This year our band was pretty small. Class 1A and about 30 members. But, the thing is, half of our band were Seniors. So next year its going to be cut in half.

They say that every year they're supposed to get a lot of freshman in, but every year they only get a couple. This year it was only me and two other freshman.

How would you go about coping with this? Marching Bands are supposed to fill an entire football stadium. We won't even fill a cafeteria.

EDIT: Oh don't even get me started on colorguard. So far we only have 1 signing on.

...one.

We've had a small band, not less than 30, but usually around 35. What you've got to do is just love the activity. Yeah your friends won't talk about how you owned the other school anymore, but you guys will be that much closer by the end of the season. Being in marching band has never been about competing with other schools or having the hugest sound to me. It's always been about (1) seeing how I can get better as a player, (2) doing what I can to help other people do the same, and (3) loving the family that you'll be a part of. In my opinion a 30 person band will always be better than a 100, 150 or (in one case that I've seen)300 member band, because you can't really have #3 in a huge band. If you just have that mentality versus "how will we compensate for being small" everything will run smoothly.

Also, what are you doing to get people interested? Are you talking to members of the concert band? Are you talking future freshman? Are you asking members of the orchestra if they want to do pit or drumline? Are you asking members of your school's dance department about colorguard? Are you trying to make something of the situation at all? If you just say "dang it, the band's gonna be tiny." Then I guarantee that the band indeed will be tiny. But if you put some effort into it and think about things you can do to help things out, maybe you'll be able to change this course you're following.

I recognized at our final game of the season that our DL next year would be 3 people. I could have said crap, 3 people, that sucks, oh well. No, instead I started talking to people, did a clinic to get people interested, and now we're looking at 11 potential members now.

If you try to do something about it I think you'll get more than what you'll get by just saying "aw darn." And look where you are, a drumline forum. If you just start making some decisions and start saying "I'm going to so something about this" and give some ideas of what you plan to do, people here will help you out.

So how do you cope with it? Get people interested. Everyone you can. Even if you don't end up with 50 members, you'll end up with more, and even if not, you can be proud of the effort you put forth.

Apollo, this was actually very helpful.
We've already been to the Middle schools in our zone to try to get people interested. We can almost say were getting 10 freshman, but then you never know.

Also, my drum is on the line (ahahah)
If the bands too small, I won't be able to march snare. I'm really not likely to say "Aw darn."

But the overall problem is that were just not motivated. I suggested a drumline clinic, and our section leader says (sarcastically)
"Ok, so we take some sh*tty drums over to some middle school, play like we did all season (like sh*t), whine about how small our band will be and hope that some people will feel sorry for us and join one of the worst bands in the county?"

Were not one of the worst bands in the county, but everyone thinks we are. I'm getting tired of always being in the "worst" band.

But we're not talking about him doing something, that clinic I talked about above I did without my section leader, who might not have done it anyway. If your section leader isn't interested well oh well, if your motivated enough to try to do something about it you won't need him.

Also, try getting your drum major and band captains and other leaders interested in going to middle schools and talking to people too, perhaps they haven't realized what the band'll be.

Our band directors already heard this issue a million times, and is pretty much saying the same things that you are.

Like I said, we've been to plenty of middle schools in hopes of recruiting, but so far, theres really no hope.

this is what has happend say, the past 3 years.the 2005-06 we had a 50 person band, and most were seniors. Then the next year, we got a new band director. in 2005, we had 30 people in 6th grade, then the next year 76, then this year, 84, big difference, since the band director came knowing how to do it, so by my senior year, we wil have 100, since this year we have 8 seniors leaving, and 30 8th graders.

Another thing is, that the 50 person band last year, we let 8th graders march; only2 out of the 10 marched, so we lost about 20 seniors, 5 in percussion alone.....

Oh and our band is not respected at all at my school, but we have like a 12 person cheerleading squad, and the football team is the size of the instrument players in the band.

edit- year before last, we made all 2s, this year we got 1st and 2nd in 2 competitions in 1a, 6 person drumline

Be the best 1A band & the best 3 member drumline in the state

I am serious,...it's about quality not quanity...Best wishes & Good luck.

Instructor's Secret: It's easier to clean up 3 drummers than 20 drummers.

Bumping this because we have a ballpark estimate of what our bands going to be.

