Hi everybody, and welcome back to Season 3 of the Common Time podcast. We're so glad to have you here to continue bringing our conversations, insights, and inspiration for music educators everywhere. Each week, we'll highlight voices from across the music world and share ideas that you can bring directly into your classroom and to your ensembles. Before we begin our conversation today, however, it's time for our Standing Ovation, a new segment of our show where we shine a spotlight on one of our incredible colleagues that is truly making a difference in the field. This week, we're recognizing Brad Bonebrake from Mansfield Lake Ridge High School. Carlos Lopez shared that Brad is not only a remarkable mentor, but also a trusted friend and inspired leader in the cluster. As his cooperating teacher, Brad taught the value of prioritizing students' joy in music over chasing trophies. Though his band still consistently achieved phenomenal results, Brad's leadership is delivered by balance. He challenges his students to excel while ensuring they're never burned out. His tireless, often unrecognized dedication to music education continues to elevate both his students and his colleagues. And we know that in our profession, we as teachers don't often get the spotlight. But we think that you deserve one. So to Brad and all the other hard working music educators, the ovation's for you. And if you have someone you'd like to nominate for a standing ovation, the link is in our show notes, as it always is. And now let's turn to our guest. Our guest today is David Starnes. Welcome, David.
Hey everybody, how are you?
We are great. So David is a consumer educational clinician. He's also the Director of Education at Gift of Music in Marietta, GA. David served most recently as the Director of Orchestras at Kennesaw Mountain High School in Kennesaw, GA. And as I'm sure most of our listeners know, he is also an extensive, extensive clinician in the pageantry arts world and has had extensive success there. So we are excited to pick your brain today, David, about all things marching band. John, why don't you get us started?
I'm happy to. Hi, David. So I'm just going to start off by just asking — in your incredible career, you have worked with some of the most respected programs in the country. So that being said, what are the core elements of musicianship that you believe should never be compromised in a marching band setting?
Well, I keep hearing you guys say extensive. Does that just mean I'm old? Is that how this works?
Well, I didn't know any other way to say it so I put it in ChatGPT and it said extensive is a good word. Extensive there. That's better than anything, you know?
Yeah, I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for the question, John. You know, I think fundamentals — it's all about that for me. It always has been. I started my career as an elementary music band director and then middle school and then high school. And I see a lot of people — my mentor Gary Markham used to say this all the time. He preached sequential learning, sequential teaching, sequential learning. And I look at it as like a ladder. You know, things have to come before — you've got to be able to be on rung 2, 3, or 4 before you can get to the top of the ladder. And I think sometimes we look at the destination and forget the journey. And so for me, the core fundamentals — I'm a big, big gavel banger on tone quality. When I judge concert band festivals or marching band, that's the first thing that attracts me to a group: if they sound great, if I hear that depth of sound, if I hear the maturity of sound, they understand what musicianship is. I think tone quality starts with that. And obviously we know that means great fundamentals in terms of breathing and being able to understand breathing. Now I'm a percussionist and a low brass minor. A lot of people go, I had no idea you were a percussionist because I'm so thinking of the wind thing. But I think you know where you've got to have gas to run the car or electricity to run the car, and you've got to have wind to be able to make the sound. And I think when I judge and I hear groups up close, you can tell instantly if those fundamentals are in place. Another big piece of it for me when I was teaching my high school and college kids and even my middle school kids is the blend aspect of things. I look at tone and music as a bunch of colors, and everybody has a different role in that color. And I don't use the word matching as far as tone quality and color very much, because I don't want that. I want it to be more prismatic and I want every color and every timbre to be represented. Obviously matching for pitch and intonation, but the listening piece of it — and I use a term, listening inside the sound. It's not anything groundbreaking, but I just think of it as three circles: one outside, one middle, and one inside. And I adapt that — it's kind of the balance triangle, right? So it's like we think of the balance triangle as the lows at the bottom and the highs at the top. But I put the lows on the outside circle, then the middles in the middle circle, and then the highs on the inside of the circle. And I talk about listening inside the sound — that anybody outside the perimeter of that circle, it becomes distortion and we can't blend or balance to that. So we stay within what I call the core of sound — CORE of sound. And it's all about listening into that. And then I'll use a lot of metaphorical things where I'll talk about taking that circle and turning it this way. So now they see circle, circle, circle — the little Russian doll analogy that I use sometimes. But it's all about listening down and out inside the sound. Listen to the people below you before you listen to yourself. And that seems to really resonate, particularly with my high school and my college kids. It was all about listening down and listening outside. And if you can't hear the outer circle, you're probably playing too loud. So blend, balance, tone quality, clarity of sound, resonance — all those things are created as a byproduct of that. Another analogy for that is take a pebble and just drop it in the water. And I ask the kids, what's the shape you see? And you see the circles. So it's all about resonance. It's all about creating non-distortion and those kinds of opportunities to see the sound.
I love that. I never really thought of it as concentric circles like that. That's a unique way of thinking about it — I've heard about the triangle sound for many, many years, but the idea of listening differently is a different concept and I would think about that conceptually different.
Well, and I think the triangle — I heard somebody say this one time and I don't remember who it was — but they said the triangle creates almost like a hierarchy, like the people at the bottom should be louder, quote unquote. And for sure they should be fuller. But I think the circle says we're all in this sound together.
Exactly. And that's what I love about it more, because visually you can see you're still part of the component of those concentric circles, versus looking at a triangle where there's a top and a bottom. With the concentric circles, you're just inside of that core sound, which I think is a pretty important distinction. So that's fantastic.
Well, and it's fun to do this too. You can just take almost like a tuning chord and then I'll say to them, play outside of the correct circle, and you listen to what happens to the quality of the sound and the blend and the balance. And then on my cue, go to your correct circle. And when they do that, there's just a blossom of sound — it completely changes and they hear it. So I think I'm a big, big proponent of showing kids the sound. I'm a visual learner. And I think a lot of kids nowadays because of these things — the cell phones — they're visually based. And so if we can show them the concept versus just talking them through the concept, sometimes that helps us get there sooner.
