The Train is Coming, Enjoy the Ride!

As a director I am tremendously proud of how far the Marching Bulldogs have come in terms of their development. The students have worked so hard, from the first step at band camp through the night rehearsals and the competitions.  As most of you know, I treat band as a leadership training, character development, and goal setting class in addition to the marching and music instruction.


Our marching band is making incredible strides each year, therefore we should be filled with pride at what the band is accomplishing. We are competing with bands that have been in competition for 30 or more years, with deep rooted traditions in the community and schools. Secondly, a goal of the program, which is to steadily improve and progress each year, is clearly being met and should be apparent to all. The band is bigger, the marching is cleaner, and the overall sound and colorguard is getting better each year.


Many bands choose not to compete. They choose to perform a less involved and simpler show at only the Newsday festival and their home games. We, the “Roslyn Marching Bulldogs” compete. We are better for it and will accomplish great things by being a competitive band.  Short and long term goals are an important part of life and through this great activity, we will “shoot for the stars.”


Our scores have risen and we have been beating more and more bands each year at the dome.  And at the dome “ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.”  When we received 2nd out of 12 we were ranked dead last all season in the competitions.  The dome brings in the best judges and doubles the slate to minimize the impact one judge can have.  Judges from outside our area are more likely to make the call and lead the local judges to do the right thing when we are at the dome.

What I am telling you here is that this judging arena, like life, means that you have to pay your dues. We have to change our culture where many of our kids aren’t playing the music on the field (all bands that come in 3rd through last have this problem).  We have to have our guard perfect, and we have to march great.  We also have to pay our dues.  Building a culture and paying our dues takes time, a tedious and sometimes upsetting process which can take not weeks or months, but years.

Remember, we are great, look at how far we have come and everybody in the Marching Band community, judges, other band directors, audiences, and the public fully knows Roslyn as an “up and coming powerhouse.”  We are proud as ever and I as director am so proud to run such a great group of kids and great parents.  We had dads fixing the trailer for 3 hours last Saturday, parents running band camp, and the largest contingent of spectators go to the dome from Roslyn each year.  Our parents even cheer for our neighbor competitor when they win the class over us!  We are the greatest people anywhere!  Total team players.  The kids are perfect!  They give up part of themselves for the team every single day! Hard working, fun, smart, bubbly, and love band!  What more could I ask as a director?  A fair read?  YES, I want it all!  I want our kids to get the score they deserve!  I am very positive, a “glass half full” kind of guy!  It will happen, at some point, and you will know when my post simply says “YES, HERE WE GO.” It may be this year, next year, or 10 years from now, but it will happen.  It is inevitable. The train is coming down the tracks of the tunnel, our train, and everyone, yes everyone, sees it and hears it coming! Let’s all enjoy the ride!

Don't stand by yourself on a block and yell "Play"

We are playing at the Homecoming parade on Saturday at 12 noon.  First thing, this parade starts right on time or even a little earlier so be ready and downtown before the parade blocks you in.  Second, we will not have the winds do alot of playing at this parade since 90% of the parade route has nobody listening.  If you stand on an empty block all you are going to hear is the drum cadence.  To be able to perform at all on this day we literally have about 3 times which we can have the winds play in the parade.  Any more and the brass players will not be able to get through the show at the Homecoming Game in the afternoon or at the Whitman Competition that night.

At the Homecoming game and the Whitman Show we play at full peak performance which we call “Full Outs.”  This means that the brass players give it their all and hold nothing back.  The best high school bands in the country only have about 2 full outs a day. In addition, doing a “Full Out” performance takes alot of endurance for 7 minutes straight.  This is why many bands cannot sustain and are very weak at the end of the show.  When we rehearse we do two full outs at the end of the night to build endurance. On a show day we have to be very conservative since we have to sound the best we can for audiences and judges. With the hours of break time between the afternoon game and the competition we can rebuild some embouchure muscles (the wind players mouth) but if we play more than 3 times in the noon parade we are really chancing it.  Many of my bands have bombed on Homecoming day due to these performances within 24 hours.  In addition, we are playing two “Full Outs” on Friday, one being the Pep Rally and the other the Soccer “Friday Night Lights.”

Please don’t stand on a block, by yourself, yelling “Play!.”  Stand where there is a big crowd, usually by the Clock Tower, in front of the Post Office and about a block after the turn towards the Library.  These are the traditional spots where there are the biggest crowds and where we have the musicians all play.  We will be playing the second half of the closer, mainly due to the fact that we do not have time at this point in the season to learn a parade tune.

The Parade route is from the High School, down Roslyn Rd to the clock tower, make a right downtown and go around the pond, ending at the Library.  The band also stops at the Library while the rest of the parade walks the rest of the way up the hill.  Carrying the big instruments up the hill is incredibly difficult so we stop at the library, eat, wait for the parade to finish, then we go right to the field to prepare for the half time show.

Judging is Subjective

Each set of judges give totally different scores, be ready for anything!

Judges are all different. Each judge has different tastes in music, and different ideas about the concept and quality of each show.  Judges also have a tendency to keep bands in the same score range that they were in the year before. Bands literally have to break out of their score range by being much better.  Keep it all in perspective.  If we win,”Great”.  If we don’t, there is always next week. Aim high, be patient.  We will become one of the top bands on the Island. Remember, don’t complain about the system of judging, in a few years these same judges will crown us champions.  People watching in the stands know who the best bands are, regardless of the score!

Homecoming Weekend, Five Performances

Here we go, the weekend is coming up.  We have a pep rally around 2pm on Friday at the school field, a performance between 7 and 8 on Friday night, a parade Saturday at noon, the halftime show at the homecoming game around 2:30 to 3pm on Saturday afternoon, and the big first competition of the season on Saturday night at Walt Whitman High School.