I hope you all have been doing well since my last post in April. When I originally started this blog, my intent was to post regularly. That clearly did not happen haha. That has not been due to a lack of things to talk about because I have plenty of things to talk about. However, 2021 has kept me very busy and been a pretty good year for me. On the design front, I was involved in 10 marching band shows this year which is a huge step in the right direction after a pretty slim 2020 season. I am also working with 3 marching bands. One of those is West Clermont, where I am start year 3 as percussion director. I was fortunately enough to get back into the drum corps picture writing the front ensemble book for White Sabers, who are competing in the DCA Virtual Season which wraps up this weekend. I also got the opportunity to teach Phantom Regiment this past summer. I was able to spend 4 weeks with them which was reinvigorating to teach at that level again after having nothing the summer before.
Yes, Covid is still a thing and impacting our teaching but hopefully we have all seen growth in our programs. A year ago, we (West Clermont) were a much smaller percussion program at 14 students. Today we are up to 22 students. Our goals are the same - getting everyone playing fundamental skills at a high level. Still just doing flat drums in the battery with impact drums up front, which I am really enjoying. I think most schools don't have kids that "love" bass drum, but we do it because it is "tradition" or " the norm." I am going to do a post on that idea of "tradition" later.
One change I want to talk about a little bit is a mindset change that was kind of forced on the marching arts over the last year. I think last year very few, if any, marching band programs competed due to Covid. We still performed, but found different ways to reach our students and our audiences. If you were like me you focused more on what the students were doing with a little less concern about how well they were doing it. I made it a goal to give the students as much information as possible. At the high school level it was focused around playing and at the drum corps level it was playing but also how to be a better teacher after tour. A lot of information, and time, was also devoted to building better humans. Even though the goals changed, and maybe we changed what we focused on, successes (and growth) were still achieved. Look at the DCI season, it was non-competitive and arguably as good, if not better, than a normal season.
The 2021 marching band season is a return to competitions. Currently, it looks as if the 2022 winter and summer seasons will be competitive as well, so this marching band season is the start of that. I know for myself the changes I made in 2020 are still a driving force for me. I have devoted more time, especially recently, on improving myself and encouraging students to do the same. We have shifted our focus from vocabulary to quality, because the path to greatness is pretty similar regardless of the activity. We are engaging the students and audience, and hopefully that will fulfill the sheets. But at the end of the day, that is the least important part of what we do (to me at least). If the past winter, and summer, have taught me anything it is that when you focus on being great without a number involved, you will be great. Hopefully we all continue that and the numbers just follow since they are a thing again.
I hope you all are experiencing, and enjoying, a successful 2021 marching band season, whatever that means for you and your programs.
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