So then David, just to clarify very quickly as a follow up before we go on — I think there's some misconception across the country in terms of how you approach ensemble sound from a marching band perspective to a concert band perspective. Are there differences? Should you approach it differently?
I don't — I literally tell the kids the same thing. And I know a lot of people that would answer that way. And I don't know how to change that from the indoor to the outdoor because basically we would be telling them there's a set of rules outside that pertain to tone quality and to blend and intonation that we don't want you to use inside. And I think that's misconstruing to a student. I think about — for me it's always about can you hear yourself first, and can you hear your neighbor second, and listen to the quality of the sound that you're creating and create that within that ensemble. We call it playing in your trios, obviously. But I don't change that concept. In fact, it's funny you say that because I use that core of sound thing on any whiteboard or chalkboard when I'm doing a concert band rehearsal, a clinic, or whatever, every single time. And I start putting that into place. I did it at Kennesaw Mountain, I did it at Western Carolina, and I taught my student leaders that concept. So when they were working in sectionals or whatever, we would listen. The other thing about that circle — and I apologize for the hand gestures again — but the outer circle is the third trumpet part, the middle circle is the second trumpet part, and the inside circle is the first trumpet part. So they can actually work within sections when they're talking about blend and balance and a core of sound, and they're blending that within their choirs before we actually put that on the field. Many times from the tower I might say, tubas, because of where you're staged, we need you to widen your circle. Trumpets, because of where you're staged, we need you to widen your circle. Or flutes, because of where you're staged, we really need to narrow your circle. And they see that and they can understand — when they hit that set, my circle looks different. And that's another visual for them as far as that goes.
Yeah. That's a really good concept. I can see how that can be applied across various scenarios outside especially. So talking specifically — jumping back to the marching band — I'm curious how you balance, or think about balancing, the visual demands of the modern marching show, everything we're seeing, with the fundamental goal of expressivity and musical performance, etcetera. How do we balance those?
Well, I think there's an inherited issue in our evaluation system because of this. And it's interesting that we're having this conversation about it because I think for me, the ask — what the students are being asked to do — has to be in direct correlation to their ability to deliver the product musically first. Start with the music in mind and make them want to hear you before they see you — as an audience or an adjudication panel. Make them want to hear you first and see you second. I had this conversation with my dear friend Lee Carlson two or three years ago. We were judging Bands of America Regional and there was a group that was phenomenal visually — like this group was there — but I just couldn't do what I needed to do to compliment his number in visual in music because they were sacrificing their musical ability with how much visual they were being asked to do. And I think we would all agree — the three of us, I think, would agree for sure — that music has to come first. It's the soundtrack to the screenplay. And with a great screenplay and a bad soundtrack, the movie is not as good.
I have a colleague who would — a predecessor at Michigan — he would say in order to tell the quality of a marching band, close your eyes.
Exactly. Thank you, Doctor. Exactly. And when I used to train judges for BOA and DCI, that's one of the things we used to do. This was a general effect thing, but we would say we're going to turn down the sound, we're going to watch — what's your impression now? Then we're going to turn the screen off and we're going to listen — what's your impression? You know, we start talking about coordination, but does the movie match the soundtrack and the screenplay? And I think that's so important. We've been to Broadway musicals where the music was absolutely incredible, but the acting or the set pieces just weren't up to that ability level. And I think I fear that right now in marching band — we're spending a lot of money on visual, we're spending a lot of money on costumes, spending a lot of money on set pieces. We're doing everything that we can possibly do to make our what fantastic. But the how is not in place to make the what communicate. I see that a lot.
Yes, I would agree with that completely. Well, and this is — we didn't bring you on to stir the pot, but let's dig into this just a little bit. I think some of our future questions are probably going to get into this, but since we're here, let's just go with it. What can we do to help — I don't want to say change the activity, it's not the right word — but to help create balance, or to help encourage, because we have young directors that are moving into this having seen this whole evolution that's occurred over the last, I want to say, two decades or so. And where does it go next? It's like, OK, we have people that are seeing this and it just keeps going further and further and further. Do you have thoughts on what we can do, how we can help sort of create a balance? Because that does seem to be the challenge today — like to be successful, to compete, etcetera.
Yes. And I think we're in an arms race right now. I think that's what it is. Because I saw so and so do it, I've got to do this. If we don't have this, then I've got to buy this. And it creates, like I said before, budgetary issues. And for a young director, two things happen. Number one, they're really eager to do the thing, right? It's like, I'm so excited — I marched drum corps three years ago and now I'm ready to jump in and I'm going to make my band the Blue Coats, right? It is what they're trained to do. And something that I'm telling university kids as we go around — you're here in school to be a music educator. It starts with the word music. And out of that, we've made marching band such a beast. And I'll say this — I'm concerned about it because I think what we're asking students to do in terms of time and in terms of investment, to what it is they're there to do, becomes more visually based than it does musically based. The amount of time that we spend on visual fundamentals, on creating choreography and creating body movement — I'm not saying it's not important, but if you go to, let's just take Grand Nationals — I was so fortunate to judge Grand Nationals last year and I sat there and I was thinking about this very thing. Every single group that came out in finals, the music drove the show. The music drove the show. Now there was icing on the cake with beautiful props and beautiful effects and great soundscape and cool costuming. But at the end of the day, the music drove the program. And I think sometimes — and I'm not trying to ruffle anybody's feathers here, but we're being transparent — I think sometimes some of the groups that may be compensating for the lack of musical ability make you look at the shiny object, which is this really cool set piece or this really cool visual or costumes or whatever. And you're worlds apart — your boxes apart. You may be a box four visual group, but you might be a box two or three musical group, and they're frustrated. And young directors — I think the latest NAfME thing is two and a half years is the average lifespan of a new teacher. And when they see they can't be successful with what they've been trained to do, either through college or through drum corps or through WGI wins or whatever, they fail. Sometimes they give up. And that's what you're talking about, David, as far as just like young teachers — I'm very concerned about that.
