Rethinking Band Camp: Why Getting the Dots Down Isn't Enough

For those of us who’ve been in the marching arts since the ’80s, band camp was a time of simple goals—dots on the field, notes in the air. Band camp was that time in late July when we stood at pseudo-attention under the blazing sun, skin sizzling, while each chart’s coordinates were carefully painted onto the asphalt.

Well into the ’90s, each camp’s goal was pretty much the same: get as many dots on the field as possible—and that was okay, for the most part. Instrumentalists weren’t tangled in fancy choreography, and the color guard? Well, they were strategically whisked away—no stealing the spotlight from the musicians all day! If you didn’t have your show fully on the field by the first contest, it didn’t matter. You could stand and play the last song until the end. Today, we have to integrate the color guard in wind ensemble vignettes that are well-choreographed and thought out, connecting the audience to the theme of the production.

The marching sheet is gone, replaced with a movement sheet that demands variety in movement styles and choreographic devices. As a result, if you only stand and play through the show without weaving in the choreography and connecting the ideas, it now costs you far more than it once did.

Nowadays, I encourage my clients to break their total band camp days and show charts into manageable daily portions. By focusing on just a handful of charts each day—where they memorize music, nail choreography, and lock in their dots—by the end of a week, they might have 25 charts solid—essentially a full song or more. By the end of each day, the portion of the show should form a thoughtful, polished snippet of the full production.

I recommend a daily rehearsal plan with a visual block in the morning—starting with stretch and dance basics for movement—then tackling around five charts a day. Five charts may not seem like much, but if you’re intentional—charting one to two, then marking halfway, quarter, and three-quarter points—you create a structure that sharpens the show over time.

Before lunch, rehearse wind and guard choreography, along with any prop or staging elements. In the afternoon, with winds in sectionals, percussion on their own, and guard refining choreography, everyone focuses solely on those five charts—music and movement—so it all comes together in the final block of the day. Each new day begins with a review, then moves forward. By week’s end, you’ll have 25 charts in an early-stage form of the show as you’ll perform it at championships.

More than likely, even after two weeks and 50 charts, there will be snags that keep you from finishing the full program—and that’s okay. Those details can be addressed in rehearsals once school begins. If you only perform your first two songs at your first contest, at least they’ll be fully realized, giving judges something complete to evaluate. However, if you rush to get every chart on the field and then scramble to add choreography and cohesion later, what you present feels incomplete—and the score will reflect it.

In the end, a show is more than just dots on a field or notes in the air—it’s the story you tell with every step and every phrase. This is a different era, with different expectations than the patterns many of us grew up with. It’s not just about finishing—it’s about crafting something layered, connected, and intentional from the very beginning. If you build it that way, piece by piece, your performers won’t just learn a show—they’ll understand it. And when they understand it, the audience will too. Best of luck as you bring your vision to life.

It's All in the Feet

Sometimes, our worst enemy in teaching can be the thought that we're above using devices that seem pretty elementary. When I was in drum corps (one of history's best brass lines, I might add), our caption head emphasized daily that the breath before we play was more than just a suggestion. He even went so far as to create a technique that helped the performers get the most amount of air as well as being used for timing to enter any given phrase. It was a simple, basic method that was so important to him that he repeated "Breathe–Dah!" in rehearsal more than our drum major called us to attention.

That's a key difference between Box Four and Box Five—application. Many instructors move on to intermediate and advanced material, and only occasionally reinforce the fundamentals. To see a great example we all deal with, go no farther than the students' feet. Basics block sets the foundation for pulse or beat but rarely gets into rhythm. That's where our biggest issues arise. Sure, we have to ensure that our students can march in time when we're isolating the beat. Once we have established that, what exercises can we use to demonstrate the use of the feet to maintain the pulse while simultaneously playing a rhythmic passage?

In 2005, while Program Coordinator of the Blue Stars Drum and Bugle Corps, there was a recurring melody that moved from section to section. The rhythm wasn't too complicated for musicians, but I noticed that every time a section would play it their feet would fall miserably out of sync. So, I stopped the horn line one day, put them on the 5 yard line, and had them march to the opposite end zone while singing the rhythm and marking time between repetitions. Rather than use the word "dah" or numbers, I had them sing the appropriate foot for each down-beat and the rest of the subdivisions as normal. By the time they got to the other side of the field they were feeling how the rhythms of the melody were overlayed on the driving pulse of their feet. Let's look at this example:

This excerpt is from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Breakfast Machine.

