Do you like your marching program? Honestly.

[RHS Drumline]

Well, Everyones program is different, but do you like it? My program is going down hill. Our good, talented band members are gone :( ...no one likes the instructor :mad: , our school takes forever to order something **$ ...are they all the same? Or am I just in a bad school for band? Discuss

[vicfirthrules10]

well i like our band program at east central high school in indiana. all of the percussion feels like our percussion director is like a big brother, but our head director could loosen up a bit. our school is very mean towards the band as in like the student body and our principal, but our two assistant principals and our superintendant really supports the band. and what's also awesome is that we just got all new drumline.

[JimiThing]

Our drumline rules, but the band is fulled with immature tools.
But we're not doing too bad ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_High_School_(Fort_Wayne,_Indiana)#Marchi ng_Band

[DrummerRobbie22]

Our band program isn’t very good. We use to be the best in the area but our school decided our director made to much money and replaced him. Since then it has gone downhill quick. Our new director is ok but he doesn’t know how to have a little fun so everyone hates him.

[AJH123]

We're just....eh. We don't have as many good people as we did last year, so it'll be that much harder. Also, we play some pretty boring songs :\

[emmyemmyjojo]

we used to be the best around, then people became less involved, stuff got more expensive and funding fell. our dl instructor..... while he is an amazing jazz drummer, he dosent really help anyone other than snares and he dosnt think us girls should be on the line. other than that our staff is great.

[ironcobra]

At my school(or what was my school since i graduated) i had a good time, but I didnt really like how everything ran.
I will start off by saying we were not drum corps style, so we didnt compete. We just did parades football games and a bunch of random performances. I did enjoy the fact that we were not that style. i dont hate drum corps, but i think our style was more fun(but i could be wrong)

Any way, our music department has a band director, choir director, and a strings director, and then a guy who is in charge of all of them at the school, and then another person in charge of all the fine arts teachers in the district.
The guy in charge at the school hates the band and spends all the money on the different singing groups, and the musical we started putting on every year.
We dont get that much money anyway so we have been playing the same snares they played when our director bought when he came in in 1993, and we were able to buy new snares and basses after i think getting money from the city probably 7 years ago.
We dont have a drumline instructor, and the middle schools music programs lack teaching so we get a bunch of people who come up that cant play, but our band director lets them join anyway, and that leaves the ones who can play to teach them everything.

i think our program has been going down hill over the past couple of years. I noticed a big change in the discipline in the kids since ive been there.

The current director is going to retire after this coming year, and the guy that will most likely take over for him is great. I think he will do alot to change the band for the better. And they have been talking about a percussion instructor coming in sometime in the next couple years, Im just sad I wont be there for it.

Even though I have those opinions of the band, people from all around the state have great things to say about us, even complete strangers, and we have had some great performances like Main St USA in Disney World, and even for First lady laura Bush when she came to connecticut last year.

Sorry that was so long

[Redeye]

I LOVE my band. And I especially love my battery. We're all really close... almost everybody gets along in the band..and thats great for a 170 peice band. We're shooting for 2 state titles in a row this year :) Our Staff is great...they've ALL been in corps....and they're all percussionists (except for the guard instructors of course) so unlike many bands I know of, our percussion section doesn't go without.

I don't want to leave after this year! :(

[RHS Drumline]

My band director says band isn't about competition...its not...but now we have 1 comp. Nothing else...our whole year will be a waste of work.

[Jeffrey.]

Yeah I like it I guess. I hate how much time it takes.
Our snare tech (I guess you could call him that) marches snare for mystique. And our visual instructors march phantom.

[Slaptastica]

Though we have a good band, a great staff, and the best show our school has ever had. I'd still say no. This is my last year because I'm starting to realize that high school marching band is a waste of life. The moments are fun. The rest is terrible.

Our motto last year was literally, "Winning is fun." :(

[Redeye]

Though we have a good band, a great staff, and the best show our school has ever had. I'd still say no. This is my last year because I'm starting to realize that high school marching band is a waste of life. The moments are fun. The rest is terrible.

Our motto last year was literally, "Winning is fun." :(


judging by the frown face after your motto, I assume you disagree with it.


And I agree with you disagreeing with that motto lol. Its fun to enjoy what you do. And who cares what judges think if you think you're good. Its about making music, enjoying the music, enjoying the crowd...making the crowd enjoy you. We were the Mississippi 5A state champs last year (by four full points) but our championship run wasn't my favourite performance. My favourite one was out of state where we got second. We were no doubt the crowd favourite.... the only band to get a standing O. Even the home band didnt. We played so well that literally half the band, and most of the battery, came off the field crying. We couldn't have cared less that we got beat. We layed out hearts out on that field and we threw it down. Thats what its about. The joy of the performance.


sorry about that long winded post lol.

[THSdrummer]

Are program has been regaining strength ever since my class first joined. The percussion section now is much stronger as well. We got a new drum instructor my 7th (I think) grade year. Anyways, by the time I graduate everyone in the section will have gone through that program, which should help out a great deal more.

But yes, yes I do love are marching band program. We have great upper-class man, a strong middle section, and a great class coming in. Also marching band is not are "lives" like a few local marching bands, where they are at band camp 2-3 weeks for 7 hours a day. I'm very happy to work with the people I do, and get a chance to be in the program I am.

EDIT: I'm very pumped for this year. Out of the 4 competitions we get to go to, 2 of them are in the big colleges :D . Last year we played one big college, one big high school and two small high schools. This year we'll be playing Mizziou and Springfield (can't recall the school name). Along with this, we have the honors of representing MO in the Memorial Day parade in Washington, D.C. I cannot wait for that. :D . Not to mention the first day of drum camp (today) went excellent. It might help that we don't have any new freshman on the line (no offense, I was one of them last year) but they just don't know the ropes as well. This year is really shaping up for some greatness.

