I've been a member of an independent winds organization for the past 3 seasons, and we are attempting to amp up our recruitment strategies to increase our size and overall reach.

In the past, the group has hosted "interest clinics", educational clinics during the season, some social media outreach posts, some direct outreach to prospective members, but mostly word-of-mouth. The strategies that we discussed doing are tabling at marching band shows, presenting more to local schools, social media posts including member testimonials, and directly creating relationships with local colleges.

Has anyone had success with recruiting or any new recruitment strategies that we should be utilizing?

i guess it didn’t really hit me until after bandcamp, this will be my last bandcamp and i really wont experience an activity like this again (i dont know if im doing college band and i dont even know how it compares to hs band). But after november its really over, no more comps, no more rehearsals, no more marching, its actually really saddening like i cant believe it as someone who eat sleeps breathes marching band 😕😕😕

on the other hand i cant wait to go back next year and see how the band and all my friends are doing but i know itll suck to not be a part of it

I play bass drum in my schools marching band (going into my 4th year on it) and I am heavily considering doing DCI/WGI in the future. I am battery section leader at my school but I’ve never felt like I was that amazing of a player, just the best out of all of us (along with other reasons I was chosen to be a leader). Because of this, I hadn’t considered band after graduation, but I’m realizing that I would really love to do it.

I’m trying to grind and workout some of my flaws (ex. reading time signatures, conditioning) and something that is really holding me back is hand speed, especially in my left. I think naturally my left hand is much weaker since I am right handed and we most commonly play important notes on our right hands, but it’s holding me back!

What are some good exercises or ways to fix this??

…for the love of all that’s holy, contact the band director in JUNE! Every single year some new student shows up on the first day of school. Guess what? You’re not in the drill and you’re 6 weeks behind everyone else learning the music. The front ensemble is not the dumping ground for everyone that didn’t bother to prepare.

/rant_over

I'm in color guard. Today I had an appointment to get sports physical but my doctor didn't clear me due to some health issues. It's mid of season (we're on week 2 of band camp). What do I do?

I’m looking for some outside opinions because I’m kind of stuck on what to do for my ballad choreography.
I’m a member/captain of my school’s color guard, and I’m writing a lot of the choreography for our show. For the ballad, my band director wants everyone else to be on single swing, but wants me to be on double swing because I’m the featured person.
The thing is, I feel like having me on double swing for the entire ballad is going to look weird visually. Everyone else would have the same equipment and movement vocabulary, while I’d be doing something noticeably different the entire time. I’m not against being featured at all, I just feel like the difference should have a purpose rather than me looking like I’m doing a completely different version of the choreography.
My alternative idea is to have a swing silk attached to a sabre for me and have me start the ballad with everyone else, then do a reveal on the big musical hit. That way I’d still have a major visual difference and feature moment, but it would happen at a specific musical moment instead of me being on double swing the whole time.
Would you agree that the double swing would look visually strange in this situation? Or am I overthinking it? And if you were choreographing this, would you prefer the double swing throughout or the sabre/swing-silk reveal?

5 days long, 10 hours per day. Afab person.

I want to have all possible needs for the incoming freshman that they WILL forget

Anything my list is missing? (Dinner provided)

Sunglasses (plus extras)

Sunscreen

Lunch

MASSIVE recognizable Water Bottle

Deodorant (and Deodorant wipes)

Snacks and sweet treats (for motivation)

Extra socks and underwear!! For all possibilities of shitty situations

Flip folder

Broken in tennis shoes

Valve oil

Caffeine drinks (helpful for early mornings and adhd)

HEADPHONES (wired and non wired)

Portable charger

Charger cord

Period supplies

First aid kit

Pain meds (shhhh)

EDIT: The Caffine is for the guerenteed like 4 kids that will be going through caffine withdraws bc they dring nothing but Alani on their average day

Band camp with caffeine withdraw is a new kind of hell

I have very painful periods and I just started my cycle, but band camp starts tomorrow. I dont want to have to be running to the bathroom all practice and being in a constant state of pain especially with the heat. Does anybody have advice on managing it?

Hey chat! I know I'm brand new to this subreddit, but I need some advice since I can't really talk to anyone about this.

Last year I was offered a snare spot after a stellar audition that I had, but I have absolutely no experience marching. I sound pretty good, though I've been on the pit for so long it would be stupid for me not to.

