MisterNick

Eh...phrasing and musicality is what Solo & Ensemble is for. I know when it comes to region auditions, you could have no musical expression save for what's on the page, but as long as you cross every "t" and dot every "i" you should rank highly. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Many of my professors in my college have a few qualms with the all-state audition process, but that's another rant.

My sentiments exactly... I looked it up on IMDB, and I couldn't believe it! *groan* http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0436058/fullcredits fyi, the guy credited for the music is named Robert Folk. Maybe Downey submitted a score, but it got rejected. Either way, this movie has been regulated to straight-to-video heck and should thus be avoided like the plague.

They probably have a whole bunch of concert bands, I know Duncanville has 5 bands, and Kingwood probably has 5 or 6. As far as ideal band size, I'd like to have 150-180 in my band. You can actually get a lot done with that kind of size (look at DCI).

Yeah, I saw it twice on opening night! I'm re-reading "Order of the Phoenix" right now. Many music majors at my school are what I like to call "Potterheads," so don't knock it. ...and yeah, the book was loads better, but I was satisfied with what they put into it.

While it's true that most military bands learn the drill by hand, Waymon Bullock (former Lufkin director and Drill-Writer for Nac High) invented his own military drill-writing software. While he's still perfecting it, a lot of band directors still prefer to do their own drill-writing by hand. As for glide-stepping, as far as military bands go, that's specific to Lufkin, because a lot of military bands do have a "bounce in their step"; it's a way to tell if everyone is marching in step. If there is someone out of step, their head will "bob" in the opposite way of everyone else.

You know, I was talking about this back in the "Military Band" thread. That corps-style marching today is just an evolution from the old-school military-style. I have old videos of my band from the 80's, when the band high-stepped marking time. And they would start with a march, then do a pop-tune, then a concert transcription. Pretty different from what bands do nowadays. Of course If by some time travel freak, old school band people would see what bands are doing now, they'd probably wet themselves just the same. Edit: Just saw LD Bell's 1963 show...Bell marching military...that's a hoot!

Well, in college we tend to do things a bit differently, like having concert bands in both fall and spring. Anyways, here are some possible programs that our top two bands are going to perform this spring: Variations on America - Charles Ives Suite Francaise - Darius Milhaud Pavane for a Dead Princess - Maurice Ravel (awesome, awesome, awesome french horn solo) unfortunately, I didn't audition for any spring concert bands, but I'll be auditioning for one of the spring jazz bands. Also, I was wondering, what does everyone think of orchestral transcriptions?

Well, we had a lot of discussion about this in my percussion methods class; essentially, corps-style marching today is a huge evolution from military style. Usually along the lines of: One year: hey, let's try facing front the entire show The year after that: hey, let's try doing a curve formation instead of a block The year after that: hey, let's try playing something other than marches and so on... I'm kind of glad that this came up, because East TX is the only part of TX (possibly the country) that have high school bands march this style. And I'm glad that Nac High was brought up (even though I'm not a Nac high graduate), but they're pretty much a prime example of a military band thinking outside the box (or block). Gate swings, wedges, triangles, stuff I didn't think you could do. I kind of wish they would go to NAMMB (the National Association of Military Marching Bands Invitational). Unfortunately, the farthest they go is UIL competition.

I like the "Lord of the Rings" show idea, but my idea would be in addition to the film score, add in Johann DeMeijj's "Lord of the Rings" symphony too. A good show I think would work, and one that I'm arranging as I type is music from "The Wizard of Oz" combined with Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" My working title is "Dark Side of the Rainbow"

Yeah, honestly that's the conception involving most military bands. Mainly because a lot of military bands tend to do "safe" drills (dragging the field, a few counter-marches) just enough to get a 1. With a lot of the bigger bands (Lufkin, Kingwood, even Lindale), there is a little more risk to the drill. A lot of those directors are trying to get rid of the whole "if you've seen one military band you've seen them all" idea that a lot of people in East TX harbor.

Also it depends on region to region... Some parts of TX have so many students from so many schools that are auditioning that they have to have a district level auditions. The hiarchy goes like this: (district) region (pre-area) area state the ones in parentheses are the ones that don't really exist in the smaller regions. Also, I've heard that some of the bigger regions (like 3 and 20) have scales and sightreading in their audtions. I'm wondering if this is true in some of your cases.

I hope everyone is doing well and manages to stay safe from the hurricane. I live in Nacogdoches, about 2-1/2 hours away from Houston, but I'm going to take a small vacation with some friends in Dallas until things blow over; I can only hope that my apartment will still be there when I get back.

Song battles can be fun when it's done in good spirit, but it does get out of hand when one band tries to overplay the other. The ones that lose is the audience, some of whom actually like hearing the bands play.

THAT would be the problem. I don't have divx on my own computer, nor can I download them onto the school's comps.

I'm having a bit of trouble trying to get the files to work. I think maybe it's because I'm on a college server or something.

For the trombone players, here's a site with recordings of the audition pieces, and some performance suggestions, as suggested by my trombone teacher. http://www.music.sfasu.edu/faculty/d_scott.html good luck to all who are auditioning!