Not counting incoming freshman:
3 Trumpets
0 Tuba
0 Baritone
1 Trombone
2 Flutes
3 Saxophones
0 Clarinets
1 Oboe (Marching Oboe?)
1 French Horn
5 Drumline

Guaranteed Incoming Freshman:
1 Trumpet
1 Suzaphone

Please. Just tell me how ridiculous this is. 1A? More like 1/8A
A lot of bands in our county are actually going to be pretty small. I wish that it'd be acceptable to join a few bands together. Thad be so awesome.

Guys this is a serious cry for help. The motivation in our band is crap. We might as well not even have a band next year.

Yeah, that's the spirit . I think the woodwinds should learn brass instruments, that would definitely add some body to the ensemble. Subtracting woodwinds and adding 6 brass would make quite a difference. But again you're thinking the wrong way, yes, your year will suck with this many people if you let it. Take it as a challenge, think "how can I make this better" and enjoy the family you're in. Quit thinking negative.

The motivation of your band is crap? Get other people involved, go to nearby middle schools, get people in the arts programs in your school involved, dancers have movement experience, orchestra people read music, if you put some effort I think you could get three from each group. So that's 6. Let's say you have 6 middle schools in you county, 4 nearby. Let's say you visit all of them and and you get around 6 altogether. That's 12 (with the 6 above), put that with the 18 I counted in your line up above, that's 30. Then what if you get the people you recruited involved. What if you get those dancers and orchestra members and middle schoolers that you got to all try to recruit someone? Let's say a quarter of them got a buddy in, thats 3 more members. 33! Just like that. Those are pretty hypothetical numbers and it might not be that easy, but the fact is, if you sit down and think you can do something. Really, try it. I got excited making this post and I'm not even in your band, are you excited at the challenge? Have you done anything yet? Or are you still just complaining? Because complaining will not increase your numbers, working to increase your numbers however, will probably increase your numbers. Best of luck to you.

It's a matter of how you guys view yourselves. I know a band director who taught 5A & moved to 1A school & took that little band to 3rd in class 1A state marching competition. Just work with what you have man.

But thats the thing.
How could we pull off recruiting?
Why go to one of the lowest average bands in the county, when you can go to a school like Northeast High and be in one of the biggest and baddest.

The only way were getting freshman is because of School zones. 8th Graders can't be arsed to get bused or anything. Or if there are good friends in the band.

Also another problem: I can't get in to the middle schools anymore. My old middle school (where were getting the most freshman from) put a gate around the school so people can't get in without going through the office. And I tried and they wouldn't give me a visitors pass.

The only way is if our Band Director would go with us. And she's already done this plenty of times. But to no prevail =/

By posting this, I hope you realize it means I'm willing to do everything I can, but I'm so deeply discouraged I just don't know anymore.

Bah. I had no idea this would be happening when I decided to go this specific High School. Back in the 90s, Dixie was a BIG [b]butt[/b] band with lots of pride. Now its just an endangered species, getting ready to go extinct once the last of the seniors leave.

EDIT: Wait. There may be a loophole. Is it common for marching bands to use keyboards? If so, it could kill a few birds with one stone. It'll be no substitute for actual parts, but keyboards could really help fill it in.

Our band is roughly 30 members, 2 brass (1 trumpet, 1 baritone). We got first place in all categories in our last competition. Our scores were even higher than several of the bands in the division above us. All of the people there have to know their parts, and have to understand how important every single person in the band is.

At our concert band contest, the judges there said we had some of the best sound they had heard all weekend. As a senior graduating from a small band, I can tell you that you can be surprised what you can get a small band to do.

Get them a good field show, in my opinion stay away from pop-music shows (never have been a fan), some exciting drum parts too. Get them hyped before shows. Show them videos of drum corps. I used to show various shows that I have on DVD to the drumline that I'm section leader of, you'd be surprised how interested they will be in the videos. Have them point out things they find cool, and impressive. Ask them what they are doing that makes them so clean and wonderful to listen to. Have them try to apply this to there own playing and marching.

Cham, that was truly the most inspiring post so far.
But the problem is, we already know what our show will be.
-Michael Jackson's Thriller
-Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show
-KernKraft 400 by Zombie Nation

When we found out our show, we were totally syked. But the thing is, when the brass in Thriller comes in, it's supposed to be absolutely huge, even overpowering. That's the main thing that makes it a good opener. But with a small band, we kept help thinking it'll sound kind of lame.