Left–Right–Left–Right! Left and right and left (breathe)! Left and right and left and right and, Left–Right–Left–Right! Left–Right–Left–Right! Left and right and left (breathe)! Left and right and left and right and, Left (breathe) Left–Right (breathe) Right (breathe) Right.

It's so simple. It's elementary. But it's so easily overlooked as a viable and useful tool. Whenever I have the opportunity, I encourage students to write their steps under their music so they can think of their feet whenever they look at their music. The next time you see one of your students marching out of time or on the wrong foot, maybe give this method a try. I'm sure your student will thank you.

Good God Girl, Get a Gun!!

Back in the day—and by "day" I mean a time before Reagan promised trickle down economics would work and Woody Harrelson had hair—when you dropped your equipment during a show you left it there and continued your routine. The pursuit of synchronized precision was such that performers were expected to go on with the show, even if they left the show somewhere else! Judges watched every move giving a "tick" for each mistake they saw. Interestingly, George Bonfiglio spoke at one of our corps banquets and told us that Don Pesceone was such a scrupulous judge—even so far as to give negative scores—that DCI chose him as the first executive director, mostly to keep him from judging!

Nowadays, if you drop, pick it up and get back into the choreography as quickly as possible. Gone are the "tick sheets" of yesteryear, replaced with credit for recovery. And thank goodness! Audiences shouldn't be forced to stare at an abandoned rifle, waiting to see how many clarinets trip over it. No matter how precise the performer who lost that rifle can "air guard," the static prop lying alone on the astroturf steals the spotlight every time.

For decades now, most instructors have taught their students the importance of recovery. Buuuut, every now and then the antiquated air guard philosophy sneaks its way back in. Imagine my horror last weekend—IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND AND TWENTY SIX—watching a unit who had a rifle drop and pantomime her imaginary rifle along with her floor mates! I wanted to scream a slightly modified Latrice Royale favorite, "Good God Girl, Get a Gun!"

Let me try to explain it for the newbies who were apparently taught by some really old-bies: dance—or color guard—is very simply the art of linking poses and gestures. In a typical sixteen count phrase there are simply sixteen poses that need to be synchronized with other performers. Imagine that you take a picture on every count, you would have sixteen pictures (32 for the seasoned instructor who knows to also clean the &-counts). If a performer drops their equipment on count 4 and leaves it there, only to air guard the last twelve counts, TWELVE pictures are not the same as everyone else! If they pick it back up and get back into the choreography by count 8, they've only messed up four pictures. And yes, pick it up EVEN IF it's the last count of a song, but do it very, VERY quickly.

And finally, the judges' sheets credit recovery. In the five box system, Box Five says, "mistakes rarely occur, but when they do recovery it's effortless." Let's teach our students to recover professionally and if they drop, get back in and make the audience forget it happened. This is also a nice metaphor about life—for all of us old-bies who learned the hard way.

Get In Line!

Nothing smacks like a clean flag line! Watching the unison of flags spinning, cutting planes, and articulating musical hits has got to have a street value for addicts, am I right? Sadly, one of the best ways to get an ensemble to unify their technique and choreographic material is hardly used by young instructors who default to the ubiquitous block. If you’re looking to find flag dirt to clean out of your flagline, look no further than the Almighty File!

I remember hearing George Zingali yell, “If your form is clean it will make your flag work look cleaner!” (I’m not going to try to figure out how to type with a Boston accent.) Even if an ensemble is going to stand in a fundamentals block, taking the time to figure out the exact distance and interval between ranks and files is just as important as getting everyone to understand how to twist the heck out of their wrists for that never-before-seen toss you can’t wait to put in your show. Everyone rehearses their choreography in a block, and why shouldn’t they? We need room to swing our equipment without finding out the hard way if our school has a reliable dental plan.

But if you take a moment to put a group in a file, whether it be basics or a choreographic phrase, you’ll see inconsistencies that you might have missed in the block. As a beloved mentor once said to me, “If it’s clean in a file it’ll be gold in a block.”

Just take a look at this simple drop spin exercise in a file and tell me you could see the positions of the elbows, the rotation of the wrists, and the placement on the vertical line as easily in a block. Give it a try next rehearsal!

