Derek Reaban

I’m guessing that everyone in High School marching band is at the peak of their season and getting ready for the fall competitions. Everyone is in good physical shape, chops are used to the demands being placed on them, horn angles have been addressed and are pointing at generally the same place in the stands during the show, everyone is breathing well, etc.

I thought this would be a good time to take an informal survey if anyone is interested in gathering some useful data that is directly related to the perception of the sound of your band in the stands.

Before or after a rehearsal, have all of the trumpet players in the section stand on the 50 yard line (one at a time), point their bell to the same point in the stands and play two notes. The first note is a 3rd space C (tuning note) and should be played at a comfortable mf dynamic. The second note is the same tuning note but this time played at a ff dynamic (I chose this note because everyone in the section should be comfortable playing it - you can choose another note as appropriate). As a section, agree what mf and ff should be at the field level before you have each person play individually (standard dynamic as perceived on the field).

Have someone go up to the top of the stands with a clip board to record some data for each player. They should write down the player’s name and the Perceived Dynamic that they hear for each note (have the same person do this so they are recording the information consistently from player to player). It may look something like this:

Players Name............Perceived Dynamic ..........Perceived Dynamic
..........................................Note 1 (mf).....................Note 2 (ff)
Kenny Makit............................mp............... .....................mf
Kent Reed...............................mf............. .......................mp
Noah Count.............................mf.............. .......................ff
Etc..........................................pp... .................................mp


What did you learn from this experiment? Does everyone project the same or does it vary from player to player?

If you’d like to share the results here, I would be interested in seeing them.