In 2005 I was a new teacher at a high school with about 50 students in band and no marching band. Everybody was required to play in pep band during football games. We grew to 80 students the 2nd year, then 100, then more than 100. I was trying to do everything myself! It was insane.
I created a drum major/student conductor position. It allowed me to monitor attendance and behavior while the student was conducting. A few years later, we developed a marching band. The drum major position required an audition and additional training by me once selected. In those early days I had too many pep tunes – we did not perform them well. It’s better to do eight pep tunes well than to have 20 that you don’t do well. You can continue to add more. I eventually ended up adding many more. Here are some rules and tips for playing at football games.
- Don’t play when the ball is in motion. Have your drum major practice making a lot of cuts. You have to teach them not to hesitate. The first game you might need to stand by their side and yell out “cut now.” The drum major has to be bold starting and stopping songs.
- Play right after an extra point. There’s usually a little bit of extra time. The clock has stopped. Offense and defense are switching out.
- Play during a timeout. They tend to be a little bit longer. However, don’t play when there’s an injury on the field. Some fans look at it as disrespectful. How do you know when there’s an injury? Typically the players will become very quiet and everyone takes a knee. They’re waiting to see if the injured person is going to be okay.
- Play the recognizable parts of a song. Don’t use up time rehearsing the unrecognizable parts of the song. For example, the ditty that opens up Smoke On The Water is recognizable, but most people don’t know the rest of the song. Focus on what the crowd will know. Many pop songs are like that – take an 8 measure section of it to play.
- Remind students about balance. When you are playing a ditty and everyone is on the melody, you don’t need to blast your sound. Tell students to fit their sound into the clarinets or the low brass. Good tone and sound quality are important whether playing indoors or out.
- Play as often as you can. Most students want to play. The crowd wants to hear the band. Sometimes there is someone in the box who likes to play recorded music. I have often had a talk with that person about the band needing to be the main thing we hear rather than recorded music. Too much recorded music and band members start saying, “Why are we here?” You do have to be aware of chops endurance. If you have a halftime show don’t wear the students out before the show. For first down, we always played “Tomahawk Chop”. The fans loved it. The band loved it. We painted an old bass drum in school colors. That drum became the opener for “Tomahawk Chop” every time. The honor of starting it went to the percussion section leader. If your community has something special like that, dive into it.
- Get to know the coaches and the cheer captain. Get to know the coach before the first game, and find out if they have likes and dislikes. Most of them could care less what the band is doing. Don’t take this personally. They’re focused on the game. But I’ve had some coaches who were very specific about something. I tried to honor their requests. Have the drum major meet with the cheer captain every single time before the game begins. This helps eliminate misunderstandings. They get to know each other, talk and plan. That way, there are no hurt feelings. It’s very easy to play over the top of cheerleaders. Then they get mad. Then the captains get mad. The drum major may not even realize he’s playing over the cheerleaders. This avoids most problems.
I once had a student who was on the football team and in the pep band. He tried to tell me all these things that were important to do, and why we should play this song at this spot. And we should do this here. And this helps to encourage the players by doing this certain thing. I remember thinking, “wow, that’s a lot to be worried about”. I went to talk to a coach. I asked the coach about what the student was telling me. I wanted to honor this football player who was also in the band. The coach responded with “There’s a band playing?” (“I’m exaggerating slightly).
- Don’t use a whistle. The referees are going to get angry at you if you do because it will interfere with what they’re doing. Some ways that you can communicate with the band:
- number the songs and then have the drum major hold up their fingers for a number or a sign with a number on it.
- Have large cue cards with a shortened version of the song’s name
- Where are you going to be located? Are you going to actually be in the stands? On the track in front of the stands? I’ve done both. In some ways the stands were nicer, but as we grew we became too big. Our “audience” is the fans, so when we moved to the track, we faced the stands. We developed a signal so that the students could watch the game and be ready in a short time to come to attention and play. I found it worked out best to keep students in a marching band column set-up.
In closing, make sure that whoever’s leading the music – whether it’s you or the drum major – is bold with starting songs and bold with cutting songs.
James is the author of Almost Everything I’ve Learned About Teaching Band. He has served private, suburban, and Title 1 schools and now teaches at a charter school. Find out more about James at www.jamesdivine.net Subscribe to his podcast Almost Everything I’ve Learned About Teaching Band.