[devildrums555]

I've only marched one year with my current program, and it's also a really new program at the school. But from my experience it's okay. There is definetely some talent there, especially in the melodic sections, but the low brass and saxes are always just really weak sounding. The drumline was good, but there's plenty of room for improvement. But speaking of improvement, I see a lot of potential for it this year. I'm not marching, but I'm gonna help teach the line and front ensemble, sort of tech. Should be a cool experience.

[CharacterZer0]

I sort of agree with Jimithing, our drum line is pretty tight. There are just those few kids who dont care, and dont practice at all. Homestead has had some amazing drum lines, and some not so great drum lines. The thing that separates the two, is friendship. The lines where everyone hangs out all the time are always better than the lines who only see each other during practice. We have gotten away from that the past few years and need to bring it back. Our band program as a whole is awesome. Our staff is great, we have tons of community support, and the majority of the members care enough to put the effort in to improve. I would not trade this program for any other.

[fireintherain]

i enjoyed playing alot. sometimes, i wasn't a big fan of the parts our writer (who is our head drum instructor) made because he had to "dumb down" the parts so everyone could play them and they ended up being too easy. Some of the stuff was challenging for me and thats when I loved the playing. I love our band teacher shes such an awesome person and great teacher. But we hired this other guy to come in and help teach the whole band as well and he was pretty strict but he loosened up a tad as he got to know us of course. overall it was a great experience and my 3 years in MB helped my chops and musicality and lots of stuff.

[Rush equals love]

less than a year removed from 7 years in my high school band, and i ADORED it. For our school, band is a family. The most members we had at any one time INCLUDING bandfront was 18, and the past 4 years we havent topped 13. Our line is always actually pretty B.A though. Our principal didnt even allow us to do competitions. My band director for the last 3 years is THE MAN. He was adored by everybody in the band and always made really sound decisions for the band as a whole. I have no experience with a drum instructor since we didn thave one. I was drum captain for 3 years, and it was my job to write all the parts for the line (we never used shete music because the music was really really really really dumbed down, since we had like 6 instrumentalists). The best part, though, was deff. stand tunes at football games. We had a had a monster cheering section that cooperated with the band.Thats something I'll miss forever. For being so small, we sure knew how to rock.

[Slaptastica]

judging by the frown face after your motto, I assume you disagree with it.


And I agree with you disagreeing with that motto lol. Its fun to enjoy what you do. And who cares what judges think if you think you're good. Its about making music, enjoying the music, enjoying the crowd...making the crowd enjoy you. We were the Mississippi 5A state champs last year (by four full points) but our championship run wasn't my favourite performance. My favourite one was out of state where we got second. We were no doubt the crowd favourite.... the only band to get a standing O. Even the home band didnt. We played so well that literally half the band, and most of the battery, came off the field crying. We couldn't have cared less that we got beat. We layed out hearts out on that field and we threw it down. Thats what its about. The joy of the performance.


sorry about that long winded post lol.

yeah. That's what I want. Our indoor line show was always clearly crowd favorite. But we were constantly beat though we were actually playing hard stuff and had complicated visuals. We were mainly getting killed in General effect. But we constantly got compliments on the show and were constantly bashed by the judges. But I loved it.

I don't like competitions a whole lot but I love showing off...with precision and emotion. Our book this year is rediculously hard. I'm reconsidering sticking around next year. It's not even fun anymore. But if we get it prety clean we'll be blowing away the competition pretty bad. Our visual directors march Phantom Regiment. Our battery intructors marched Mystique, Glassmen, and Spirit.

[JimiThing]

I sort of agree with Jimithing, our drum line is pretty tight. There are just those few kids who dont care, and dont practice at all. Homestead has had some amazing drum lines, and some not so great drum lines. The thing that separates the two, is friendship. The lines where everyone hangs out all the time are always better than the lines who only see each other during practice. We have gotten away from that the past few years and need to bring it back. Our band program as a whole is awesome. Our staff is great, we have tons of community support, and the majority of the members care enough to put the effort in to improve. I would not trade this program for any other.

Yeah, forsure, we're not really close at all. There's alot of different personalities though, which kinda makes it tough to bond. I wish we'd get together more.

[David Hollywood]

Marching programs are always tough. I talk to a lot of band directors and most of them tell me the same thing: They have a few kids who are REALLY serious about it and a few who don't care at all... and the rest fall somewhere inbetween. A lot of schools (like my old High School) require people to play in Marching Band if they want to play in Jazz Band or Concert Band so you almost always have people who would rather be playing drumset or classical percussion but are being forced to play marching percussion. You also tend to have that guy who thinks your program should be DCI level but he doesn't understand you don't have the budget to pull that off.

It's hard to find music that will challenge those hardcore kids but will be easy enough for the ones who aren't going to practice. Also, most High School and College directors aren't 100% focused on marching. If you're at a smaller school, chances are you have a director or percussion guy who's more of an all around player. It can be hard to convince those people to devote tons of time and energy to Marching Band... especially if half the band doesn't really care.

[Armitando]

Our directors (band, percussion, color guard, drill) are all great, and drumline and pit have professional gear (high school). I'm aux. percussion in pit.

Also, this year was our first with-

new field
new uniforms
night games
competitions

1st competition - 7th out of 19
2nd competition - 18th out of 23

still, we had SO much fun

[Ryan93]

I don't care for mine too much, we have like 3 good people left and everyone is ridiculously arrogant. I'm a seinor and I feel bad for the only one who is going to be good next year, our equipment also sucks. The instructors refuse to listen to me when I say remo pinstripes are not good for marching snares at all....