Marching Band as Spatial Representation

As a teenager, school band played a crucial role in teaching me important life lessons. Music has always been fascinating to me, but it wasn't until playing with a good group of musicians that I realized just how powerful music can be. Co-creating music requires attention to yourself, your peers, and the combined product of everyones sounds. When everyone understands the shared creative intention, musical groups can create immensely powerful works of auditory art.

Finding a group of musicians that click in just the right way to create truly great music together is rare. Think of all the rock and roll bands in music history and you could name dozens. But the list of truly great rock and roll bands is just a fraction of that larger whole. The chemistry of a musical group is what makes their music unique, and every group of musicians no matter how large or small has a certain chemistry.

Marching band shows combine a musical theme with choreographed movements that create visual shapes and effects on a football field. Pulling off a marching band show requires a lot of individual practice and group awareness, and in high school it takes about 3 months to perfect a roughly 10 minute show. Everyone involved has to memorize 10 minutes of music, physical positioning on the field, and relative distance and position to the rest of the band.

To do this, band directors use tools of spatial representation called drill charts to map each band members position on the field. This chart uses a dot grid based on a standard step size, which varies from band to band. A common step size is "8 to 5", or 8 steps every 5 yards on the football field.

Band members learn their individual positions by reading the labels and coordinates of their position, ordered horizontally on the field by steps off a yard line and vertically in distances from either sideline or the hash marks.

Band members learn their individual positions by reading the labels and coordinates of their position, ordered horizontally on the field by steps off a yard line and vertically in distances from either sideline or the hash marks.

This is an example of an individual drill sheet. Set refers to each page of drill, move refers to the number of musical counts to move for, count refers to a musical measure in the score, and finally horizontal and vertical dot coordinates.

From these directions, anywhere from 60 to 150 people can march and play music together to create a multidimensional audiovisual performance.

During my time with the UF Gator Marching Band in 2018, we used electronic drill on an app to learn a new show every 2 weeks. The traditional 2D paper drill sheets are a logistical nightmare for a marching band in Florida, and this 3D time integrated app allowed us to view drill as it moved in real time to music. The data was shared to our phones virtually and we could download the new files at the beginning of each practice. This app took the drill learning process to a new level and is an example of how tools of spatial representation are becoming more complex and adaptive as technology continues to innovate.

Marching band happens in both physical space and social space, and both are crucial to the success of a good marching band. The physical actions of marching on the field, posture, playing instruments and maintaining correct relative distance are crucial to the visual and auditory performance of the band. Creating a good musical chemistry in a marching band is a product of the social space, leadership structure, shared intentions and goals of the members.

Marching band is physically demanding, as you have to move your body almost constantly while holding up your instrument and controlling your breath to play said instrument. Getting the fundamentals of marching is also challenging, as you have to step in a way that minimizes movement in your upper body. This allows you to play instruments and control your breath more easily.

The other physical aspect of marching band is the coordinate grid. Every moment of marching is thinking about where you are on the field, where you are going and how you relate to the other members marching around you. The 8 to 5 step system becomes more comfortable as the season goes on, and using relative distance to hash markers and yard lines becomes second nature. During my season with the UF marching band, we could use certain home field markers and logos for relative positioning cues. As every band member becomes more comfortable with the drill over the course of a season, you begin to refine the group shapes, movements and timing to create more visually compelling show. This physical coordination requires an awareness of proxemics and distance to each other and the markings.

The long-term success or failure of every marching band is determined before the season even starts. I was a member of the leadership team for several years and saw this process happen at the start of every season. Between 12-15 of us would convene with our director prior to band camp and agree on the goals and intentions for the success of the band that year. This decision making process involved tradition and realistic evaluations of that years potential.

Each year high school band programs pick a show to work on from August to November and perform for evaluation at the Music Performance Assessment for a rating. These ratings judge the visual performance of the band, marching fundamentals, musical effect and musical technical performance. In each category, you can achieve a score of poor, fair, good, excellent or superior.

Every year, our band leadership team would agree to set two goals: an overall rating of superior at MPA and superior ratings in every category. By setting this ambitious goal at the start of the season it set the tone and expectations on a personal level and interpersonally in what the group was holding each other accountable for. This active choice to pursue excellence was the core value that made every season successful.

Marching band camp is a roughly 2 week experience that sets the tone of every season. It teaches fundamentals and gives more time to practice the show for the season as a way to make progress before the school year begins. This camp heavily leverages tools of spatial representation in drill charts and coordinate sheets, as well as the drill design process and shapes that the band makes.

Beyond the visual aspect, marching band must align the musical score to the stepping rhythm of the drill charts. This is a highly collaborative environment that requires lots of attention to the people around you, and this musical and physical chemistry is something unique to marching band. Certain environments contain awareness in one or the other dimensions of spatial reasoning, but none that I have experienced combine physical awareness of yourself and others with musical, temporal and harmonic awareness of the group.

As a result of the choice to pursue excellence at the beginning of the season, the group chemistry grows and solidifies over the course of several months. After a month or so, the performance could be at 90% perfection. The chemistry aspect came into play when refining that last 10% to make the performance really cohesive and compelling. DCI is competitive marching band performance, and here the group Carolina Crown actually creates a 3D visual illusion through drill (0:58 to ~1:20).

This showed up in a lot of ways in my marching band experience. It helped the band work harder in the face of adversity, like when it rained but we had to practice anyway because there was a performance coming up. Having a high standard of accountability to the groups success was a result of a healthy social space and the intentional goal setting process. Myself and many of my peers felt significant personal growth as a result of this striving for excellence.

To perform above 90% effectively, every member of the group has to be individually practiced enough to perform all their roles as well as pay attention to the people on either side of them, and the sound of the whole group. This group co-generation of a performance is incredible, and every season it took time to grow and develop. Each show was a decision making journey that realized itself over a few months

Marching band is a complex form of spatial and temporal reasoning that every member is practicing at all times during the show, and that makes it a really unique art form. Groups form a sense of self-awareness that adds a unique flavor to the audiovisual show that they are performing. This ranges across physical and social space, from group culture and values to different marching styles that emphasize different physical posture and messaging. My experience in that co-generative field of spatial reasoning shaped my creative approach for the rest of life, and helped me establish a healthy work ethic and sense of accountability to myself.