Yeah, well. And it's — I mean, my niece is in a very successful high school band program that is very well known. The schedule that she's asked to keep is remarkable. You were talking about the things that we're asking the students to do now — she loves it, they've got a fantastic culture there, I mean they are doing the correct things. But on paper, when you see that schedule, you're like — and then they have to be students on top of it, right? Pretty remarkable. But anyway, it's all perspective.
It is perspective.
So I was at the DCI San Antonio show a couple of weeks ago — and when this airs it's going to be months ago — but I was struck. I hadn't been to a live DCI show in a while. And I mean, I taught drum corps for 15, 20 years, and when I started teaching drum corps it was around 2001, 2002, and the visual component was mostly just drill.
We didn't do a whole lot of body work. And now, I mean, every melodic line had specific body movement that contoured with the melodic line. So they might have body responsibilities, like 14 different body responsibilities within a 25 second melodic space. And I'm watching this thinking like, Oh my goodness, I can't even imagine trying to focus on sound. And I'd have to, we'd have to, I'd probably create an entirely different physical regimen just to teach their bodies how to do what they're doing and try to maintain the sound that I want to hear. And it just keeps getting more and more and more toward that. Now, on the flip side, some of it was amazing to watch happen, like the coordination between those body movements. And that's like, so it's, I don't know, there's probably not a, an answer like a black and white answer to this. But I think you hit the nail on the head when you said the programs that were successful at BOA Grand Nationals that were in finals, the music was driving their success. All those other things were a component. When you flip it upside down and the visual starts to lead that, then we have to rethink where are we? Because the teachers, the teachers are driving the bus. Like, how are we bringing our students into a place to be successful or not successful and then again this is a whole nother conversation on how we define success. I think you're right, the music has to drive this moving forward. And I think too, this is something we haven't talked about, but simultaneous responsibilities, I don't think it has to be simultaneous all the time. I mean, I think if we plan our moments like this is going to be a great visual thing. This is a double tonguing, we're going to stand still, some slight body within this, but let's create something really cool jazz running as far as across the field or whatever and our horns are down. Let's create those moments that can still be effective visually and don't have to be simultaneous. But I think coordination and difficulty matter, you know, and I think if we can choose our episodic moments, I think there's a lot of things you can do with that. But I hear what you're saying, David, as far as the drum corps thing, and I'm amazed. I mean, I was in drum corps in the mid 80s and, you know, even teaching, you know, from the early 2000s to just last year. I don't know how kids do what they do. I stand there on the field and I watch and the physicality is just, it's incredible what they're being asked to do. I think we got to be really careful about going, OK, here's my 9th grader that was sitting down in middle school band last year and I'm going to ask them to do what I saw the Blue Devils do, you know? And I think you start looking at those things, that's where the disconnect happens. That's when kids go, this is too hard. And at the end of the day, I want to keep kids more than I want them to do crazy visual stuff, you know, and I was never even at Kennesaw Mountain or Western Carolina — I was never, if I knew that the visual was going to hamper the music, we fix the visual. I want the music to be primary. And there was nothing wrong with that. I mean, there's numerous High Music Awards that we took at Kennesaw Mountain and we would be second or third in visual. But I was OK with that because at the end of the day, there was one year, it was 2006, we were at Grand National finals 41 days before we sat on the Midwest stage with the Wind Symphony. And I won't, I'm not going to apologize for the fact that we were third at Grand Nationals. We played the Midwest. It's about the music. And I used to tell my kids this at Western Carolina, that in my marching band techniques, please, please, please make the music first. At the end of the day, that is why you got into this, not because you wanted to do marching band.
So then David, going into that or I guess I'm kind of segueing from that, how do you or in your experience, what are some of the most effective strategies for directors to help their students develop tone and phrasing and ensemble sensibility on a marching field?
Well, I think that again, I think that starts inside. I think it is what it is that you that they have a sense of what is acceptable sound quality. What did they know sharp from flat? One of the biggest things I did and I continue to do is sing. We sing all the time, play chorals in choirs of brass and woodwinds. We do a lot of mixed instrumentation, put a lot of people together, but there's always this sense of, you know, your word, the word phrasing to me, on a marching band field, it's an inherent feeling, I think that students have to understand their role and their self investment in what they're doing on the field. You know, a crescendo is only a crescendo if it's got goosebumps at the top of it, you know, and we used to preach that all the time. We talked, I talked to my kids about the triad of effect, the emotional, intellectual and aesthetic. And those are big buzzwords for nothing more than feel it, think it, see it, you know? And I wanted the audience to feel with the emotional. I wanted them to feel the heart of what those kids were doing. Get that program across the front sideline. And it's odd enough to me that I don't think I ever talked about the phrasing piece of it. I don't think I ever talked about dynamically, we need to do less or more. I just wanted to understand and communicate. I wanted everybody in the place to understand what it is that we were doing and to take away from that. You affected me because of your musicianship, you know, and I think that I've used that word self investment a couple of times, but I really believe that's a part of it. Like if they found one, we used to tell the people, we used to tell our kids we were standing in the tunnel before we'd go on for a regional or grand nationals. When you get out there, find one person in the audience that you don't know and have a personal conversation with them for the next 9 and a half minutes. And when you hit that hold and you find that person, put it to them, communicate and talk to them. And there was so many times we came off the field and that kid would say, I got 3 standing ovations in that 9 and a half minutes from my person. I saw my person crying at the end of the show. You know, it was always that reach out and grab you. And we kept, we would say it all the time, get over the front sideline, bring the audience onto the field with you and have a conversation with them musically. And that was really, and even when I got into marching band rehearsal now I will go and I'll say I'm not feeling it, guys. I got to feel this. You have to invest in you before you can invest in us.
