Band Activities

In ancient Greece great truths were revealed by the oracle at Delphi. In modern America great truths are revealed by bumper stickers. The bumper stickers tell us that 'Band is not a spectator sport!".  Bands go places and do things. As a band parent you will go right along with them as close ground battlefield support.

Football Games
Most marching show performances are at football games. Bands were added to football games in the 19th century when people discovered just how boring it is to watch football. Constant band music entertains the fans so they never notice that most of the time nothing much happens down on the field. The long half-time period when nothing at all happens down on the field gamewise is filled by band marching shows. These are much more interesting than the game. Today there are more band fans than football fans in the stands at most high school games. Without bands, football would have disappeared decades ago.

Poem Link- "Bands at Football Games"

There are two types of football games, home football games and away football games. Home games are played in your local stadium often located conveniently adjacent to the high school but in any case not very far from it. They require much less work than away games which are held at the stadium of the opposing team. That stadium may be hours away by band bus. If you have a choice, which you won't, volunteer as a chaperone for home games.

At the game once everything is moved into place you will sit next to the band in the stands. They will warm up, semper troppo forte, for about twenty minutes and then play two or three pieces just to pass the time. These will demonstrate the quiet restraint and melodic invention for which football game music is justly not known. Then they'll play the school 'alma mater' song and the school fight song. The national anthem will be sung with gusto by a poorly but loudly amplified high school songster who desperately wants to be in another key than that in which the band is playing. You will be functionally deaf before the game starts.

During the game the band will play music to highlight each of these important events: a kick-off, a touch down, a point after, a field goal, a first down, a recovered fumble, the end of a quarter, a completed pass, a long ground carry, a short ground carry, a loss on ground carry, a time out for a measurement, any other time out, a penalty against the other team, a penalty against their own team, an injured player's being walked off the field, an incomplete pass and whenever the director feels music is appropriate which is close to always if they are any good at all. During a half in which the teams play for twenty-four minutes the bands will play for forty.

Delegations of band members from both bands will trade visits. This custom serves a function similar to a mutual exchange of hostages during wartime. Concern for the safety of the delegates keeps both bands on their best behavior. Delegation members are introduced to the cheers of those band members with whom they share some important attribute such as playing trumpet, being a senior or breathing oxygen.

Half-time is the bands' time! They perform their marching contest shows plus whatever else they can squeeze in. Both bands march facing the Home stands unless there are more people in the Visitor stands. The visiting band marches first. It is a friendly half-time tradition for the football fans to try to make enough noise to drown out the bands. After the visiting band finishes the home band is in its glory. Proudly taking the field they will perform to the delight of their community and the wonder of visitors.

Usually.

Sometimes a home band after watching a superior visiting band in a show of much higher quality will be reluctant to take the field. An extreme example occurred in West Koindexter City, Minnesota in 1987. The 42 piece W. K.C. High School Marching Marmosets Band became so unnerved following the half-time performance of the visiting 350 piece reigning State Champion East Islongton High School Marching Mavens that it declined to take the field and voted to convert itself into a stamp collecting society. (As such it remains successful to this day.)

Poem Link- "Football Games"

Marching Contests
Marching Contests are one of the two venues in which high school bands compete (for Concert Contests, see below). Band parents have a lot to do, in a menial way, with marching contests.

Poem Link- "The Week Before Contest"

Marching band contests are not direct head to head competitions. The bands do not take the field all at once and by force of sound attempt to conquer each other. Marching contests are classy affairs appealing to cultured and discerning ladies and gentlemen of refinement. The bands politely perform their shows one after another before a panel of distinguished judges. No interference of any kind is tolerated among the bands whose members are expected at all times to display the highest standard of quiet good sportsmanship. As a band parent you get to enforce these standards of quiet good sportsmanship on 250 over-stimulated, over-tired, over-excited adolescents all of whom are carrying expensive high quality noisemakers.

When you get that many people that close together (a marching contest can feature 35-45 bands) some problems will occur. One must pity the unfortunate 50 piece marching wind ensemble whose contest performance is drowned out by a 350 piece monster band warming up in the parking lot. A shortage of parking space for buses, trucks and the cars of thousands of band parents is always a problem.

Poem Link- "Marching Contest"

Each band has 5 minutes, timed to the second, to move everything onto the field and prepare to start their show. Once they begin they have 10 minutes, timed to the second, to perform the show and get off the field, completely off the field. If just one band foot is still on the field at 10 minutes and 1 second the band will be disqualified. Take care! Tardy band parent feet count toward disqualification. If you help with the pit or props make gosh double darn sure that your feet are off the field in time. Otherwise your only recourse, in the very unlikely event that you survive the immediate wrath of hundreds of band members and parents, will be to change your name, flee the country and continue your miserable existence in a distant deserted wasteland (the more remote and northern parts of remote northern Siberia come to mind).

