Marching Band Basics

Marching band is one of the most underrated outdoor activities of all time. Many people believe only “nerdy” and “unpopular” kids join marching bands as a way to branch out of their awkwardness and meet new people. While marching band is a great social activity, it’s much more than that. It takes great concentration, endurance, and skill to properly march and play an instrument at the same time. In this post I will describe the marching basics, tips and tricks for memorizing your music, and how to put it all together.

I started marching when I was thirteen years old. It was the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year, and I was completely in love with band. While my instructor didn’t typically encourage kids as young as I was to join the marching band, he handed me a flier one day after class and told me to go for it. While I was a talented player (I am a clarinetist), marching band was honestly a whole new beast for a young musician. Suddenly I wasn’t just tapping my toes- I was having to memorize specific places to go, people to follow, and directions to turn, all in coordination with the music I now had to memorize. While I caught on pretty quickly, it was overwhelming at first, which is why this post could benefit new marchers.

First thing first: step off with your left foot. Don’t forget it. A LOT of people (including myself) typically start walking with their right foot. You HAVE to train your body to step off with your left foot when marching, otherwise you’ll stick out like a sore thumb to the judges.

Second: cross your feet on the “and” of the beat. Doing this ensures your feet will hit the ground exactly on the beat. Music is subdivided in eighth notes to be “One and Two and Three and Four and.” The tempo, or speed, doesn’t matter. In a standard 4/4 meter (time signature) there are four beats in a measure, and this is how you count. The top number of the time signature indicates how many beats are in the measure, and the bottom number indicates what kind of note is used and how many times in a measure. If you’re planning on marching (and playing an instrument), you likely already have a firm understanding of these basic principles.

Third: know your basics. Basic principles include marking time, sliding, roll stepping, touch-and-goes, different step sizes, guiding, and posture. Marking time is when you stand in place and move your feet to the tempo of the music before you actually start marching. There are a few different ways to mark time, so pay attention to the specific way your band instructor tells you to. My instructor always told us to imagine a tennis ball under our heels and to pick our feet up that high. As with marching, begin marking time with your left foot. Your foot should hit its highest point on the “and” of the beat.

Sliding is when you keep your lower body facing the direction you need to march but keeping your upper half in line with the judge’s stand. This keeps the sound from your instrument (or your flag, if you’re in color guard) directly towards the judges, regardless of where you’re headed on the field.

Roll stepping is one of the most important basic principles when it comes to marching because it ensures your marching is smooth. For an instrumentalist, it keeps the sound steady, smooth, and consistent. For a guard member, it keeps the flag from bobbing up and down and wavering. To roll step, basically remember you aren’t walking- you’re marching. Your movements need to be smooth and consistent. Roll your feet from your heels to the balls of your feet.

Touch-and-goes are when you quickly alternate between marching forward and backwards. They can be tricky, especially when the tempo is incredibly slow or fast. To do this, you have to pay attention to where your weight is on your feet. If you’re marching forward and transitioning to go backward from this, you place your left foot regularly on the second to last beat of the section of drill, then place your right foot to where the weight is entirely on the ball of your feet and your heels are off the ground. You keep your right foot there, then transition your left foot to go backward on beat one of the next move. If you want to touch-and-go and go from marching backwards to forwards, you do the opposite. On the second to last beat of the move, you place your left foot as you usually would marching backwards, then on the eighth beat of the measure you place your right foot with your heel up to march forward again.

Different step sizes include the standard 8-5, the large 6-5, the small 12-5, and the ridiculously small 16-5. The first number indicates how many steps, and the second number indicates that it’s per five yards, since marching is typically done on a football field, or on a track with five yard markings. Learning the different step sizes ultimately comes down to muscle memory and learning to guide. Take note: when you’re actually doing drill, your step sizes may not always be precise. You will have to figure out how to accurately time your arrival to your spot.

The most important principal of marching is guiding. Guiding is when you judge where you are relative to the people around you. It is how marching bands manage to keep straight lines, despite not looking at each other or directly down the line. To guide, you must use your peripheral vision. Therefore, some people that are vision impaired will struggle to march. Bands typically guide right. Therefore, if you are the person at the end of the line on the right-hand side, you are responsible for ensuring your line ends up where it’s supposed to. However, even if the person on the end is wrong, they are “right” in the sense that everyone should still guide to them. Judges would rather have a straight line a little off from the correct spacing interval than a crooked line with some people in the correct spot. Guiding is a LOT easier when looking down the line and sliding. However, it becomes difficult for certain instrumentalists to not bump their instrument on the person in front of them, and to not play into the back or head of the person in front of them. This is a large reason why posture is such an important aspect of marching.