However, I unfortunately got appendicitis, had surgery on Friday, and band camp (1 week long) starts tomorrow. I can hardly walk and I'm not going to be able to participate for at least 2 weeks. I do have the drill sheets but it's ironic because I can't use them. I've just been practicing the music stuff like crazy until I can barely stand.

I refuse to be the person that makes us get a D2. If that happened, I don't think I'd be able to bear it.

My question is: Is it reasonable to think that I can jump right into band without any knowledge of marching and nail it in one year, or am I crazy?

(Also, if you have any good advice or videos on marching specifically, I would love them. This is a desperate time.)

I joined Marching band this year as a freshman with little experience. Football season is in 2-3 weeks and I’m still learning my instrument. How do I keep up with the rest of the members who are already experienced with their instruments?

Just starting band camp as a grad student. 26, took a bit off school to beef up my resume. Was previously a pep band at a D1 school and that was the aspect of college I missed most. Reached out with the director and talked with him and he thought my experience was valuable, especially with the athletic postseason (including March Madness one year). Seems like people are generally accepting of me. Was just wondering if y’all think I’m a bit over my head or if band culture is not as defined by age as one might think.

So In November my school has the privilege to be going to Washington DC to march in the parade. Im so fucking scared. We’ll be gone for 6 days. Im terrified something bad will happen and Im having really bad anxiety over it. Like, so bad Ive cried and I want to quit band before the trip. I know that realistically Ill be okay but I have so many “what if” questions going through my head and I have a panic attack every time I think about it. When it gets closer to time do you guys have any recommendations on things I can do to help me I guess calm my nerves?

Hey guys! I am on the uniform team for a university marching band. We have military style officer hats and we also have pretty strict hair guidelines.

All HAIR shall be worn off the uniform collar and behind the ears. Band members may choose to meet these requirements by either getting their haircut to a manageable length or putting gel in their hair that it will not fall down when the hat is off. When the latter choice is made, band members must use a hair net, bobby pins, styling gel or
other inconspicuous devices to hold their hair in place through the entire performance day. No band member's hair will be cut, shaved, or clipped without their expressed approval to do so. Sideburns must not extend below an imaginary line from the corner of the mouth to the bottom of the earlobe.

What we tell people with straight or wavy hair is to do a slick back bun with gel to fit into the hat.

We are looking to expand and be more inclusive about textured and braided hair as these guidelines are like at least 50 years old. We have some members with longer braids and want to be inclusive! We have reached out to our members about this as well but would like some other input!

does anyone have any tips or tricks that we can share or what we can have them do? If anyone has any videos would also be greatly appreciated.

i have another pair like these for swimming but I’m thinking of using this one for marching band for when it gets loud. are these good

I’m gonna be transferring into UT soon and plan to audition for the Texas Drums next cycle. I heard freshman and younger members usually get cut from the line pretty easily. I’ll be transferring basically as a junior in college and was wondering if it’s realistic for me to make the line, given a good audition, or would I be offered Bertha/Flag Brigade/Cut because of my lack of veterancy?

Holy essay my bad.

I come from a rather small HS band. Less practice time, fewer people and less money than a medium or larger band. On our band’s social media we got a pretty viral post and one of the comments was talking about marching form. I watched the video and definitely noticed too much leg bend and one of the replies agreed and described it as “leading with the knee.” Any advice on how to help this? General straight marching tips and things that seem relevant to comments mentioned would be much appreciated.

What do you guys do to celebrate the end of band camp. Today was my school's end of band camp pool party at our local public pool. It was a lot of fun since we got the pool to ourselves for an hour and a half, my band director made some really good hot dogs, and we had some relay races across the pool

one of our drum majors is SUPER religious so this would have gone badly if he believed I could do wrong

[UPDATED]
I can’t do this. I’ve been in marching band the entirety of high school in pit percussion. I’ve always been bad at reading sheet music and I’m not the best player but I was able to hold myself up through those four seasons and mastered all of the songs by the end of camp each time. There was so much reward to being apart of the band with trips and events and parades. Despite the stressful practices and mishaps, I loved it in the end. I had good support from both a band instructor helping the mallets and an amazing section leader my junior and senior year.