And I've totally planned to do this next year. As far as getting us pumped up as much as possible. Haha it sucked because this year we were never pumped up before a game. I want to get us crazy!

I'm with all of you guys that have small bands.

This year, my band was in A class and there were about 30 something members. I don't remember how many of what instruments we had but it didn't matter to me anyway. My band sucked, in my opinion but that didn't really matter to me either. What I do to cope with having a small band, is just go out there and do my best, learn, have fun and hope that everyone else does the same. Like previously stated, it's not about quantity, but about quality.

I'd love to be in a top, award winning band (like my freshman year, we were decent) but to me, really, high school band is more of a learning experience.

This year almost all of our (awesome)pit is graduating and we don't have many kids coming in since we don't have any feeder programs yet. That is something you guys could do if you are desperate for kids. Talk to your band director about setting up feeder programs at the middle schools in your area.

Good luck

There are some very small bands in my area and they dominate. Numbers have nothing to do with with a band being good. The drum corps im marching with this summer only has about 35 members and the powerful sound that we get is amazing.

What is a feeder program?

A feeder program is basically a lower level ensemble that is generally set up at a middle school (or independently) to recruit members for the upper level/high school ensemble for the future. The members will learn various skills required to march and play at a higher level.

Corps such as the Blue Devils and Santa Clara Vanguard also have feeder programs.

Hope that helped a bit.

Were already doing something like that.
Our closest Middle School played their winter concert at our school, and were doing a joint Spring concert sometime next month.

This includes playing 2 songs as a whole band as well. That all may just work!

darfin,

From that song list, it seems those songs have the potential for boring drum parts (although fun wind parts). I'm going to guess you are section leader, or at least one of the more dedicated members of your line. That said, don't be afraid to talk to your director about writing a drum feature to transition between one of those songs to the other, or beefing up the parts some. Beefing up the parts in your situation helps not only challenge the players that you do have, but allows you to play things that large drumlines may struggle to play clean. (I'm having trouble wording this next part, but anyways) I found myself glad at times that I was in a smaller drumline, because there were less players to worry about making clean (not saying the small drumline=instant cleanliness). Another reason for beefing up your parts is that with many pop songs, the drum parts can get boring, just being a split up drumset part. When the whole drumline gets bored with what they are playing...well a number of different problems can arise.

Even with a small band, you still have the potential to use visuals, the line could do a version of the time warp while throwing down some notes. Or, you could adapt the tap solo from the end of the time warp for a snare break or something.

Here is our small band, I'm the one with the broken arm:

this is our small band, one, if not the, smallest in the area. I am the one left of the tuba (not percussion) Granted not as small as yours, but still.....

or you could just look at the picture under my name, JacketSnare3

Link won't work.
But Cham, you seem to be the only telling me just everything I want to hear.

I'm not section leader, but your right I am the most dedicated one in my line and I'm guaranteed section leader my Junior year.
But the thing is, we have a drum instructor and he is pretty much in charge of the line. If only we could stand on our own two feet, we could write some cool drum parts.

Whats it like having two snares in a band that small? Because I may loose my snare next year if the band gets too ridiculous.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having an instructor, he could probably write better parts too, talk to him or the BD and see what you can do.

That joint concert stuff is exactly the kind of thing you want to do. Stuff that gets you around the kids in the middle schools. See if you could take some drums over there once a week and get a little drumline together, maybe for their talent show or something. If you can't do that go over their and coach their percussion section on their parts in band. If you can't get a drumline going, get a percussion ensemble together over there.

How're things going so far? Any progress?

Yeah, the attatchment links don't work on here anymore... (bug perhaps? I know Mods are working on it)

But having 2 snares, it is alright, but when one is absent, the other you can tell the mistakes REAL fast, and one doesn' get a real good sounds, but the two together is better than one. It is also easier to clean up snares. And with two, it doesn't take as long to switch those old BlackMax heads.

When one of the snares didn't show up for the game, I wanted to play it marching to pregame, and the cadence (yes THE 1 cadence)
but I never asked, because the BD wouldn't let me, even though my trombone was damaged at one time... but I can say a few other times that happened, but I'm not.

Apollo, I'm going to try your suggestion. I'll tell the other (dedicated) members of the line too and we can take em all over. No progress so far.

