takigan

I am not following your list criteria at all. You made corrections to your previous list, but you still have Poteet at 3 even though they have WAY more, you didn't include Friendswood and Dickinson at all even though it's been stated both have more than 10.

Not very often we get people from Tennesee on here. Welcome. Can't say I have much advice to offer on the topic, being a Euphonium player (Euphoniums almost never play in orchestras--"The Planets" being one of the few exceptions, ironically enough). I will say orchestras are fun because they're more deeply layered with the addition of the strings. The literature is sublime, and considering the one-on-a-part scoring, you're getting to play with some more elite players, this can result in quite a rewarding musical experience. I should also mention that orchestral wind parts require a bit more maturity and preparation than band, since typically you are the only one responsible for your part. You're not sharing it with 2 or 3 other people like in concert band, or 5-10 other people like in marching band. You have to own your part, and can't rely on others to cover your shortcomings. The listening is also a little different since you're typically sitting in a different part of the setup, and have to deal with the added sound and tuning of the strings (which can be hit or miss depending on the size of the section, the number of players, and what direction the wind is blowing that particular day). Hope you have fun .

Definitely true. Whenever I'm sizing up Area G, I'm always like "Well Harlingen should be in the running for state... they're always in the running". That's been the case since I got into this activity, and I'm sure was the case long before that. I actually wouldn't be surprised if there's some 1A school that I'm overlooking.

Were there any other years besides 2014-2016 where Friendswood has been in the largest size class? If not, then this is probably accurate. That would mean 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014 & 2016 for a total of 12. Bold means it's verified. No idea for '95-'01. Normally I would pull up the MFA forum archive which used to go all the way back to 1999....but that's basically gone now. I could dig around through RAMBla, but that site is a nightmare to navigate. If anyone wants to confirm rankings for those years, feel free.

Cedar Park turned 5A in 2002. They placed 6th at UIL Area D 5A and didn't advance, putting their total streak at 7: 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017

Duncanville's is definitely the longest, both for 6A/5A and overall with 17 consecutive appearances from 1988 - Present. Dickinson has the longest for 5A (4A pre-2014) though. Dickinson appeared at every 4A State contest from 1986 to 2007, for a total of 14 consecutive appearances. For 2008 they went up to 6A (then 5A), and placed 8th at Area F Finals, so that was their first year to not advance. 1986 - 1st 1987 - 4th 1988 - 2nd 1989 - 1st 1990 - 1st 1991 - 1st 1993 - 1st 1995 - 2nd 1997 - 2nd 1999 - 5th 2001 - 4th 2003 - 8th 2005 - 15th 2007 - 4th 2008 - Didn't Advance

It should be noted that most of Roma's numbers are split between 2 classes, since Roma is a 5A school where many students choose to compete in the 6A track. Roma HS: 2002 - 12 (5 4A, 7 5A) 2003 - 17 (9 4A, 8 5A) 2004 - 9 (1 4A, 8 5A) 2005 - 18 (13 4A, 5 5A) 2006 - 22 (16 4A, 6 5A) 2007 - 21 (15 4A, 6 5A) 2008 - 18 (10 4A, 8 5A) 2009 - 8 (6 4A, 2 5A) 2010 - 10 (7 4A, 3 5A) 2011 - 15 (11 4A, 4 5A) 2012 - 14 (9 4A, 5 5A) 2013 - 9 (5 4A, 4 5A) 2014 - 10 (7 4A, 3 5A) 2015 - 7 (6 5A, 1 6A) 2016 - 11 (6 5A, 5 6A) 2017 - 19 (13 5A, 6 6A) 2018 - 14 (7 5A, 7 6A) 2019 - 14 (8 5A, 6 6A)

JJ Pearce dominated the lists in the 1980s. Getting 10 All-Staters in a given year already puts you near the top of the heap for that year. Achieving that almost every year for an entire decade is quite an accomplishment. 1980 - 7 1981 - 13 1982 - 19 (including 5 Bb Clarinets, and 5 Trombones) 1983 - 13 1984 - 7 1985 - 10 1986 - 10 1987 - 14 1988 - 17 (including 5 French Horns) 1989 - 12

I noticed on Contrabassoon, 5A students can still decide which class to track (5A or 6A). With twelve 6A kids competing for 5 spots and seven 5A kids competing for 1 spot, I think some of those 5A kids probably made a wiser choice tracking 6A. That said, even back when the 5A band had only 5 Euphonium spots (it's 8 now), I still think it was harder to nab one of the 14 6A spots (I suppose that might depend on the Area though). 3 Piccolo spots is some stiff competition though.

