Far and wide many have tried, none have done it better.

One of my classes has spent the last few weeks on a very important aspect of being a band director, that of building and sustaining a marching program. Something the school where I teach lacks.  I marched for four years in college, but both in the music department at UCD, and at CSUS where I'm taking credential classes, it's a part of my past that I admit only sheepishly, seeing as the organization that I marched with, the California Aggie Marching Band(uh) is somewhat scorned by the music faculty and the band program at CSUS (which marches corps style) for their lack of... precision.

Granted, my experiences in marching don't come close to what is expected of a high school marching band - the CAMB is a show band; loud, boisterous and full of energy. They don't play standard literature, only arrangements done by bandsmen themselves, mostly of popular music, though the level of music is far above what I've come to expect from high school students.  The shows are charted by the student drum major and I have to say in six years I've yet to see one french curve. What I'm trying to say is that I'm surrounded now by people who march in drum corps and percussion ensembles and stress the importance of discipline and precision and the corps style of marching, and everything I'm learning contradicts my image of what a Marching Band should be. I talked to my instructor after class one day, and in mentioning my marching history, he laughed and joked that he would make sure to provide me with extra resources to help me "undo" my previous predispositions of band.

However, as I'm slowly being conditioned, I spent this weekend at Picnic Day, the one day of the year that the Aggie Band  lives for. The day they get to stand up and say, "Guess what, we're for real." Their parade show this year was tight and precise, surprisingly so, considering their fanfare was in 10/8 (3-2-2-3) followed by arrangements of Styx, Rush, and Boston. Normally I'm shamed into acknowledging that words like "phrasing," "blend," "balance" or "dynamics" have no place in the band - and it's true for the most part (when I want my students to pull out all the stops with dynamics, I say "Band-uh Loud" and they know what I mean) - but on Saturday, I felt pride for the first time in a long time, being an alumnus of the organization.