So thinking about where you come from there, I'm curious if you could share a specific example of a moment in a show where a musical decision elevated the emotional or storytelling impact of the performance, like something that we could tangibly talk about and feel.
Yeah, it's going to make me feel really old because I'm going to talk about 2004, which was like 800 years ago. We did a show that year, Kennesaw Mountain. It was called Evolution, and I hear people talk about this all the time. Oh, that Kennesaw Mountain, that was the group that did the band camp show. Yeah. So we developed from the very beginning of the show, a season of what it was like starting at band camp with a basics block, Mike Gaines and Richard Saucedo and I put that program together and Mike did something in the ballad that to this day, every time I watch it, I just completely get choked up. The show was about growing and the middle part of the show, the ballad was the Joni Mitchell Both Sides Now. And our kids didn't know Joni Mitchell from anybody. They didn't know Both Sides Now. But they said this is the growth piece of where you're coming, where you've been to where you're going to go. And it was great because the next movement was starting with BOA announcement. You know, like the show was officially starting at that point. But the ballad, the way Mike did this, he brought two sides together and it was Both Sides Now, and it was this filtering of kids coming in one at a time. It took probably a good 40 seconds, 45 seconds for this whole thing to happen. But they're playing Both Sides Now, building this triangle. And that was the whole thing. It was the whole like Trinity piece, right? It all came together. Both sides coming together were a group. And then right after that, the announcement happened and we go straight into the closer. But I still think, you know, from a coordination standpoint, I can remember standing on the field at finals in 2004 and the whole staff was just bawling because that was what we wanted this whole show to be, right? Because of the musical choices that we made. Both Sides Now come together and here is the product. And we watched it happen that night and it was the most emotional thing I've ever seen on the university side of things. In 2019, we took Western Carolina to the Macy's parade. It was our second trip to the Macy's parade. We were there in 14, but I wanted the whole show to be about Believe, which is Macy's theme. And so at the very end of the show, we had that year, we marched 545 I think in the marching band. So we could just about spell anything we wanted to legally on the field. But we had a triple company front and Jamie Thompson wrote the drill and out of that he scripted Believe and we saw it right itself from left to right in the Macy's font. And at the end there's the word Believe, just like it is right over the door at Macy's. And that was another one of those moments. And it was Blessed Union of Souls, I Believe, that was the whole motivation behind that. But you know, it was this nice company front that was real Maestoso and the I Believe. And then when they went to double time in the feet, here comes the spell out and we get to the end of it at zero to zero in the word Believe. And it was just magical. And I'm glad you asked that question, David, because I think, you know, Mike Gaines and I've had these conversations — it's, I think too many times we are so cerebral that we don't let people in and people go, what's that about? And in that moment you can be literal. And then Mike used to get on me. He's like, you know, you don't have to be so literal that everything we're going to do on the field. And then the Cavaliers did Double O Seven and put 007 on the field and I was judging and I was like, nice work there, Mr. Gaines. I enjoyed that moment a lot.
I was just going to bring that up. As a matter of fact, when we did that, the Cavaliers then — yeah, we both taught that show.
Yeah, very funny. And Michael, though, he's a genius at taking these long ideas. And you kind of knew, especially with the Cavaliers in the 2000s, like you could see something developing and you kind of knew what was going to happen. But it was so in cycle. Cycle was a perfect example — like you just kept watching it develop, and at the end you're just like, how did he do that? It was genius. Just those moments.
Well, yeah. And it's like a slow car wreck. You know, you know what it's going to end up, something's going to be upside down. But it's just fun to watch, you know, and those long, long phrases.
I mean, we talked about putting body to that, to the Both Sides Now thing. We talked about putting body in there. We brought Michael James in. We were going to put all this choreography and every kid was going to have just on their own movement. And I was like, that's not the — after we did it, I was like, that's just not at all what Mike intended. He intended us to be fluid and we're going to watch this and we're going to grow. And it's going to be about students coming together, creating something magical. And it was just so much fun to watch. You know I have to say Michael Gaines, for anybody listening, in my opinion, is the best drill writer ever to do it. And he actually wrote a couple of shows for me here at Michigan, but his family has some Ohio State connections. So they gave him too much hell so he couldn't do it anymore. But if you're listening, Michael, I would love to have you come back to us, brother.
But anyway, David, I'm just going to change topics slightly from music to the kind of visual side of things. I think that there are a lot of directors, especially younger teachers out there that feel the pressure of show design and then that pressure is pulling them away from prioritizing the musical output and growth of students. Do you have any advice for them?
Well, I'm programming for 8 or so high school groups across the country right now. And a couple of them are trying to take that quote unquote next step, right? And so they're saying we know what we want to be. This is where we are visually and what do we do to get to that next step visually? And I tell them the same thing in the very first design meeting. Look at the room, teach to your room. Look at the kids, who do you have in the room? What are they able to do this year? And let's create like a three or four year plan. This is where I want them to be. We're here in that cycle right now, but not to teach past that because I think I see this a lot when I judge field music — there's a lot of kind of doing it like you're supposed to. It's kind of a plié. It's kind of third position. It's kind of a lunge, but it's not really, you know what I mean? And I think there's a lot of imitation going on where I look at somebody like, you know, Michael Rosales that can come in and teach a group really how to move and how to look. And that vocabulary means something. So I would say to young directors, take 3 or 4 techniques visually and make those a part of your daily warm up. Turn on a sound system and a metronome and go through those and let it be about whatever you want your vocabulary to be visually. And it's something they do every day. And it can't be something that you just go, we're going to add this quote unquote look here. It's a part of their pedagogy every single day. And then as they add on to that, do more and more and more of that. But I think a lot of what's happening right now, particularly in high schools, is there's imitation to the drum corps world as well as the WGI winds world. And maybe the director isn't as clear about what it is that they should be doing versus the technique of what it is. I said this to somebody a couple months ago — we don't imitate a B flat scale, but we imitate a B flat scale visually sometimes, you know, and I think we got to be really careful about knowing the techniques, knowing the pedagogy, so the kids can understand how to clean it. That's the other piece of it. So don't bite off more than you can chew. Look at your room. And I'll say this about costuming also. I had this conversation with a director not too long ago — with everything going to tight fitting things, there are parents that are really concerned about what their kids look like. You know, I don't know that I want my child to be wearing that. My child is a bit overweight and it makes them feel weird and they're being asked to do things in terms of what they're wearing that makes them feel uncomfortable. I really would hope that directors would look at those kinds of things as they're programming, because I think that's another piece of this. Nobody looks like themselves. Nobody knows who the band is until they're announced because everybody's wearing a costume. But be very judicious in how you costume your kids and what you're asking them to look like as high school students. Because everybody knows that 9th grader may be the most insecure boy or girl that might be on the field. And if band is making the field even more insecure, they're going to be out the door. And I think that's something to take a look at.
