High School Band Marching Technique

[Jupster]

Hello,

I'm a brass and visual tech at a local high school in Florida. When I taught at the school last season, we harped technique and they did fairly decent with it. (Straight leg approach). But I did happen to notice a fair amount of phasing and out of step across the board. When I start the season out this year, do you think I should harp being in step first or start with technique??? Obviously, I know this is high school and you are going to have kids that just dont get it but what do you think would make the group succeed the most? In Step and trying to throw in technique later in the season or vise versa?

Thanks to all who reply. This is helping me become a better teacher :)

[Garrettt]

Definitely being in step first. the technique doesnt matter if they are out of step. But yeah, "feet with the hands" (hands of the drum major) is the foundation. It'll make them much cleaner musically too!

[Toby]

In step first. Technique second.

[Jupster]

Okay, so any specific exercises you would recommend on this subject? Just regular marching fundamental things like 8 steps foward blahblahblah? Or maybe some other exercise that has worked well for you

[Garrettt]

Be creative. Make some exercises that force them to watch the drum majors hands. Have the drum major have a met in headphones and then conduct for them. You could count them off like 8 clicks from a wood block then go, but then have them do the exercise in complete silence. It'll condition them to watch for time and hopefully be more together. My guess is that right now they are listening for time so this will be rough at first, but in the end its a great fundamental exercise for timing and will help them lots on the field.

[Stu]

Okay, so any specific exercises you would recommend on this subject? Just regular marching fundamental things like 8 steps foward blahblahblah? Or maybe some other exercise that has worked well for you

In the movie Mr. Holland's Opus he placed a football helmet on a student and then pounded out time on the helmet with a mallet. Try that

[Minimaster]

Technique first, you have to teach the subdivision of the technique properly first.

Of Course Technique matters if they are out of step, it makes no sense to first be in time all doing different technique, because you then fix it and start over.

If a kid know's first where and how his feet need to be on 1, e, and, and a, timing will be able to be facilitated much more easily than trying to synchronize the wide variations that will be present without proper technique training.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Minimaster

[John Murray]

Those straight legs don't look nice when you're out of step.

[Kamarag]

The very first thing you should do, before you do anything else related to movement, is have them walk in time. WALK. Not march. Bang a gock block, or play music with a nice, easy tempo (100-110) and just...walk. Straight line/follow-the-leader works really well.

[corpsband]

Pulse first.

Technique second.

Learning correct technique is harder when the marcher cannot identify and internalize pulse.

In reality you'll probably start teaching technique even when/if you have marchers who struggle with pulse. But by starting with pulse you'll at least have identified the pulse-challenged marchers.