Band Camp Update - Camp Taconic

After a long search over the past 3 months we have reached a decision. Camp Taconic in the Berkshires is the new camp we have chosen to go to.  The price for camp will still be $615. The dates are August 15th through August 21st. A special thanks to Saul Waxman, Jed Schlacter, and Jim Downey as well as many other parents for helping me with the search. I will be proposing the band camp for approval by our Board of Education at the January 20th BOE meeting. Please remember, this is all subject to BOE approval.

Camp Taconic is state of the art, incredibly clean and new everywhere — great facilities for outdoor and indoor rain practices, delicious meal selections, wifi and full cell service for all carriers.  The Berkshires are traditionally cooler than upstate New York, the mountains offer a scenic background to the beautiful lake that surrounds three sides of the camp. The price will be the same and all amenities will be what we are used to and MORE! The Berkshires offer a lot for our parents to see as well.  Tanglewood, arts centers, museums, restaurants, shopping, and many of the nicest tourist areas in the country will make some great day trips for parents who are helping us to chaperone.  Taconic will be taking care of the afternoon fruit snacks and all water so parent chaperones can avail themselves of some time to explore the area during the day. Travel is a bit longer, about 3 hours away from home however, there are multiple ways of getting home from there. We will have a variety of routes in order to avoid the traffic snarls that we experienced in past years. You only have to cross over one bridge to get back to Long Island. Overall this is a great choice for us.  Just look at the two links below and you will see for yourself.

Check out Camp Taconic
Hit link below for the Camp Taconic Map.  There are slides of each area, just click around the map.

http://www.camptaconic.com/Content/VirtualMap/VirtualMap.asp

Hit link below for the Camp Taconic video.  It is their camp promotional video which shows just about all of the areas of the camp.
http://www.camptaconic.com/Content/Staff/Staff.asp?Link=Video

Band Camp 2011

Our band has grown in leaps and bounds over the past 7 years.  With that in mind, I have decided to take our band in another direction with our band camp venue.

For the past three months Saul Waxman, Jed Schlacter, Jim Downey, and myself have been looking for camps.  I made two trips to three camps who have our dates available and we are now about to finalize our plans.  In a few days, this Friday or Saturday, I will post a full update on where we plan on having band camp in 2011.

I will also be deciding on next year’s trip, either the Outback Bowl or a Disneyworld Trip.  We will probably vote on it to see if there is enough interest.

Orange Bowl Plans Unveiled

Hot off the press! Ok, here we go!  I have just received all the instructions from the Orange Bowl about the game, exactly what and when we are performing.  This is very exciting.  The Orange Bowl started this tradition of having a major artist perform at their game, many years before the Super Bowl copied their format which is now famous.  Being a part of this game is a true honor, it is a top Bowl Game and we will be nationally televised. They could not formalize any of this until the teams were decided, which took place last night.  The two teams are Stanford and Virginia Tech.

First let’s start with the parade on Sunday, January 2nd.  This is the Junior Orange Bowl Parade, the official parade, which replaced the Miami Orange Bowl Parade which was stopped after 9/11.  This is a huge parade in the town of Coral Gables and is part of the Orange Bowl Festivities.
For the Jr. Orange Bowl Parade on Sunday we will do the two new parade tunes “On Broadway and “Rocky” with the drum majors in their drum major uniforms, the guard with flags and the dancers with the yellow streamers.  All the band members will play instruments with the exception of Keith Shapiro and Lindsay Wolfson who will hold the banner in front of the band.  See what your assigned instruments are on the “Orange Bowl Info” page of the website. The captains will choreograph a simple routine and we will learn them during the three rehearsals before the trip (Wednesday December 15th, Monday December 20, and Wednesday December 22, with uniform and instrument and uniform check-in for the trip that last night).  All band members must check in their instruments and uniforms on that night, we will lock them all in the bandroom for the trip.

Now the Game on Monday night.  For the Pre-Game, all band members from the two High School Bands will unfurl and hold a 50 yard wide American Flag for the National Anthem, this will most likely be nationally televised on ESPN. This is one of those huge flags.  We will practice this very involved unfolding at the rehearsals in Miami as well.