No, absolutely. That's great advice. We have to keep in mind who we're teaching and what level they are and what they're experiencing emotionally, mentally. There's a lot of things we take into consideration and the cost of anything continues to evolve in some interesting ways. I'll just say that it's interesting seeing some of them going, like, I don't know if I would wear that.
Well, I was just going to say, and it puts a very big strain on some of those programs that are smaller. And the director comes in and says, we're going to be competitive because we're going to wear this, this, this, this and this and have all these props. That goes back to the budget thing, you know.
And I think where you can drive a parent organization away from a director, or a director can be seen as not as trustworthy — I'll just go there — I think we got to be really respectful about who is in your program and what you can't afford. There's certainly nothing wrong with recycling set pieces. And I think if you can't afford to have a compression shirt, then wear a band uniform and take the shako off. Even though I'm a huge advocate of headwear, I think that makes everybody look better at a high school level. But I just think we got to be very careful. And I know it's a little old school on this, but at the end of the day, I can remember sitting in budget meetings going, our budget needs to be this for us to do this year, and feeling a bit guilty about it at times. You know, it's like we're at $700,000 for the year. We're going to go to WGI, we're going to go to BOA, We've got a Midwest trip. It's a lot to ask parents. And I guess the juice better be worth the squeeze.
There it is, it really needs to be. I was thinking this watching DCI a couple weeks ago. I haven't taught high school in a long time. It was 25 plus years ago and I was thinking about what I was seeing on the field, I was asking myself, would I be able to do some of these things, like just making these decisions for students? So there's so many things to balance in that. One of the things that came to mind for me was knowing that these students are investing a lot of time. We're asking them to invest a lot of time. If you're teaching March and band, your entire fall for most programs is dedicated to that nine and a half, 10 and a half minute show. So we're investing a lot of time in them. And you've done this in both high school and collegiate programs. So I'm curious about their musical maturity. What changes, if any, do you see in students and how they're developing musical maturity in that context? And where are we with that?
Well, I think every college is different. I went to the University of Tennessee and I know what an SEC football band and a Big 10 band — the halftime thing is way more important, as you know, John and David, because you've been a collegiate director as well. But the halftime thing is way more important to the kids than it is to the audience in most places, except for Michigan and Western Carolina, because nobody left and nobody leaves at Michigan because you're going to turn the lights off and they're all going to trip. But I just think it's how you set the standard. I was so fortunate to follow Bob at Western Carolina University and Bob had an incredible lineage at that program. And I'll never forget this. The day that I was offered the job, I had lunch with Bob and he said we got to build a more substantial color guard. They've got to be pushed harder. I want you to continue to develop the wind program and take them show design wise to a level that fits 2011. It was the first year that I got there and that was easier said than done. That conversation with Bob and I was really easy because the kids, as you know too, John and David, both of you — kids come from so many backgrounds and so many different kinds of styles of marching band. And then they get to you and you're going, we're going to do a college drum corps style marching band and they go, let me show you a video of my high school band. And you watch what they just come out of, you're going like, oh boy, there's a big disconnect. And so we had students that could not march over 144 beats a minute. And we were asking them to go 180 in the opener for 2 and a half minutes. So that learning curve was there. So if you're a college director and you're listening to this, don't expect everybody to jump into college marching band in grade 13 and they're ready to go because they came from so many different backgrounds. And that's honestly something I didn't think about when I got the job. And then it was just, we've got to find that center point and grow together. Now, we had anywhere from 30 to 40 kids — now I should say 20 to 30 kids on any given year — marching drum corps. So they would come back and they were fantastic models during that time. I was on Crown staff for five years and we had a lot of kids at Crown. And they'd just come back after finals and really like, OK, let's keep these systems in place. But then you have the kid also, which this is a part of your question — there's like, I'm in college band to have fun. I'm not in college band to be a drum corps. I'm not in college band to push my musical abilities. I joined to have fun. And so I remember we had this conversation with our leadership: let's define fun, because being good is fun, but working hard to be good takes a little extra effort. And I just told them, I said, if we want to be recognized as one of the top college marching bands in the country, then it's going to take a little bit more than jumping in the swimming pool with their instruments and learning our show from that point. And it took a couple of years because the band got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then the University of North Carolina opened the borders and we could pull kids from South Carolina and Tennessee. We're getting kids from Dobbins, Bennett, and Wando. And all of a sudden these kids came in and I'm like, OK, it's go time. Around 2014, 2015, we really started putting some systems in place. So I think it's possible at the college level to do that and to continue to push them. But I think you have to know where they came from before you know where you can take them. And sometimes that's not always considered.