Yup. 1 per area. So 8 total; 4 in each band. Which is generous compared to some other instrument categories. Like take 5A Piccolo for example. Only 3 Piccolos make 5A All-State since they only have one band and no orchestras. But there are 8 areas. So the top piccolo from each area submits a recording after area auditions which is then judged and only the top 3 piccolos are accepted. I had a Euphonium student get eliminated this way. He took 1st at region and 1st at Area, but they only took 5 Euphoniums in the 5A All-State band, so he was eliminated in the recorded round (he placed 7th overall). Which was really unfortunate for him as it was his senior year . Contrabassoon on the other hand has a single statewide recorded audition. 19 Contrabassoon players across the state submitted a recording for the All-State ensembles. Six were accepted; one for 5A and five for 6A (essentially one per ensemble, though it appears one of the 6A ensembles will have two contras this year).

There several 1A schools with no marching band. Round Top Carmine HS has a band (or I should say 'has had a band'--I think they still do) but no football team. They don't do marching band.

Random observation; I wonder why 6 Japanese marching bands have been awarded the shield but none have been awarded the flag (concert groups) or the scroll (community groups). Sorry, just using the general nature of the topic to observate. Congrats to TWHS.

Just about anything a regular member can do except you can't enter students into competitions, or anything that involves voting on policies/officers. It should allow you to login to the TMEA website. This means you'll have access to Area results this January if that's something you want access to. I believe it also gets you a subscription to the Southwestern Musician periodical, though I actually have no idea how to claim this since I don't really read it. But more than all that, the biggest prize is entrance to the TMEA convention in February. You'll be allowed to enter the massive exhibit hall which is like any other con exhibit hall, except it's like a candy store for music majors/teachers. Instruments/mouthpieces to try out, sheet music to peruse/purchase, music recordings to purchase/listen to...Pretty much every major player in the activity has a booth set up, MFA and DCI have booths, all the major university music fraternity/sororities (KKY, PMA,TBS, SAI), all the uniform vendors, tons of colleges, the military are there trying to recruit people for the service bands. You'll also be able to attend all the clinics, workshops and presentations if that's something that interests you as well. A portion of your payment also goes into the TMEA scholarship fund to help out prospective music educators (one of my old roommates was a TMEA scholarship winner one year), so if none of the other stuff really applies to you and you're feeling like you wasted your money, you can at least feel good that you donated to that .

Not really a camera guy, but if you're using a camera that has swappable lenses, your solution is likely a specific lens rather than a specific camera. "Wide-angle lense" is a term I've heard thrown around a lot. I'm picturing that as what you'd need to be able to cover endzone to endzone. But that's with a DSLR like a Canon or a Nikon that would be able to achieve this....not so sure how that works with videorecorders.

In the olden days (like the 50s, 60s and 70s) it was common for a band to learn a new show for every home game. Keep in mind these were what we now call "spirit" style shows and were easier to learn. If your entire show was march tempo (120bpm), that's 720 steps for a 6 minute show if you move nonstop. So if you're doing military style or block drill with 16 and 32 count moves with lots of standstill, you'd have a full show with only 20-25 sets. You'd just have a lot more music to memorize....but considering it's mostly just marches and stand tunes, a lot of bands are memorizing those anyway.

I always made the mistake of spending too much time grinding reps on the etudes. I remember competing against almost 60 Euphos for region back in the day, and I knew if I made top 2, it would mean only competing against SIX for state (where again, you needed to make top 2). Missed it by 3 chairs my senior year. I found that each year I made region (and I made it all 4 years) I had probably spent more time on the etudes than practically everybody who had made it (putting in over a hundred hours from July-December), and one year I lost to a senior from Round Rock who didn't even start looking at the etudes till 2 weeks before the audition. I should've taken a much more methodical approach where my goal was to figure out what skills I need to develop in order to execute a "frame-perfect" run (to use a speedrunning term). There were many sections of the music where my issue wasn't because I hadn't practiced enough, but rather I hadn't developed the skills necessary to "learn" that section of the music. What I spent 10 hours on playing over and over across several weeks messing up again and again (in hopes I'd eventually get lucky) should've been spent on relevant exercises that made it so that mastering the actual lick should only take me a single practice session. I remember in college competing against a guy for band placement who had spent the entire summer marching corps and didn't even look at the audition music until the day of the audition. He spent 45 minutes on the music and still beat me even though I had been practicing it for the past 2 weeks. Because if you're a super good player, you don't really need to spend a lot of time on the music. He also played his horn everyday all summer in corps, and I didn't. It's not always about who spent the most time working on the music, it's about who has spent enough time practicing in general.