Marching contest judges are very demanding. Years of competition have raised standards far beyond those thought possible when you were in high school. The better bands play like the Berlin Philharmonic while marching like the Bolshoi Ballet. The best bands do better. Judges rate bands using various scoring systems all designed to give your band a lower score than it deserves. Sometimes each band receives a score or set of scores but no winner is announced. Sometimes winners are chosen by ranking the bands by numerical score. The top band(s) advance to the next level of competition, if any. Bands are scored separately on musical performance, marching and auxiliaries. At any given contest they will invariably give the most weight to whichever of these three in which your band is weakest.

At contests band parents have an additional duty beyond those discussed previously. They form a claque whose job is to applaud and cheer loudly at any point in the show when a musical mistake is likely. They drown it out so the judges do not hear it. Do this subtlety. Drum majors should not turn around to cue the claque. Nor should band directors cue the claque from the stands. Rather have musically trained band parents (there are always a few, they may try to hide it, but ferret them out) memorize the difficult parts of the score and let the rest of the claque follow their subtle lead. Right after the performance when the judges are writing down the scores the band parent claque should go hog wild with approval- clapping, cheering, shouting, whistling. stomping, jumping, screaming, etc. Regular attendance at football games is good training. It may not influence the judges but it couldn't hurt.

Poem Link-"Another Contest Day"

A little more about judging-  If your band advances to higher levels of competition, the judging will seem to become more irrational.  At the very top level it will seem to make no sense at all.  This is how things must be according to sound mathematical principles. Really.  The judges aren't being lazy or biased.  They are caught in a situation beyond their control.  For more on this go to About the Adjudication of Band Contests.

Concert Contests
Concert contests are just like marching contests except there is no marching, the bands perform indoors, the musical performance is all that matters, there are no props or auxiliaries and there is usually hardly anyone in the audience. Concert contests are nothing like marching contests.

For the contest each band carefully prepares several pieces of music from a contest sponsor approved list which is years out of date and neglects much very fine music. Contests usually require bands to sight read at least one composition which has to be obscure enough not to be known by all the competing bands/directors while at the same time being familiar to the judges.

Concerts
Several times a year your band(s) will give concerts. These are usually held in the school auditorium or gymnasium. These are usually free of charge. These are usually poorly attended. Very poorly attended. Even some band parents fail to show up.

That some band parents fail to show up is just plain weird since they have spent on average about $1000.00 each per concert!

It is one of the sad realities of the late 20th Century (offsetting such good things as microwave popcorn and the Home Shopping Network) that it is very difficult to get people away from their televisions and computers. Live performances even of very good quality and at very low prices are a hard sell.

The 'on-line society' is increasing out of touch with reality. The newest generation is performance illiterate. Elementary school children attending their first band concert stare open mouthed at the stage in complete disbelief that they can actually hear instruments that are not electronically amplified. Upon hearing a diminuendo for the first time many children panic afraid that their ears are failing. After all, the music never gets quieter on rock videos. There is no simple solution but if we band parents are not part of the solution then we will surely be part of the precipitate.

Parades
Parades take us back to the very beginnings of the modern wind band. The earliest marching wind instrument groups were in the armies of Northern Europe in the 17th century. These small bands of oboes, fifes, bassoons, serpents and drums played music to help the soldiers march in step at a fast pace. Soon valveless horns and bugles were added. The first concert use of military wind bands was by Georg F. Handel in his "Music for the Royal Fireworks" in the mid-eighteenth century. The fife and drum corps of the American Revolution are part of this tradition.

Following the addition of valves to brasswinds in the 1830's military bands developed quickly. By the American Civil War every regiment had a band with an instrumentation we would recognize today. The band played whenever the regiment was on the march.

Following the Civil War ex-army bandsmen formed professional and veterans' organization bands for entertainment purposes (John Philip Sousa's father was a Civil War Bandsman). The marching band tradition continued strong in Holiday Parades, Circus Parades, Political Parades, Festival Parades and even Commercial Parades (of which Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is one of the last).

About this time marching bands were first included in school sporting events starting a parallel tradition that has grown into the modern marching show. Today almost all the professional marching bands are gone (a very few remain as at Disneyland.) and the Veterans' Bands after a 30 year revival following World War II have now faded. (The author has fond memories of marching with American Legion Bands in the late 1960's. Even then their numbers were dwindling and they filled up the ranks with high school students. They paid $5.00 a parade which was good money. On July 4th you could easily make $20-25 rushing from town to town changing uniforms in the car.) Only military and school bands carry on the tradition of parade marching.