Now onto the halftime extravaganza. When the half time starts, a DJ will call the two bands out and have us play the 2 minute fanfare to begin the festivities while the stage is being set up, we will then be doing an additional special effect after our fanfare to introduce the GooGoo Dolls.  We will practice this at the two Massed Band Rehearsals as well.

We will then stay near the tunnel after our segment to watch the GooGoo Dolls show from the field level and then move back up into the stands to watch the second half of the game.

There will be no pit or drum majors in the half time show, I have assigned everyone to instruments.  Guard and Dancers will have flags and will learn their routine together with the other guard at the Miami Massed Band Rehearsals. They will all do a flag routine with the band during the fanfare.
All music is up on the 2nd page of the website entitled “Orange Bowl Info.”  There are music links to download your parts to practice as well as audio links to listen to the music.  Please learn everything and learn the part you are assigned to.

Keep looking to this blog for more information and an update on band camp which I will post this Thursday or Friday.

New Service Point Rules - Why we started the service points

This year I am getting barraged by calls and e-mails about people not getting their points.  Last year, not one call.  Michelle and I watch everything, write it down and that is how we do this.  If we didn’t see it, then it is not getting points.

Also, if this is WHY you are helping out, please don’t.

The intent of the points is to reward people who are helping out, not to get more people to help out.
We always had those altruistic and hard working kids who never got noticed, now they are, through this simple point list. That is the ONLY reason I made it, so that those people get some recognition.
Last year I didn’t receive any e-mails about “you missed my points.”  This year it is out of control.  And most of these people are already in the top 20! So here is a new rule, if you e-mail me for more points, I will simply reply “please don’t help out if you are doing it for points. You should be helping out because you love the band and want to contribute to the program.”

A great band person told me last year “If I get some points, great, if I don’t, that’s great too, I just love that feeling of being a part of this and helping out.” That person is one of our leaders now!
In addition, part of life is for the important people to see you do that extra stuff, you need to build those skills as well. The officers you want to be seen by are the President, CEOs, Vice Presidents, and Managers. You should know who they are.  Do not ask them about your points, just make sure one of those people, or I see you.  In the workplace it is a major skill to get the credit for what you do in a passive and intelligent way.  Yes, you could tell your boss “hey, did you see me do that” but it would probably be more effective to “just do it” and be seen doing the work in a modest, hard working fashion. I am the one who ultimately picks the officers and this is the kind of person I am looking for.
We need help at certain times. It is pretty obvious when those times are. The 9 of us are taking notes and watching at those exact times in those places. Those are the times that we need you and that’s where you will get noticed.  And know what else? You should be an altruist and do it for no reward!
From this time on there will be no more point adjustments after the date. You should be doing this for the “love of program.”  Points are only to give SOME recognition to those who work very hard to keep us going! If you are the type of person who won’t do it without points, don’t. We have plenty of people who will help just because they want to.  Those are the kind of people that I am looking for to be our future leaders, hard working, band loving, altruists.

From the Best we go to the Largest!

Yes, Newsday made the call.  At the end of the third hour of their television telecast, they announced the phrase “from the best we go to the largest” to segue from us to Northport, the last band in this year’s tv show.  They showed our closer along with Sam Hoffman being interviewed from the sideline after our show.  Saving us for the end, along with making that statement surely shows that the Newsday and MSG people feel we were the best band. Our band is truly one of the top bands on the Island, you can see an hear it if you watch the entire show.  Compare us to any bands the entire three nights and you will come to this conclusion as well.

I will be posting a pretty comprehensive few paragraphs about where we are going to band camp in the next few days.  For vatious reasons which are pretty obvious, we are looking for a switch.  I have been researching for weeks and will be posting my findings very soon.

Newsday Festival on TV today!

Here is an important post which we should read again, now that we are about to be on TV with the Newsday Broadcast.  Today Christie Wang, one of our colorguard captains, got major “air time” on National TV!  This is amazing and we are all proud of her.  In order to get air time the planets have to line up just right. With Christie, it was a home run.  Hopefully today, we will get an interview or something extra on the Newsday show on TV. It will be shown all year long so let’s cross our fingers.
Here is the post I made in October.  It is important that we all read through this before the upcoming weeks.

