hours a week we have to rehearse we know what's going to happen if we get rained on and we you know start getting into a situation we might lose an hour or two for whatever reason so we try to structure it that way and the harder shows the more difficult material will be put into a two or three week production run so now do some students do they join the band one year and then the following year they say all this isn't for me i'm just going to stay with school and that's it right sometimes yeah unfortunately that does happen  typically happens as they get into that junior and senior year when they're approaching some serious credit requirements to finish graduation on time so they don't have to put in another year or the pressures of their they have a lot of  students in high honors courses you know if they're in honors college that gets very stressful for them and then some to some do unfortunately you know it gets to a point where it's tough for them to handle and do both however you know we try to work with them and be understanding of the fact that marching band is part of their collegiate experience but it's not necessarily the reason they're going to school so you know trying to be understanding of that and you know work with them is something we always try to do we don't like to see any student leave our program sometimes if those just get a little little too much so no you said that there's two hundred people as part of the band right know and you want to grow with the three hundred fifty people you compared to a university that's  more michigan state or something like that one of those size bands compared to the writers yeah actually actually me becoming a new member of the big ten i actually reached out to all of my colleagues and they were they were fantastic i sent them a short email with like five questions you know how big is your school have big your band how often do your things like that every single director got back to me which was which was incredible and we are in the middle of all of the schools there are some schools the big powerhouses like michigan  highest state they'll be around four hundred you know three eighty to four hundred but there's a lot of schools that are in like the two sixty's there seems there's one school in the big ten that's only hundred twenty one that seen around our size two hundred so a lot of schools are in that like mid to high to hundreds and then some of the programs that have been established for a very very long time there in the three hundred centers that there is there a reason why you need that many people as part of the body of sound and the ability to make really intricate looking pictures on the field you know when you have we have the more people you have the more opportunity you have to create a more powerful sound and also be able to do more detail and what you see on the  field very interesting didn't well we're going to the end of our show and usually i ask my guess what advice you want to give to the parents out there that the sons and daughters are interested in going to  play bad at the college level what advice you want to give to those those parents do your research you know don't be afraid to reach out to schools and visit reach out to the directors of the ensembles you know talk to the the professors that are there teaching the more hands on you can be the better it's going to be for your son or your daughter just taking the time to find out how many ensembles do you have what courses do you need to take you know what are the requirements and you know how long does it take and i still do this even if i'm not a music major because i think most times parents don't they think they have an answer because of what they heard from somewhere else and it's actually incorrect you know like a giant misconception for our marching band right now you have to be a music major to be in it which could if you could not be further from the truth and just being able to connect with those teachers and get the answer right from the people who are doing  it and then go visit you know take take some time and go go look at the school and you know see if you like the atmosphere see if you like the environment you know you spend a lot of money to go to college and if you have more than one you know son or daughter have two kids at home you know you think about how much it cost to send