Atention Band Parents/Kids

UCLA_Band_Mom
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:00:07 +0000

College marching bands are used to having students who are serious students. They handle it by learning most of their routines at summer band camp. Camp is held for a week or two just before school starts (longer camp if you are in drumline, or are a freshman, and shorter camp for returning students). My son met several good engineering friends at his Freshman band camp, it was nice to make friends before all the other students showed up and classes started.

His professors were always lenient with the band members when it came to re-scheduling midterm exams and finals that coincided with important games. One Physics professor even let the band members skip one of the midterms, and weigh the other exams higher so as to let them all travel up to the Stanford game.

Marching drills take less time to learn in college, because the students are much more experienced. What took 3 weeks to learn in high school only took an afternoon in college. And the freshman had the music mailed to them over the summer so that they could learn their parts ahead of time. Actual weekly practice wasn’t very time consuming, more of a refresher of what was learned in band camp.