Marching band winds down

We're almost to the end of the 2004 marching band season, and it's been an interesting one. When we were talking about show ideas back in the day, I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of playing jazz. I got over it, figuring it would be a good learning experience to write an instrumental jazz show. Then I found out it was going to be Frank Sinatra music, and it took a while to come to terms with that :) It ended up being some really great music - I haven't tired of it like last year's... although I expected it to get old after the first month. Unfortunately jazz is really difficult to play, so it's taken us a while to teach the style to the kids.

We started out with 14 percussionists, then lost two, gained two, and lost one (of course each of those was a longer story than that), but we've ended up with a great group of kids. I figured that I had written too difficult of a show for most of the season, but it has all come together pretty well here at the end, and I didn't need to simplify too many parts (I wrote things that were too hard for my section in ISU drumline back in the day too, so these kids shouldn't feel too bad).

I've mentioned before that it's good to get positive feedback about the percussion writing and the teaching that you do for the kids - but this show hasn't been as kind to us. Learning jazz is difficult in a standard jazz band - just because the music is challenging. Learning jazz in marching band is crazy. Triplets are a little bit unusual for your typical high school freshman, and the feel of swing just isn't in their blood. In a regular jazz band you have a bass that plays all the time, the drumset and piano (and maybe guitar) that play almost all the time, and the other instruments that play as needed. In a marching band you have to split all of this between 30 or so different instruments, and the hardest part from my point of view - splitting up the one drummer into a dozen or so percussionists.

Jazz and rock&roll shows are difficult things to pull off on the marching field (in my opinion, which is why I wasn't excited about playing jazz), because the non-marching version of the music has a repetitive beat that one person can perform. When you split that between multiple players you either end up with a complex beat that may be difficult (or impossible) for the players to perform, or you have a beat that is very simple and/or boring. The snare drum on 2&4 is essential to most music these days, but it's only interesting because the player is also playing other things (bass, cymbals..) - if you have a marching snare drummer play 2&4 through the whole show, they would get extremely bored. The other challenge is keeping things together. A single person playing a drumset isn't going to have too much trouble keeping the bass drum in time with the ride cymbal - sure, they may play a part out of time, but there is always one idea of where the beat is. With multiple players, each person has their own idea of the beat, and it's even harder when the players are spread out in different places around the field.

Well the judges this year have marked us down because we don't have a drumset sound throughout the show. Well, as far as I'm concerned, we do. We have drumset swing beats split between all of our different sections, we just don't have the same boring ride pattern going the entire time. I guess I'm just venting because the kids have worked hard and are probably learning more than they would from the simpler parts, but they don't get the credit for it. Aside from the judging part of it, the kids seem to like their show, so things are going pretty well overall.

Ahhh, that's some good blogging therapy :)