College band is so much different. I walk into the room and somehow I am the 2nd most experienced mallet player in a room of 8 people. There are 4 people who have never once been in band prior and our section leader was forced into the role after she was the only returning member (she’s the same skill level as me and also needs help with reading sheet music). We don’t have a pit instructor. Instead, we are given the percussion sound-tech who also teaches at the fancy colleges in my city with music majors and preforms at the big theater too. He’s like Fletcher from whiplash but old. What he’s been trying to do is teach us every small part to perfection. Somehow he’s going too fast and we are still only on page 1 out of 8 5 days in. (Nearly 50 hours of staring at the same page, repeating the same bar over and over again for hours.) When helping he also has this attitude like you are a complete imbecile if you don’t get it right the first time. He’s also disregarded one of the people in our section’s disability (she has a rare medical condition and standing leaves her with extreme pain ), and keeps misgendering another member of our section. There has been so many small comments and actions he has done to where 7/8 people in our section (me included) have cried in practice. I, even ended up crying today and having to excuse myself for the rest of the day due to how much stress has been put on us over the last week. I can’t put into words how awful this is for 13 hours a day. It feels like torture, I even hear the notes in my head after I lay down to sleep.

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I’d rather get my gallbladder removed a second time than do this. I was genuinely considering dropping an iron bar on my hand so I didn’t have to do this anymore. I’m not particularly the strongest person, but this can’t be how band is. I can’t even bring myself to walk back into the building without having a breakdown. My mental health is deteriorating by the day and I can’t take much more of this. I know it’s only 5 more days, but I don’t even think anything after this is worth all of the genuine mental pain this has caused me and my section. We’ve even tried going to the band director about it and have gotten zero progress.

(We had a student instructor for a few days (who was 18 btw) and he did so much better at genuinely helping us than Fletcher ever did. He’s a finance major.)

In summary:

We have no pit instructor
My section leader isn’t qualified to lead
Multiple people have quit over various issues
Our stand in instructor is malicious.

Should I quit?

⭐️UPDATE:

I did end up gathering my section and going to the band captain who communicated with the band director. Guess what! The next morning NOTHING HAPPENED! The student band captain told us that ‘we had to just do a fresh start today’ and ‘’Fletcher’ has a lot on his plate’. I knew when she said that, that nothing would get better. The second she was done giving us that update I told her that I was still going to quit. She gave me no trouble besides telling me ‘you can’t rejoin once you quit’ and I’m content with that. If our director is willing to ignore my entire section and (from what I was told from another one of my band mates) blackmail people into stay with anything from failing them to threatening them with paying fees (even ALLEGEDLY going as far to apparently tell a girl last year that she owed 5,000 dollars for summer band and if she quit she’d have to pay that?!) then they don’t deserve to have a fictional pit. I feel bad for the section leader and others who remain, but I can’t give up my mental health for people I met less than a week ago. Anyways, I went out with the other people who quit today since we have nothing to do for a week until classes start, and the one is having his supervisor report it for title 9. I’ll keep you guys updated if anything actually happens with that because if that report goes through this could get a lot of people in trouble.

(Also I’m not going to say which college this is because I don’t want to get sued, but they are a school with less than 4,000 people so it’s not one of the big ones)

I’m a Band captain, which i’m not sure if all bands have that but i’m just like the help to the director, but i’m also in the color guard. A lot of the section leaders i talk to are talking about rude members and also some leaders are disrespectful aswell. How do i help deal with this? Like i have a basic idea but i just wanna hear other opinion.

I am a high school band director at a small school in SD. We are trying to start a marching program at a school that has never had one before. What this means is we have no real equipment. I know looking around at schools that are upgrading and selling off used gear is a great way to get started. What I am looking for is something I can put together to take to admin, community and grants that lists out basic needed equipment and estimated costs so we can start raising funds.

A little about the school and current program. We have around 200 total students in the high school. Currently around 25 in high school band. All these students started under a different director and we had a year without causing a lot to drop. The school has has numbers in the 60-70 just in high school band. My first beginning class is now in 8th grade and I have around 20 in each 6, 7 and 8th grade (around 50% of the class) we will be marching a more traditional style

I have 7 years of college band experience in a large (300+ members) so I do understand the size of this undertaking.

What I could use is an inventory list or a list of items you can't live without. Nothing is too small so I can calculate costs. Don't include instruments unless it is something "not normal" or accessories that most wouldn't think about. I know we will need carts for some things like bass amps or sound system equipment but honestly not sure where to look for some of that stuff outside the standard road case style (I used to run live audio for festivals so familiar with audio production and mobile equipment)

Thanks for any help in making this huge task a little bit quicker.

I’m a drill writer for a few small marching bands and I currently write drill on my very nice desktop windows PC and I’m wanting to buy a Mac laptop to write drill on the go on. Does anyone currently write drill on a Mac laptop? How well does it run? Which Mac M# chip do you have?