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Hey there, Band Nerd Guild! It's been a while.

I've got two topics to discuss here. First off, I'm trying out for field commander/drum major, and I need all the help I can get trying out. Last year was the season from hell, and I want to kick some serious a** in tryouts so that I can get the band on the right track again. I've got all the basic info about how to do the different time signatures, but I'd like to know any extra tips that you guys might have as far as technique goes.

WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG STORY.

And now for a tale about the marching season from HELL!! First off, our director was on maternity leave for the entirety of marching band, so we had the choir director (who knew nothing about running a band) take over while she was gone. As if it was bad enough having one person who had no idea what they're doing in charge, our two field commanders were another crisis altogether. One was cocky, arrogant, and totally hypocritical (for example, she would make someone run for PDA and then go and make out with a random guy behind the church that we had band camp at), and spent too much time talking to her many male followers to do what she was supposed to do: lead the band. The other one was pretty much the same story, except she was never there at after school practices due to vocational school, she yelled at the band without reason, and was a lot more of a slut (and, I might add, tried to steal my boyfriend quite uneffectively.). Now, as if THAT wasn't enough, we have a little incident we like to call the Night of 1000 Disasters. We had a festival to go to about 20 minutes away from our school. Unfortunately, there was a body building competition taking place in the school, and they decided to use the band room as their place to oil up with that nasty bronzing oil that smells like moldy coconuts. So we had to file in 4 at a time to grab our uniforms, instruments, hats, raincoats, and shoes while trying to keep our white polo shirts that we have to wear under our uniforms clean from the bronzing oil. In the midst of all this, the fire alarm goes off (no fire, of course), and we all have to shuffle outside, only to find out that our fill-in for the director hadn't called in a bus. Any sensible leader would have canceled our performance, but no! We carpooled there with the kids that could drive and made it there safely, only to find out that the equipment manager had packed the sousaphone that doesn't work (we only have one sousa player). So the band finally gets together and we start to march down to the field, and a tornado touches down a few miles away. It starts to pour down rain a little later, and only then do we go inside the school to seek shelter. The pouring rain developed into a horrible thunderstorm, and it starts hailing golf balls. Since no one can wait until the storm passes over, the fill-in decides that we should leave during the worst part of the storm "before it gets worse." As we're going to leave, the power goes out. We leave anyway, and while walking to their car, someone almost gets struck by lightning. Eight people's rides end up leaving without them (one of them me), and of course, the fill-in is the first to leave. Finally, we all get out of there, only to witness a car crash on the way back between two band members (they and all their instruments were okay). And that, my friends, is the Night of 1000 Disasters.

Discuss:
Field commanding tips
Band disaster stories.

eek wow

wow...

wow...

ok... field commanders.
yes it would be nice to have a good attitude and personality. it seems that you've experienced what is it like to have a bad FC... use it to your advantage and watch yourself when/if you become a field conductor... is what i'm doing right? fair? try and look at what you're doing from the bands perspective.

Commands are yet another thing. yelling at your band won't do much. When calling commands, call commands... not orders. An order is a direction to do something with an implied threat attached to it. people don't like threats. With your commands, be firm and know what you want from you group, and voice it correctly, no threats attached. you'll get a better response. Also, the way you communicate with your band will reflect back at you... the same as when you're conducting, if you do it expressively then they'll play expressively. when you ask something from them, anything from them , the way you ask them will change a lot of how they will respond.

getting good at the physical aspects of the art is important as well.conducting and whatever parade form if you do parade, practicing and getting good at what you do... practicing whistles and oral commands so that you're prepared before you even step out for auditions.

get a checklist of everything you need for a show so you know exactly what to bring... and make sure that the people you assign to handle it all know what they're doing and are reliable as well.

you can get more stuff about it on this website.
http://www.onlinedrummajor.com/infocenter.html

2 FC! we have four
2 are senors that where from last year
and 2 juniors that tryed out the year beofre in the off sesion
our director is also a nazi ((we think)) we have a band director
another director
2 guys on flags
and during band camp a small army of collage kids