My school uses 8 to 5 steps and it's pretty easy but my aunt taught me how to march 6 to 5. What kind does your school use and which do you think is easier?

We do 8 to 5, 6 to 5, 12 to 5, and 16 to 5. the hardest is 16 to 5. Toes up to the sky, rolling the heel, you can really feel it.

The most common step size is 8 steps for every 5 yards. But most groups practice the 6 to 5, 16 to 5, 12 -5 ect... Also 16 steps to 5 yards should be rather easy as the step sizes are half the size of your normal 8 to 5 step. Now doing a 4 to 5 is nice and fun especialy backing up at about 180bpm or more. But there is no right or wrong way. The right way is the way that everyone in your program marches. As long as its uniform its correct.

He means 16/5 CLEAN.

Especially 'refreshing' at a slow tempo.

My director taught us 4/5, 8/5, 16/5, and *gasp* 32/5. Trust me, it ain't a walk in the park at all.

We use 8 to 5 most of the time. Some time there is a flaw in are drill though that makes us go too far in not enough time or steps.

25 or 6 to 4?

Seriously, 8 to 5s are the standard. But you should be able to do them all.

My school only teaches to march 8 to 5. I wish they would teach more than that, but what can you do? Pretty much if I want to learn something else, I have to do it on my own. Which I have done many a time.

batman98 has a point. You should be able to march all of them. You really should be able to march all of them if your are thinking about marching in a corps. Oh yes this means crab steping too.

Ok taking SMALLER steps to make 5 yards is easier than taking larger steps to make 5 yards. HELLO! You guys are going to honestly tell me that its harder to do a 16 to 5 as oppossed to a 4 to 5? Get real. You can crank out a 16 to 5 at 180bpm much easier than you can a 4 to 5 at the same bpm. Come on peopel think. You have to work harder to cover the same ground in only 4 steps.

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

We do 8 to 5 at our schools. On the count of 8, everyone yells "Hit it" so that we all should be saying hit it together and we should all be hitting the line together. Obviously if the band is yelling hit it and you are nowhere near the line, you are probably going to be doing some adjusting. It works pretty well.

Well, we've switched directors so many times in the past few years and each had a different style they liked. I was just wondering about that.

Most of the successful schools that I see have a standard step of 6/5. This way, they move more and cover more ground, creating a better GE Vis.

we do 8/5 but there was this one point in one of our shows where the drill called for 6/5 fro crabstep straight to the side then we had to switch to 12/5 and start going diagonally back crab stepping it was fun but really hard but our normal stepping is 8/5

When I was in high school we used only the 8 to 5 steps. Now that I'm teaching I will even used the 8 to 5 steps. Occasionally we used 6 to 5 steps. But that is rarely.

Are band uses 8 to 5 marching. To me that is the easiest one

In the OSU Marching Band (a traditional style band), the fundamental step of our marching style is the 8 to 5 step. We use this step along with our high leg-lift chair step style of marching. In that "traditional" style, we also use adjusted step, essentially taking as many counts as is necessary to get to the spot. They could give us any number of counts in which to reach the spot, and the technique used to make it there in a uniform manner is to split the distance into halves. Obviously, in an 8 to 5 step, you reach halfway in four steps. In a 6 to 5, you'll reach half in 3, 32 to 5 you'd reach half in 16 and so on and so on(we're all smart enough to do basic math). The trick is to keep that idea of halfway in your head on non 8 to 5 steps. Something that many people do not notice about the OSUMB is that we also have what's called the "stride step," which is not a corps-style roll step, but is essentially one's normal walking gait. The standard distance measurement for our stride step is 6 to 5, although we do adjust that step as well.

8 to 5 should be easier since the step sizes are smaller but many corps use 6 to 5 for backwards marching. They both serve their purpose.

I think that you have to be versatile. At my school we learn and use frequently 8 to 5, 16 to 5, 12 to 5, 6 to 5, and even an occasional 4 to 5. We do this because we move alot a lot and we have a lot of gaps that we have to get thru so the step size changes often enough that we have to have so many

8 to 5 for us