Go do 4/5 at 180.
Then do 16/5 at 60-70bpm.

You'd be suprised... they are both difficult to do CLEAN -- 16/5 no big deal fast, because you don't have to worry about having your foot in the air as long... but when you get going to 16/5 and above SLOWLY, and CLEANLY, it's pretty freakin' hard to look GOOD..

I just thought i would add my two cents, in what case why you not want to jazz run a 4/5 step size, becuse it is 45 inches, thats just short of 4 feet per stride, It seems to me that that below about 132 bpms that it is of little use to try to clean because you simply arnt moving your feet fast enough to make it smooth. and on top of that, to uniformaly clean a 4/5 step at any tempo would be a daunting task, regardless of who it is, marching band or drum corps. I could see a set of jazz running this big, but to actualkly ensmble in a line a 4/5 step seems like a huge waste of time...

Unfortunatley, at my school, we are only taught 8 to 5 and to just "Make your steps smaller" or "Make your steps bigger" if 8 to 5 dosent work in the drill.

Our school teaches 8 to 5, but then us drummers learn most of the other common ones, 6 to 5, 15 to 5, etc. The hornline, however, doesn't learn as many, and they just stick with 8 to 5.

Hi! Everyone

I'm Elizabeth. Reguarding about the 8 to 5 stepes. As a Marching(Visual)Tech. I have always taught the 8 to 5 only. Most high schools dont want to learn the 16 to 5 or etc. I always been call or ask to "ONLY" teach the band and color guard the 8 to 5 steps. While i was in high school band, we were only taugh the 8 to 5 stepes too.

Our band does everything. You name it, 20 to 5, 18 to 5, 16 to 5, 12 to 5, 8 to 5, 6 to 5, and last but not least 4 to 5. Yeah that one's the killer. Especially when your doing it with a drum on............crabbing! It's kind of fun though to watch the short players not being able to do it.

Elizabeth - You don't have to say "hi", we know who you are. Your name appears next to every single post you author. It's kind of hard to miss it.

Nice Chicago reference there, Batman. I loved their sound. I think more rock bands should have horns.

Back to the topic:
When I first joined marching band, the standard size was 8 to 5. During basics, we really didn't cover much else, even though we rarely did 8 to 5 in the drill.

When I joined corps, the standard step size used by the corps was 7 to 5. It was a more natural step size, but more difficult to clean and set during drill rehearsals. 3 years later they changed the standard to 8 to 5. We did practice other size steps but not with any great frequency.

At Cavaliers, we used 8 to 5 as the standard size, but we practiced just about everything under the sun pretty regularly, from step sizes of 4 to 5 all the way down to 64 to 5.

Wow. Our BD touts us as being one of the best high school bands in the county, and perhaps the state. Yet I've never heard of any of this. We just kinda march... and do our best to stay in line :P

I live in Maryland by the way. We're nothing compared to some of the big bands in the south.

Our school only teaches us to march 8 to 5.
At band camp we learn to call out.
One, Two, Three, MIDDLE. Five, Six, Seven, LINE.
And we use that to teach how to do our pregame show.

we pretty much just use 8/5 or jazz run in our shows