I need to preface this blog post with my personal story about learning about press coverage.  Some of you know this story, some do not.  If you’ve already heard it, please humor me.  It describes me coming up the learning curve with all this press stuff almost 14 years ago when the yankees were IN the World Series.

October 26, 2006, I’ll never forget it.  All 280 band members in the Mineola Band that day will never forget it.  All of a sudden, the scores we were receiving all season, in the 90s, the highest scores on Long Island meant absolutely nothing.  We were about to experience something that would change our lives forever. So there we were, at the pinnacle of fame, the band I had come to in 1990 was now going to the World Series, Game 6, the first time the Yankees were in the World Series in 18 years.  Little did we know they would win that day and we would be there.  It was incredible, breathtaking, uplifting and impossible to describe. We were playing at the game, we got 300 seats in the left field bleachers, and playing for 20 minutes before the game started.  The news crews swarmed Mineola High School, like bees, they were everywhere!  News 5 showed up at noon, ABC news at about 12:30, NBC and CBS, as well as News 12, all here within minutes with cameras all over the bandroom for 8th period band.  Then, the New York Times reporter went to one kid, the one kid in the entire program that I would NEVER want interviewed.  Like a magnet, this reporter gravitated to him, I have no idea how or why.  He started asking him questions about the band, what it meant to him.  The room was insane, wires, cameras, lights everywhere.  There was absolutely nothing I could do, it was at the point of no return. He was talking, laughing, and smiling.  I was having a heart attack, ignoring all the other things and trying to read his lips from across the room.  It was at this time that I realized something a great band director had told me when I was in my early 20s, teaching at Hampton Bays Jr/Sr High School.  You can never control the press, you can never get upset about the press, and you have to welcome the press, they are PR for your kids, your program, and bring excitement and enthusiasm to the entire community! You need to prepare your kids for the unpredictability and randomness of press coverage.  They need to understand that this is part of being famous.  They need to embrace the PR and not be upset if they don’t get the “air time.”

So now it is time for our band “press talk.”  Every “dynasty in the making” band needs it, like so many other talks we have throughout our lives as we grow.  Talks that prepare us for life.  We are now hitting the “big time” and with the Orange Bowl approaching, I need to have this discussion with you.
With the press you never know how much air time you will get IF ANY.  It is very fickle.  You should NEVER expect it or you will surely be let down.  30 seconds is major, huge, and bands will go years without even that much.  Some kids will be shown a lot, some will not be shown at all, it is just a simple reality.  My friend’s band was at the Rose Bowl Parade about 15 years ago.  Their band was going to be on all three networks.  President Bush decided to talk at that time and completely covered up that band performing on ALL THREE NETWORKS.  I couldn’t believe it, just really bad luck. And other weird things happened in our show on MSG, for instance, they showed some people over and over and missed other solos or decided to simply not show them.   I don’t know if they will use that footage or different footage on the 3 hour show they will air on Thanksgiving weekend.  Almost every band gets one tune featured, and some kids interviews will get on the air, but most won’t.  They interviewed about 100 student band members and 36 band directors.  Few will get on.  Our show might get some more coverage because it is artistic, fun, and enjoyable, or they may show us for 1 minute, like they did many bands last year on the Marching Band TV show.

Please do not be upset if you didn’t get in the video, that is the way this works.  If you did get some “air time” be thankful, you were lucky.  As a whole, us being on TV helps us all no matter what.  Be happy for the people who did get on and please stop texting Michelle about the drum major mishap.  Obviously something went wrong.  All three drum majors got a major shot on the video and that in itself is amazing.

With the Orange Bowl coming up as well as our fast growing fame, you need to totally be ready for anything with press coverage.  Be prepared, don’t expect anything, and you may be pleasantly surprised.  The Orange Bowl is covered Nationally, and with the Goo Goo Dolls doing the halftime show with us, it may be covered, it may not.

And as far as the MSG website video, you all look amazing, we sound and look great!  I am so proud of all of you but most importantly, you should be totally proud of yourselves!  We are truly one of the great bands!

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.