<p>Marching band is a lot of things. It is the opportunity to perform in front of hundreds of thousands of people, it is the opportunity to learn to be part of a team, it is the opportunity to to put some movement with the beats and to learn to be a performer, not justs a musician. </p>
<p>My son has probably performed in front of more people (in excess of 800,000 people) as part of his high school marching band program than some of professional musicians have in their entire careers. He once had someone ask him if he was “THE trumpet player from XXX high school”. He litterally feels like a celebrity any time he goes to a band function and someone asks him what high school he is from.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that the argument that it “takes too much time” is bogus. Sure it takes time, everything takes time, but I think that the rewards that one can get out of it are worth the time ten times over.</p>
<p>Of course I am sure all of that depends on the particular marching band program. At my son’s high school marching band is just as competitive as any “sport”. Competitive for spots in the marching band, competitive for “chair” and part, competitive as a team competing against other bands. I’ve heard a few college marching band student say that college marching band is not “the same” as it was in high school, again, that probably depends on the college. At my son’s high school marching band it is a very amazing experiance, I think that I almost got as much out of it as a parent as my son did as a participant.</p>
<p>Here is a email that my son’s high school band director recieved just after our state championship:</p>
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<p>That guy made it quite clear that marching band is not the same everywhere. I honestly feel sorry for people who don’t get to experiance why my son has experianced at his high school.</p>
<p>You gotta think about those thousands of students who participate in drum corps every year. They have 12-16 hour a day practices, they run and do push ups and spend hours in the blazing sun. It has to be physically miserable. Yet they pay lots of money to do it! And a lot of top wind and percussion college music majors do this on top of their college marching band. There has to be something worthwhile about the experiance or else they wouldn’t put themselves through all of that. </p>
<p>If nothing else musically, marching band builds crazy lip and lung endurance.</p>
<p>When it came time for my son to narrow down his college list, the first thing we did was to eleminate all colleges that did not have marching band.</p>
<p>I’ve read some posts where people indicated that marching band was “just about playing as loud as you can”. thats not true. Anyone who thinks that has never experianced a good marching band. Yes, you do have to play out, but you also have to avoid standing out or blasting. It’s all about blending in, not simply playing as loud as you can. </p>
<p>By the way, there is another quite lenthy thread on this topic that was started several years back. You may want to search for it.</p>