Correct posture includes always facing the front, unless body work or other instances tell you to do otherwise, having a straight back, a chin “high with pride,” and shoulders back. Correct posture is one of the first things judges critique, so it’s essential to master it in the early stages of basic training.

When I was learning to march, this one girl in my section ALWAYS insisted she was right. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. It doesn’t really matter. You know why? Because she was in the MIDDLE of our diagonal. Shocking principal: diagonals are sideways LINES. That means the person at the end is always right! People can’t guide backwards. So even if she was right, what’s the point of insisting it if it makes the whole diagonal off? Note: your “spot” on the field doesn’t really matter. The judges don’t see what you plot or where you initially were. They see the end result. So even if you’re right according to the charts, you’re wrong in their eyes. Moral of the story: just guide.

When it comes to knowing your music, don’t be the person that never practices and pretends to play. In my band, there were around 45-50 people. Ten of those were usually guard members and ten to fifteen were usually percussionists. Over half of those percussionists were always in the pit (the back portion of the band that doesn’t march). Therefore, there were about thirty instrumentalists that marched. It was such a small band. Every. Person. Mattered. If you don’t do your part, it WILL be evident. There’s nothing more frustrating than being incredibly dedicated to a group effort and one person drags it down. Don’t be that person. Build it up. Learn your music bit by bit, and put in effort on your OWN time. Rehearsal can’t be the only time you practice. It’s for putting the pieces together- not finding the pieces.

To memorize your music, begin by learning one phrase at a time. A phrase is typically eight bars, or measures. They’re the little bits of songs you get stuck in your head that you keep repeating over and over because you can’t remember anything else- those are phrases. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Start by playing the phrase over and over again while looking at your music. Then start leaning the music measure by measure. Make sure you’re practicing correctly. Nothing is worse than a wrong note and not knowing who it is. Once you learn one or two measures, finish learning the phrase. Then, continue on to learning the next phrase. Bonus tip: something I always did was after I received the drill charts as we learned drill, I wrote the drill into my music so I knew what moves went with what music. This really helped me learn my music because I had something physical to put it with. When we were learning drill and repeating it over and over again without instruments, we would often sing our parts loudly for everyone to hear. This (while not always pretty, but usually entertaining) allowed the whole band to resonate with the music and understand how the music, drill, and story line of the show all fit together.

Putting it All Together: Now that we have gone over some of the marching band basics, it’s time to talk about putting them all together. The first thing you need to understand is while you may have one down, when you add the other element, you WILL make mistakes you’ve never made before. If you have 90% of the drill down, and you suddenly add music, your drill performance is going to go down to probably 80-70% as you try to remember your music for the first time. This is why bands practice so much. It takes a LOT of repetition to gain the muscle memory necessary to execute the best show you possibly can. Don’t get frustrated with yourself- going through this is COMPLETELY normal. Many of my band’s early run throughs every season were complete disasters. There were times I got hit on the head by guard member’s flags, my feet were stepped on by other members, and people almost ALWAYS forgot when the next set started so they’d keep marching in the direction they were going instead of transitioning to the next move. While these mistakes ideally won’t happen again, it’s a very difficult process when you combine what you learn in the band room and what you learn on the field. My instructors always said “Practice at 100% so you can preform at 90%.” This is because they understand nerves and new surroundings can cause us to make mistakes we never made before.

While marching band is to be respected and taken seriously, please don’t forget the most important rule of all: HAVE FUN! If you aren’t having fun, why are you even there in the first place? Make friends with people you’ve barely talked to before. Learn how to spin a flag during your water breaks. Make fun of your band director (as long as they’re as easygoing as mine was). Live in the moment because once this time is gone, it’s gone.

I hope after reading a bit about the basics you understand why marching band is underrated. It isn’t just for “nerdy” and “unpopular” kids- it’s for people that are incredibly dedicated, goal-oriented, and self-driven. Marching band is NOT easy by any means. Anyone that tells you it is has never actually done it (or never actually done it correctly). These are just some of the basics. Take into account all of the hard work people do out in the scorching summer heat to learn a six minute show. It’s incredible. Marching band helps bring people with different backgrounds together because they have one similar passion. It creates friendships and memories that last a lifetime.