If you build your program heavily around fundamentals, then the bands can be combined for these fundamental sessions, especially during August preseason and the instructional resources (techs) can be utilized for both groups at the same time. If you invest a lot in student leadership, you can also minimize the number of techs you need for the competitive group where most of your student leaders abide, and can focus your instructional resources more on improving the second group, while having a competitive group that's mostly self-taught with director oversight. By having the marching bands meet during 2 different periods during the Fall you'll be able to use all of your director staff on both groups, then use the opening part of your before/after school rehearsal as a full combined fundamentals block and then split. You'll obviously need a staff split for the rest of rehearsal if your bands are meeting at the same time. Though if you have one band meeting before school and one after, that can help too (but can be stressful to the staff). You'll want your JV group show to be easy to teach, maybe even more like a college show or military show that uses less sets/direction changes, and of course you won't need to invest any of your prop/design budget into it aside from drill. But you know....if you have the right kind of kids, you might even be able to get the kids to write the drill for the JV group. lol, I don't know why I spend so much time thinking about stuff like this when I'm not even a band director

I'm not going to name specific schools though there are indeed a couple of shows that *immediately* come to mind, but I'm going to say honestly that those schools were indeed a bit blush-inducing and I have silently wondered to myself how in the world they got away with it without some huge backlash from the parents or community. I blame my own conservative upbringing. But then you remember communities have different cultures, both socially and band-related. If you tried to shoe-horn some of these costume ideas past certain other communities, it would get stopped....someone would complain to the school board and there would be an intervention. But not in others. Some mothers find these types of uniforms empowering for their daughters....some might be a bit unsettled, but go through with it if they feel like the staff is doing it with good intentions. There's also a shifting consciousness for women embracing their plus-sized figures. Some of them have likely embraced the uniform as a means of overcoming these issues. I do fear for the ones that might feel shamed by it; shamed into wearing a uniform they don't want to wear, or shamed into quitting guard because they didn't feel comfortable wearing it. Men and boys are also more in touch with their feminine side than ever before. More men use skin products than ever, and many boys (straight or ****) have no problem wearing a uniform that has a tinge of femininity to it, whether it be spandex or body glitter. But again, I worry for the occasional few that might not feel comfortable with it....were their feelings taken into consideration, or were they forced to swallow their pride for the benefit of the group? I tend to give schools the benefit of the doubt, as most directors are taking into consideration anything that might potentially go wrong with uniform choices. High School is a delicate time for body-consciousness, but it's also one where band can help students cope with such issues. This is a sensitive topic, but still an interesting one that I'm glad you've brought up.

It's a big campus. They broke the 5000 limit the year before College Park was built.

Plenty of ways. Some band kids are more familiar with UIL rules than a lot of directors give them credit for sometimes...I'd also say that just about every school has at least one kid or parent who lurks on this board and has learned a thing or two. All it would take is a single disgruntled kid that complained to the right people, and an investigation would take place.

Smart. That means those schools will always be among the biggest and most well-funded 5As, thus giving them a competitive edge in activities.

I talked about this in another thread, but Avon's interesting in the fact that their September and October weekly schedules aren't as rigorous as other bands in the GN winner's circle (they're not rehearsing much more than we do), but they keep a moderately demanding rehearsal schedule throughout both the spring and summer, moreso than the other groups. This is in contrast to the majority of bands who max out their hours during the competitive season and then "pack it up" after the last contest, and only do weekly sectionals during the spring (and taking the summer off in the case of Texas). That's how it was when I went to Georgetown...just on a smaller scale. We only rehearsed 5-7 hours outside of school during the week, but we still did 4-5 hours per week in the Spring for wind ensemble groups. I personally call it the "slow cooker" approach. Yeah, bad name, I know .

There's an old post I wrote around the same time (10-ish years ago) where I'm talking about how TMAA influences UIL judging, and it's total cringe because I really had no clue what I was talking about. I thought this was that post, but this isn't it. I actually hope we never run into that one :/ .

A band having strong woodwinds but not strong brass has both to do with the background of the band directors and the strength of the private lesson staff. It also has to do with how band directors place students in the beginning, including their strong/smart students and those with some kind of previous music backgrounds. Some directors believe the dumb kids should be on low brass and percussion (which will weaken your brass and percussion section), but some schools require piano background to be on percussion, which can be a drawback because your piano background kids will likely be among your strongest students, especially if they had more than 2 years of it, and thus should be allowed to spread more among your band. But really the attributes that go into making a good brass section are the same for woodwinds. What gets done in 6th grade sets the pace for future success. The 6th graders need to all be capable of producing big full brass sounds that sound characteristic of the instrument they play by the end of their 6th grade year. Every other attribute (technique, range, articulation, flexibility, intonation) will be acquired with experience, but the tone quality and sounding like your instrument should sound (as though a pro were playing it) at an early age is most important. If your brass beginner teachers weren't able to achieve this it will affect the makeup of the brass section in your high school band.

Whether your JV kids are their own separate band or just a non-marching unit that acts more as managers/crew, they need to be marching and rehearsing as much as the varsity kids, otherwise your varsity will suffer in the long-term since your up-and-comings aren't developing like they should. I was a mirror/shadow/alternate my freshman year (grades) and I remember sitting around quite a bit while the rest of the band played. I had a spot for the rest of HS but I probably didn't develop as solid of marching skills as I could've if I'd been marching all that time. My views on the issue are kind of complex, but to put it simply, there are a lot of kids in most marching bands who don't practice. I'm a firm believer that if you're not practicing you don't need to be performing. A varsity should have a bar of entry, and if you can't meet it then you don't get a spot. That might mean marching 200 members or 100 members.