Yeah, well, I mean, I can tell you this past season, the one that we just finished, we have 400 students in the marching band here at Michigan that come from about 300 high schools from across the world. And the ability level, the focus, the expectation, the fun component — all the things — it's really fascinating to try to put those pieces together to fit inside of the system that we have now. Every institution has their own values, their own systems. But actually my entire career — when we were at the Cavaliers, we had this kind of moniker too — my entire career I've been known as the mezzo forte guy. Because I don't want the band to sound like it's about color, it's about resonance, it's about artistry, it's about nuance. And in the Big 10 conference, we have a lot of fantastic band programs. Like they are really, really good. We are not going to overplay them in terms of volume, because I don't want to hear it. And if someone wants the MNB to play louder, they're going to have to fire me because it's not going to happen. Is every color, is every sound produced well? Is it artistic? Is it all the things? Now, it has to be entertaining. It can't not be, right? Otherwise I would have been fired a long time ago. But it's the approach to sound. Sound is always the first thing we talk about, absolutely always. And so I think that's really, really important. So anyway.
Well, yeah. Well, I was just going to say one thing we haven't talked about, and we might, but I think there's a definition about what an acoustic marching band should sound like.
I agree. There we go, because there is so much soundscape, there's so much electronics, that I'm wondering if people have forgotten what a marching band even should sound like. Or drum corps.
Do I dare say I would say drum corps for sure.
Yeah, for sure. You know, I can go back and I can watch some early 2000s, mid 2000s drum corps and just know that's why I fell in love. My first drum corps I saw was 1979, Santa Clara Vanguard, and I fell in love with it. And through the 80s and when you guys were Cavaliers — I mean, I was a judge during that time — and I just, there's so much acoustically that we can do that I think it's turned into an arms race of volume and I'm worried that we're going to lose what that acoustical value is. So that's why I think kids overplay because the electronics are louder. So now we're going to play louder and louder and louder — and where does that white noise start?
Well, and also it's the energy. You got to hit them with the energy.
Yeah, well, no, no. And this is a tough one too. Because I just — did I just rip a Band-Aid off? This is such an important conversation, because some of my colleagues in the collegiate world disagree with me on this. And that's OK because they do really great things. It's just a different approach, which is totally OK. But for me, I know every section of my ensemble needs to sound like a very specific orchestral section. That's where my sound always is. So I want my tubas to sound like Harvey Phillips, hands down. I want my saxophones to sound like Tim McAllister. I want my trumpets to sound like Berlin. I want my horns to sound like Chicago. That's a very clear sound. And I talk about this every rehearsal: does that sound like the Chicago Symphony? And some people kind of giggle if they're in the audience. And then I just look at them and I'm like, why would you have a different expectation? Why would you think that's right?
I mean, David comes up to me because he comes to my rehearsals a lot. He's like, you've got to have them play louder.
I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. And if I just — interest from the marching band listening to this — you're not going to play louder just because Doctor Clemmer says it's OK.
No, I don't. It's just so interesting because volume is — I think it's training. There's a lot of training that goes into being able to play those volumes and oftentimes the training is sacrificed because we have to produce now and we end up hurting students. And with the Cavaliers, it was a different time. We honestly didn't listen to any adjudicator that told us that we were playing loud enough. And they didn't say loud — they would say, well, it's just not communicating. And literally in critiques, we'd be like, would you just say the words, say the real words instead of that word? Because we are communicating, but we're communicating on a much different level. We're communicating intellectually, we're communicating in terms of coordination. At that time — and this is early 2000s — we would bring mellophones into the front ensemble and say, listen, you need to listen to how your sound aligns with the vibraphone color. Because what they have written in the front ensemble is the prominent color — you're supporting them.
No idea, genius. Eric was a genius. Yes, absolutely. We were having conversations about how do we get these colors to be supportive of each other, etcetera, etcetera. And you can't do that for volume. If the mellophones are overplaying that, then etcetera, etcetera. Now let's talk about the electronics for a second, because listening to DCI again a couple weeks ago, some of it was incredibly cool. Like I'm listening and going like, wow, this is like a production. Hearing how the horn sound goes through processing is very different and it did make me think like this doesn't sound like an outdoor brass ensemble. It was a completely different kind of sound, which I don't have any judgment on. It was different and I'm older now, so back then I would have been like — but now I'm like, well, I don't, I'm not going to judge it, but it's different and I don't know exactly how to process it because it doesn't really — it's not apples and apples. Like the Cavalier hornline sound from Double O Seven had energy. It wasn't anything about that I would say was like, well, that didn't communicate. But it was a completely different kind of sound than what I'm hearing from corps now that are in the top six that are based off of how they're getting so much support through electronics, even miking individual instruments and so forth. So what an interesting place to be in this activity.
Well, and I'll give the Bands of America people props — and this is Richard and Nola and John Phillips — because they're now saying to us as Bands of America judges, if you can't discern the acoustical quality because of the electronic value, you have to say something about that. You have to be aware of it. Is it being supplemented too much? Is it being substituted? That's a big one. Or are the students actually producing everything that you're hearing? And there's an edict that went out. And I love the fact that BOA is taking this on. There are a lot of people that are now starting to say OK, it's fine to have it, but it needs to be the icing and not the cake. It can't be a substitute, because if one kid playing a synth can be 32 trumpets, or if five kids with mics on the end of their bell — that's the only sound we're hearing — what about the other 28 kids, right? Do they not matter? I really have a problem with that in terms of investment and participation.
Yeah. There's a lot of challenges I think there too for the activity in general, and I think not just from drum corps, but because all of that stuff does filter down into the high school levels as well. And for us to, over the next decade, begin to unravel, I suppose. But I am glad to hear that Music for All and Bands of America are facing that head on because it really is — I took notes as I was listening to all the shows and just talking into my phone, and that was one of the comments that was recurring: that whoever's running the sound board doesn't have a clear understanding of where these colors align in the whole soundscape. So you just get this sound coming at you, which is brass-like sounds mixed with synthesizer sounds mixed with percussion sounds, which for me was hard to discern. And I think I have some level of musical discernment to go, like I don't know what they're going for here. It just sounds like a wash of sound.