Local parades are easy events for band parents. There is no equipment to lug and the bus ride is short or non-existent. Band Parents get to stand along the road with all the other spectators and just watch the parade go by.

Since professional bands are no longer with us every year high schools bands are invited to march in distant big-time parades such as the Tournament of Roses or Macy's. It would be just your luck to be involved with one of the those. Additional money will be needed get the band to/from the parade site. If airfare is involved tens of thousands of dollars will be needed. Band members require round-the-clock chaperones during the trip. Instead of spending Thanksgiving Day (New Year's Day, etc.) in the quiet comfort of your living and dining rooms you will be herding over-tired excited band members through unfamiliar territory on minimal sleep and several gallons of coffee/diet cola. Quality Time.

Strange Interlude
I have been thinking a great deal about hedgehogs which are very interesting, not as interesting as tubas of course, but then almost nothing else is so why hold that against hedgehogs particularly? Being a fair minded person you would not do so and your example is good enough for common purposes so why should we spend more? No reason. None at all! But as I started to write, well not write so much as type, but then its not typing in the strict sense since there is no typewriter, perhaps what I mean is

Strange Poem Link- "Synthetic Elastomer"

(and we should all strive to say what we mean so that we may mean what we say by which I mean what we mean meaningfully expressed without meanness and as we mean to do it with meant meannessless meaning.) But as I started to enter onto the keyboard I have been thinking a great deal about hedgehogs (Meaning the erinaceidae or true hedgehogs. Many persons are not aware that there are false hedgehogs, pretenders to the mantle of hedgehoggedness which in addition to having nothing to do with hedges and not being hogs just like the true hedgehogs, are as well not hedgehogs in any way.

I refer primarily and perhaps exclusively to the American porcupine or would do so at this point if I was not thinking a great deal about hedgehogs). Hedgehogs first appeared in the Miocene or Pliocene Epochs during the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era in which we all live still many lives of a hedgehog later. There are those who would put the origins of hedgehogs much earlier, in the Oligocene Epoch or even (stretching the credulity of right thinking persons) into the Eocene.

There are those who argue how could there have been hedgehogs before there were hedges for them to have nothing to do with? If they have nothing better to do with their time perhaps we had just better leave them at it and hope that it keeps them busy so that they don't end up hurting anybody.

Which oddly enough reminds me of tubas, which are more interesting than hedgehogs, that can not be denied, or rather it might be denied by someone trying to be perverse in their behavior, just as some persons (especially in Britain) continue to insist that all top action valve tubas are bombardons not just those in Eb but that of course has to do with tubas, which are more interesting than hedgehogs, yet it was hedgehogs (true hedgehogs, not porcupines) that I was thinking a great deal about and not tubas, which are more interesting than hedgehogs and which just like hedgehogs have nothing to do with hedges and are not hogs.

Those who are not of a philosophical turn of mind may wonder that a small old-world mammal would have that much in common with a bass brass saxhorn but it is the way of things and perhaps does much to explain why I have been thinking a great deal about hedgehogs and not about tubas, which are more interesting than hedgehogs, and a great deal more interesting than porcupines which are not true hedgehogs and it was hedgehogs that I was thinking a great deal about even though tubas are more interesting......

All-City-District-Region-Area-State Band Auditions and Concerts
In addition to competing as a group band members have opportunities to compete as individuals. The most common of these is auditioning for an All-Something Band.

The idea behind an All-Something Band is to identify the better players from many schools and form them into a really good band for a special performance under a famous (and sometimes also good) conductor playing better music than usual. This gives the best players another way to succeed. Unfortunately it gives everyone else another way to fail. At the All-State level the competition is so stiff that at most schools no one makes it at all. Even the very very best players fail right along with everyone else fostering that spirit of camaraderie and good fellowship which only shared failure can inspire.

The road to All-Something Bands runs through the dreaded ordeal of audition. Each candidate prepares solos carefully selected for complete lack of musical interest and disproportionate difficulty to play for a panel of judges who will try to choose the best amongst them. In order to reduce bias large panels of 4 to 6 judges are used. They sit behind a screen not seeing or being seen by the candidates. Students are identified by letter which is bad news if one of the judges has an unreasoning dislike of the letter "D".

Many judges are needed plus proctors, score keepers, officials, etc.. Ideally each judge would be an accomplished performer on the instrument being judged. The reality is that to fill up the panels it is necessary to use not only professionals, band directors and private lesson teachers but also college students, band parents and people who just stopped by to ask for directions.

Even at lower levels competition can be tough and the audition process grueling. It is not unusual for 150 flute players to sign up for just 10 available slots. If the judges are lucky about 1/3 of these will drop out before the audition. Hearing the remaining 100 will take an entire day and the call backs most of the evening. Some students will arrive at the audition site first thing in the morning but will not be heard at all until early evening by which time the judges are bleary eared and jaded.