The Untarnished Trophies

Three years marching beneath icons of the marching arts world—who, as grumbling rivals from other corps worn out from manning bingo parlors would mutter, were the finest talent money could buy. Star of Indiana got a lot of hate for being funded by a rich guy, no matter how benevolent his intentions—as if personal valets substituted for each us in daily sixteen-hour melanoma-inducing rehearsals so we could sip mint juleps in the shade. Imagine your age-out performance on the night of World Championships after presenting some of the hardest material to hit the field being booed by an audience that seemed to prefer Christmas carols rattling the August-burnt Cotton Bowl. Still, after two and a half months and around 15,000 miles of touring with the Best That Money Can Buy, relentlessly taking away our laundry days to get another ten minutes of rehearsal time, I would have wasted a wish granted by a genie in a lamp to put my euphonium where stadium lights don’t shine. But, there in the brutal Texas humidity shortly after our corps director placed a gold medal around my neck, I saw those same instructors and caption heads who pushed me to my limits all summer long, gazing upon their students with pride. They weren’t slapping high fives or patting each other’s narcissistic backs. Each of them stood on the sidelines with the unmistakeable aura of love and pride.

Those names were gold on a resumé and, more often than not, a reason for sitting a few minutes longer in an interview with many wide-eyed band directors. Yet, one name has been left from my resumés—more important to my development as an instructor than any of the DCI Hall of Famers under whose precious tutelage I was raised. Sharon.

Sharon was a seventh grade clarinetist in John Aylsworth’s marching Blackhawk Brigade from French Lick, Indiana. When every horn and pair of eyes were steadfastly focused at the drum major at the end of a rehearsal segment, Sharon stood immitating the intensity of her fellow band members…facing about forty-five degrees anywhere else! “Sharon, you need to point your body toward Trevor up on the podium!” I would shout. “Got it, Marc!” she would respond energetically though without adjusting her position. “Now, please!” my command competed with a field full of giggles.

The Blackhawk Brigade was the next to the last unit to leave the Hoosier Dome that night at Indiana State finals, surprising everyone—including the staff and me—with a second place finish. In the airlock, every single set of eyes I saw peering back at me from under black shakos were full of tears. EYES! WITH PRIDE! never echoed through my brain as loudly as that moment. I strode in front of the band beside Mr. Aylsworth’s turbo-charged wheelchair and into the parking lot of buses. Just after dismissal, one senior girl came up to me. “Sharon tapped me as we were stepping into the airlock and asked, ‘Hey, what place did we get?’”

Fastforward to the first day of rehearsals the next season: “Marc, let’s talk,” John said after sending the band to the practice parking lot. I followed him to a the opposite side of a service building, out of sight of any students. He whipped his chair around and looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, “Sharon wants to be in the color guard.” It bounced off of me. But John continued to stare at me with that “what the heck are we gonna do?” expression until the memories of Sharon’s regular blunders in last season’s rehearsals screamed out, “I can hide a clarinet, but I can’t hide a great big piece of fabric waving out of time!”

John told me that it was his personal vow to help every single one of his students learn whatever instrument or piece of equipment they desired, even at the expense of losing competitions. And, unchanged by my pleas, I relented and swore I’d find a way to teach Sharon color guard.

At first, I didn’t think it was possible for Sharon to stand in time, let alone swing a flag in sync with her fellow guard members. But episodically, I found that once I could find a way for Sharon to understand what her flag and body were doing—which meant I had to learn to cycle through many different explanations, trying each one on Sharon like we were trying on marching shoes—she’d remember and repeat with consistency. We spent so many one-on-one rehearsals outside of the band room finding ways that turned her lightbulb on, and it stayed on…every repetition thereafter.

To this day, every time I watch the State Finals performance video, I couldn’t tell you what anyone else on that field was doing…because my soul won’t let me do anything other than watch Sharon’s mistakeless performance. She nailed every slam, every spin, and caught every single toss. Sharon taught me that there are many ways to approach an ensemble, but there is one way to approach the student. Amidst the legendary names of DCI’s finest giants stands this awkward red-headed girl from French Lick, Indiana—one of the best teacher’s I’ve ever had.

A trophy is nice—for a while. But trophies can break and need to be cleaned from time to time. But, if you surrender yourself to discover the way that a student learns and add that to your soul, you will find a trophy that just can’t be tarnished thirty-four years later.