Yeah, which with acoustics, you hear it differently. And when you go into judging music analysis or music ensemble, it's really hard to comment on the sub-caption integrity when you can't hear it. And I think that's where it hits the most. Now effect-wise, of course it's going to create that effect. But if you get into the nitty gritty, or especially if you're judging field and you're standing next to a line array stack of speakers and you can't hear anything but what's coming out of those speakers, it's very difficult. It's a completely different challenge. Now at Western Carolina we used a lot of electronics, but I remember when I first got there, they had them close to the front and we moved them all the way to the back and created it as more of a background. But it was still very involved in the show — we wrote the show that way also. It was a Riverside Community College kind of philosophy, but it was always within the textures and it never battled with a woodwind feature or a brass feature. Again, it's about choosing your moments. Plan your moments.
Well, my wife sends me a production note in all capitals: back in my day.
Like we're all talking kind of back in my day now.
Back when the back was good. Back. OK, well that's right.
Just to piggyback on that, I have kind of a final question wrapping up here. David, if you could wave a magic wand and shift one mindset about marching band across the country, what would it be?
I think it's a couple things. First of all, creating a space where every single student has a chance to succeed on the field. I think sometimes we write the shows from a director standpoint — and this is a young director issue; I think the more you do this, the more you think differently — but we think about our most talented players and we write the show to highlight that end of our program. I hear a lot of kids on the field when I'm judging field music that aren't able to keep up with the person next to them. There's a lot of discrepancy in terms of everyone being able to participate. I used to tell Richard this — he wrote the stuff at Kennesaw Mountain — I would say I want a grade 3 horn book. And the first time I said that he was like, dude, you got a grade six wind ensemble. I said, yeah, but you haven't heard my 4th band, who is hanging on for dear life to play grade 2. And it's basically a freshman band. And guess what? Those kids are on the field. So rather than saying we're going to do an A, B, and A/C part, let's write for grade 3, grade 3 plus, and perform the heck out of it. Let them have the opportunity to do all the things musically. Because sometimes I think also directors only think about the musical part of it and they don't think about the physicality. And all of a sudden the drill shows up and they're marching backward in that phrase that they shouldn't be marching backward in playing the technique that they're being asked to do. So there's that other component that sometimes we leave out of it. So I think: design for the middle and allow a grade 3 program to be performed at a grade 6 level. It's all about achievement. If you can do the things that are being asked on paper at the highest level possible, I don't think difficulty matters. I think it matters about excellence and I think it matters about achievement of what everyone on that field can do. I used to get down on the field with my kids during run-throughs and I would walk up and down the clarinet section, and I would go to the clarinets the next day and go, OK, we've got this person, this person, this person — they are not in there. And if that individual music judge winds up in front of that person, that is our reputation musically. We have to make every single kid successful, whatever that takes. So I think it's about that. The second part of it is — I said it earlier on and I did a big clinic on this in Kentucky about a month ago and did one for the Conn-Selmer Southern Division Institute. But it's so much more important to focus on the how and not the what. You can have all the what in the world, but if you don't have the how to create the what, I think you really do a disservice to your kids. And that's where things start falling apart. We can't do this show. I had a great idea, but we don't have the horses to pull that buggy. And the second part of that is not only the what and the how, but I'm going to ask the question why. Why did you make the design decisions you did? Why did you choose that music? Why did you choose this concept? Why did you choose that costuming? And not that it was wrong, but just be clear about your intentions from the get go about the why. So if a kid asks, you have an answer. If a judge questions, you have an answer. If a parent questions, you have an answer. Not because I thought this would be cool, but there is a method behind my madness. So the what and the how. But the bigger piece of that is the why. And that's your theology and that's your philosophy of teaching. And it should be steeped into everything you do.
We should just record that. And put that like on. Just put that out. So. We've come to the part of our conversation, David, where we ask a couple of standing questions to all of our guests. So I'll take the first one. You actually may have just talked about it or somewhere else, but I'm just going to ask it anyway. Do you have a soapbox topic? And I guess it doesn't have to be marching band, it could be anything.
I think the soapbox topic is for every director that's hearing this is self analyze yourself on a daily basis. What are you doing to grow to get better? Because the better you get, the better your kids are going to get. The better your kids are going to get, the better you have to get. And I think too many times we spend so much time on the day-to-day minutiae of what's happening in the classroom or when's the first contest or when is concert evaluation. Do we ever take time to just breathe and go, what can I do to make myself better? Where is my weakness and what can I do to make that weakness a strength and not hide behind that? And I think too many people focus on their strengths, but their program also reflects their comfort zones. I don't do chamber music. Why not? Because I don't know how. I don't do jazz band. Why not? I don't know how. And I think if you can look at those areas of where the complete music educator is and allow you as a teacher to look at yourself in the mirror and just choose one thing, just one thing for a year, I'm going to focus on X, whatever that might be. It might be time management. It may have nothing to do with music. It may be about giving family more time. It might be about your personal health, because band directors are notorious for not thinking of themselves at all. And in 10 years they weigh 800 lbs and every box is checked that you can for health reasons. So I think just stay focused — you've got to be your best on whatever area that is for your kids to be their best.
I love that. It just resonates with me because I think oftentimes band directors get so busy. And we're so invested in the students getting better and we want them to be successful and all those things, but we rarely stop and go, what am I doing? How am I doing it? How am I doing? We just push through it.
That's part of it. We just push through. And I started an online sort of conducting slash music ed studio a while ago called Maestro Mind. And I posted just recently, when you grow, your students grow too. It was one of the things and in that post I asked them like, take 5 minutes of your next rehearsal and record yourself. Just record yourself and then find one thing that you think you can say differently or you can improve upon. How do you help yourself? And that's it — it's only 5 minutes. It's taking 5 minutes. Because I can tell you, I think every one of us, if we recorded ourselves, we'd find 100 things that we would probably say differently or do differently. But we don't take that time. But if we invest that time in ourselves, I think it's exponential for the students.
So that's great.