An explanation of the scoring method will be useful. Being of a fair and logical turn of mind you would never in a million years figure it out for yourself. In the first round each judge marks each performance of each selection (typically 2 or 3 selections are played) "yes" or "no" to determine who will be called back for the second round. Each judge then makes a final overall "yes/no" decision for each candidate and then all vote on each candidate. Any candidate who gets a majority of "yes" votes is called back for the second round. The desire is to eliminate students. Anyone who gets even one "no" vote will not be called back. If a student muffs the beginning of the first selection they are dead. Even if they play the remainder of the audition like a member of the Chicago Symphony they can't recover.

In the second round the judges assign numerical scores (on a scale of 0 to 500!) to each performance of each selection. Each judge then ranks each player and breaks any tie scores. To break tie scores the judge must decide between/among two or more players heard several hours apart whose performances are forgotten. The judges will rely on their written notes which might typically read "very good", "really good" and "truly good". The rankings of all the judges are then listed together and the highest and lowest are discarded. The remaining scores are averaged and ranked to determine the final scores. Any ties at this stage are broken by adding back in the high and low scores that were previously discarded. If after that a tie still remains the judges must break the tie in a mutually agreeable way. Flipping a coin retains its traditional popularity. This system eliminates bias by preventing the judges from understanding it sufficiently well to even attempt to finagle a particular result.

Students are often puzzled when notoriously mediocre players rank above good players. The system does a good job of separating the best players from the worst players. The vast middle of good players might as well hold a lottery. Judging artistic performance is subjective. Judging a large number of players of similar abilities is hopeless. At a single audition much can go wrong (or right). You shouldn't read too much into the results. (Trying to be really fair the audition process for the Boston Symphony Orchestra involves repeated hearings of the top candidates over a period of months with different judges and attention paid to circadian rhythms, the phases of the moon and the barometric pressure. The BSO still so doubts the process that winners are given a one year contract so that the orchestra can make sure they will work out in real life before they sign them permanently. Conductor Pierre Monteux, after a couple of glasses of a good French red wine, was fond of telling of the Paris Conservatory violin competition when he was a student. The only student who ultimately went on to a successful solo career was the one who came in fourth and received no prize (Monteux had come in first.).

As in consumer magazines audition rankings should carry a disclaimer that differences of 3 to 5 chairs are usually not meaningful. But life is not fair and "Band is Life".

Poem Link- "All-Region Tryouts"

This issue is overworked at this point. That is apparent. You now know that that is apparent. But stopping here will mean leaving out an A-1 First Class anecdote about the futility of trying to judge young artists. So here it is. It has the incidental advantage of being true. Probably true. This is taken from the autobiographies of the famous actors involved. They may have exaggerated. Still the stories seem to ring truly with late adolescent angst at rejection.

When students both Lord Olivier and Sir Alec Guiness (as they since became) were told by their acting teachers that they should quit, that they lacked talent and that no matter how hard they worked they would never be successful actors.

If your band member is selected for an All-Something Band you will attend the All-Something Band Concert (You could refuse to go but that would only make relations between you and your band member more difficult than usual and who needs a moody teenager about the house? That is more moody than usual.)

If you are lucky the concert will be held in your high school auditorium but it is very much more likely that it will be held halfway across the state. That is not so bad if you live in Rhode Island but it can a bit of an inconvenience for band parents in Texas or Alaska.

After dealing with problems of transport and navigation to get to the concert you must run the gauntlet of Official All-Something Band Concert Vendors. You will be offered Official All-Something T-shirts (with your band member's name on them), Official All-Something group photos (with your band member's face in them), the Official All-Something wall plaque (with your band member's name on it), Official All-Something Video Recordings (featuring your band member) and Official All-Something CD/cassette audio recordings (also featuring your band member). These once in a lifetime mementos should set you back no more than $200 and they will gather dust for years to come.

The concert itself will be uneventful. Lack of rehearsal time will have discouraged the famous conductor- clinician from selecting really unusual or difficult music.

Solo and Ensemble Contests
In addition to All-Something Band auditions many schools offer the chance for band members to compete solo or in small ensembles in Solo and Ensemble Contests. These fill what would otherwise be a three week long competitionless void in mid-winter. Students prepare solos which they themselves can select from an approved list. These they perform for a judge who rates them on a scale of 1 (good) to 5 (not good at all). That's it. Sometimes students earning a First Division ranking (1) get a small medal.

Poem Link- "Marching Season Weekend"

Copyright 1996, 1999 by George Yenetchi

Copyright 1994. 1995, 1996 , 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006 by George Yenetchi