Jacket, what I meant was how does a band that small sound with two snares? Does it overpower it? Too loud?

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... you shoulda just said that

see for yourself... opener last year

we were more worried about bass drums [and trumpets] overpowering, since they had no sense of dynamic contrast

Wow! You're right. That did sound really powerful.
But..I didn't hear any tenors?

EDIT: How many members was that.
NOT counting colorguard.

well, we didn't get a tenor player until about midway during the season, so he didn't march the show.
There was 25-30 instrument players, 6 percussion at the time- 2 snare, 3 bass, 1 cymbals. In October, we got a tenor player, so he didn't get to march the show, but he got to do pregame, and stuff in the stands

edit- our other 2 songs should be on a related video.

I thought it was something like that.
Well played.

Darfin, my band has about 25 non-percussion/color guard members. In the drumline, we have 2 snares, 2 quads, and 4 basses. We had (this last year) a pretty good pit(as far as mallets/keyboard go), but not too big. Not much over 30 people in the entire band, I think. But after watching a video again, I think we put out a decent sound for our size. (Too bad nobody could f'n march)

I'm uploading the video to YouTube right now so you can view it if you'd like to. I'll edit this post when it's finished.
EDIT - Here is the link to the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CEitfcKNeI

P.S - when the video is up, check out our wimpy "colorguard"

nice, but low brass could be stronger, that was better than some of band's I've seen of the same size. year before last, ya'll woulda won for sound quality... not neccesarrily quantity

That was really powerful as well. I really liked that show.
Props to you guys.
Definitely making me feel better. Hopefully we will be even that big, though.

I'm in the same boat as you for next year. Heh. Thanks for the comments, makes me feel better about this year. Hopefully we will be better next year. Probably not, but I'm gonna hope anyway.

I will definitely post us playing on YouTube.
Sadly we don't have ANY videos of our performance.
Maybe we'll be able to take a few good videos from Band Camp.

my dad sat next to the band section at the top and taped us

Bumping.
Our BD is getting her list of incoming freshman Tuesday. We all await in anticipation of what it'll be. It's going to have to be at least 10-15 if were going to be refilled. And we never get more than 2 or 3.

Ugh I'm feeling sick to my stomach. We practiced Pomp & Circumstance the other day (without seniors obviously) and it sounded horrible.

I'll keep you guys posted.

HOLY SH*T WE PLAYED POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE!!!!

I agree small isn't necessarily bad. the only problem is it's hard to gauge how good you are because there aren't many people besides you...

Wow, two schools playing Pomp and Circumstance, what are the odds?

I mean, it's only THE piece that is played at EVERY graduation.

How to deal with a small band:

1. Grimace
2. Bear it
3. Then go march drum corps

True that.

Four years ago, we had thirty people in the band total; about fifteen guard, four battery, and eleven people on the field.

The thing to do is always be proud. People in your school come up to you and say the band sucks, tell them to pick up an instrument and march. Don't let them haterz get to you.

Well guys, this is somewhat an answer.
I asked my BD a few weeks back that if the band was smaller than this year than would two snares overpower it too much.
She said yes.
Last week she officially put me and the other sophomore on snare, so hopefully that means good news.

Honestly, if our band is as big as it was this/last year, I'll be so happy. Which it looking like it is.

For right now, let's call this little mini drama a closed case until our band camp comes around. Thank you guys for your support.

wow i cant even imagine that.we marched 180 last year.Way to stick it out though
EDIT: here is an HBCU style show we did last year. we only did it once and on our last game and we kinda sucked it up but hey..it was fun.. fast fowerd to 6:51 for the good stuff

There's one thing the snare's and tenors can do to not sound as loud. I marched at a small school for the first two years, and I taught our snares this technique:

Use a tighter grip with more fingers around the stick. instead of your hand loosening up at full extension, keep more hand on the stick. This will limit your maximum stick heights to about two inches less than normal (and help the newer guys keep hold of the stick).

It worked for us. I personally don't prefer it but hey, if that's what we had to do to be quiet, we did it. (not considering cleanliness), 3 Snares playing with lower heights is a better number than 2 playing at wild full extensions.

it would be a better idea to maintain correct technique while simply playing lower heights.

Changing implements is another way to reduce volume. Using a slightly shorter & lighter stick (like the typical indoor model) will reduce your sound while allowing you to keep a normal approach to the drum.