I want to say this because there are people that are going to watch this and know me and they could be like, that's the pot calling the kettle black because I don't do that. Well, I haven't done that well. And I'm trying to do that. I'll be 60 in November and I'm trying to figure this thing out. There are just so many hours in the day. And I was guilty of focusing my time more on the what and the how and less on the why. And I wish — if there's anything I could go back and do again — I've said this a million times, I am so grateful for my career, the students that I taught, the career path and the people that I was surrounded by. But there's some things I would have definitely done better. And when I took the job at Western Carolina, Bob said, you're still going to work just as hard, but you need a hobby because you're not going to work as much, which was a lie because I think I worked more. But he said, when you play golf — and I was like, not well. And he said, what do you do? I was like, nothing, I don't think I do anything other than band. And he said, you have to fix that. And so I got into exercise and walking and going to the gym and doing all the things, and that was a great outlet. And I still do that every morning. I'm up at 5:30 in the morning and I go an hour and a half on a walk and I center myself for the day and then I can go to work. But I just think we need to be careful — if we're healthy mentally, our students are going to be in a much, much better place.
Yeah. Absolutely. Our next question is, is there a particular book or books that have inspired your journey? Again, doesn't have to be musical, could be just anything that has crossed your path that we can share with our listeners.
I think more than anything, I'm not going to say books, I'm going to say conversations with masters. I like reading. But if I know the person that wrote the article, I want to sit and have a conversation with them. And I'm going to start those name drops with people like Corporon, Mr. Kramer, Gary Green, who is a dear friend of mine. And just those conversations of sitting down where no question is out of their realm of answering. And I think one of my big things right now — and I'm doing a presentation at GMEA this year on this — is mentorship. And I don't mean to take the question in a different direction, I'm going to come back to it. But the book part of it is my book, part of it is mentorship. It's about finding somebody that you can read through conversation, somebody that you can bounce ideas off of, somebody you can trust, but at the same time somebody that'll lead you down the right path. I've told this story many, many times. It was when my group was preparing for the Midwest and Gary Green actually guest conducted us at Midwest. But I brought Gary to Atlanta to do a rehearsal. We're working on a piece by Yiu Magaio called The Fluttering Maple Leaves. And Gary came in and did the Friday night rehearsal. And after the rehearsal, he goes — I said, I'm going to take you back to the hotel. And he goes, no, you're not. You're going to take me to dinner. And I was like, well, we ate dinner already. He goes, we're going to go someplace and we're going to talk band. We're going to talk music. And it was at 9:00 at night on a Friday night. We had a full day the next day. And I was like, pinch me right now. Gary Green wants to go talk shop. Let's go. So we went to this restaurant, took out the score of The Fluttering Maple Leaves piece. And I remember sitting there with Gary and he's going, man, what does he want? Like, look at this chord. What does he want to hear out of this chord? Is it this? Is it this? I was tingling. I was just like, I can't believe I'm getting to have this kind of conversation with a master like Gary Green. And he's stumped and I'm stumped. And we're trying to figure this thing out together. And three hours went by like that. And we looked around — there was nobody in the place except for us and the people that were cleaning up. And they had to ask us to leave. And I looked at him before we left and I said, man, I knew you for about 6 months before I brought you in and I feel like I've known you forever. And we've been dear friends since then. But I said, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to sit here and create a moment that I will never in my life forget. And I said, you're Gary Green. And he goes, man, just remember this — the bigger they are, the bigger they are. And he said, if I don't have time for you, you don't need me. And I will tell you, every time I see Gary, it's a hug. It's how are you doing? How's the family doing? What are you doing in your life? I could say the same thing for Ray Kramer. Those are the golden people. And by the way, you don't have to have a degree to be that person. You got to be a great person. You got to love music and you got to love to serve the next generation coming through. But that will stick with me forever — the bigger they are, the bigger they are.
That's fantastic. Gary's incredible.
I just spent some time with Mr. and Mrs. Kramer in Colorado. Back in April, we did a concert band festival out there together. It was really great. It was really great to see them.
The last time I saw Ray, Ryan George was in his band when we did the touring BOA Honor Band. And so behind his back for an entire year, I put a commissioning project together that Ryan would write a piece called Full Circle and the Honor Band of America was going to premiere it. And we walked in on that Friday night and I brought in this piece of music and handed Ray a score and he goes, what's this? And Molly was there and I said, open the inside. And he opened it and I'd contacted probably 100 of his former students that had donated to the commissioning project and all their names were listed. And he just looked at me and goes, what are you doing to me right now? And I was like, Ryan, come on in. And then Ryan George walked in. He lost it. So he saw that thing for the first time at the first rehearsal, and three days later they played the piece and commemorated Ray. It was awesome.
That's beautiful. That's wonderful.
They are wonderful people, those two.
Yes, they are.
So all right, David, we are now to the point of the conversation where the ultimate question is coming — and arguably the most important — and it's what's your favorite time signature?
7/8, hands down. 7/8. I love conducting 7/8. I love the 2-3-2, the 3-2-2. I love the way you can twist it around. But I'm a percussionist, so when I write 7/8, the inside beats are way more important than the pedagogical downbeats. I just love it. Yeah. But I'm a Pat Metheny fan too, so I don't care — it can be any of it. What it is, it is.
7/8. Lord. We're going to have to start keeping a tally here because 7/8 is — I think it may be in the first. Oh, by far.
We are so thankful that you have shared your time and your extensive knowledge with us today. It's been fantastic having you on. Thank you again for your time and just sharing with us. This is inspiring and I know it's going to be helpful for our listeners, so thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity guys. I really appreciate it.
That's it for today's episode of the Common Time Podcast and thank you for spending time with us. We hope that today's conversation will give you something useful to take back to your students and your program. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribed so you don't miss what's coming up. And if you know another director who might benefit from this, please share it with them also. Don't forget you're able to nominate a music educator for our Standing Ovation program. The link to submit is in the show notes below. Thanks again for joining us on the Common Time Podcast. As always, keep making music and keep making a difference.