Throughout high school, I played the trumpet and was a part of our school’s marching band, the Marching Knights. Our marching band was a competitive marching band and took part in many competitions throughout the course of the fall from September into November. In order to prepare for these competitions, we would start practicing in June to learn the “basics” of marching band as well as to begin working on our competitive show. We would learn one show that lasted approximately eight to eleven minutes long each year to perform at all competitions in that season. If you are unfamiliar with marching band shows or functions, it is a highly cooperative process. Each individual must know their separate parts in both music and choreography or “drill”. Music is split up by both instrument and part based on the level of skill and individual has. Drill is made up of individual sequences of movement that collectively form different shapes and effects that can be seen on the field.
It can be assumed that the collective goal of the marching band is to succeed at competitions and each individual will essentially share in the satisfaction of winning a competition. The success of a marching band largely relies on each individual’s success in both music and drill but is inherently, as mentioned before, a cooperative process in that each individual must also work together to succeed, especially musically. A minor musical mistake by an individual has the potential to produce many problems and even chaos throughout the band. I would like to consider the music portions of practice in this post in order to evaluate a team production that strives to share the satisfaction of winning a competition.
During practices, there would be time for “sectionals” where each individual section would go out on their own to practice the musical elements of the show. As I was both a member and a section leader of the trumpet section during my time in marching band, I was able to observe the behaviors of individuals from multiple perspectives and would like to discuss some behaviors. Looking back, I have noticed that the success of a sectional largely determined on how a leader framed the sectional.
Consider an extraordinarily bad practice that was off musically, which was the case a majority of the time during bad practices. Now, suppose a leader attempts to solve the problem by having each individual play their part in front of their fellow section members in sectionals. Theoretically, by finding who does not know their part completely, the leader would find who needs to practice more and who is bringing everybody else down. While it may be good to find who does not know the part, it could also cause the other members to think, “Well since he/she is the one that doesn’t know the part, why should I practice more? I clearly know my part.” In essence, a small portion of the section is given the blame for a bad practice. That small portion can be assumed by other group members to be the only ones who must contribute more effort and practice in order to be successful collectively. This lack of further collective contribution to the section could result in more problems in the future and certainly less of a cooperative effort mentality amongst the section.
An alternative solution, which I found to be more successful as both a member and a leader, was to convey a cooperative effort mentality by distributing the blame equally amongst the section. Take the same bad musical practice as before. A leader could instead have the group play portions of the music together in sectionals and possibly say, “I do not know who exactly is off right now, but if we do not all play together and know each of our parts, we are done for.” This could spark the group to concentrate collectively, and motivate each individual to find the root of the problem in their own work. While this is a more passive approach, by conveying that the section will only be successful if everybody knows their part and then listens to one another to be more together and musical, a team effort mentality is created. Moreover, everybody in the section possesses a share of the blame for a bad practice. Each individual must then find a way to contribute more on an individual basis for the good of the group.
This example shares elements of what Jonathan Haidt wrote in his article, “How to Get the Rich to Share the Marbles”. Haidt describes some of the success of “grand national projects,” in which, “everyone was asked to pitch in.” The same idea of equal share of the blame and asking everyone to pitch in to the overall success can be found in the more collective, alternative solution that I posed above. Furthermore, each solution touches slightly on the idea of “distributive fairness” and “procedural fairness” as posed by Haidt. The first solution seems to fall under the idea of “distributive fairness” in which people “got what they deserved”. As you point out an individual’s lack of preparedness musically, you are essentially pointing out that they are the only ones who must work to be more successful collectively. Those who have their parts down are not given a part of blame whatsoever. The second solution posed presents “procedural fairness” in which each member is given an equal opportunity to prepare better and share and equal amount of blame for a bad practice. In this example, the solution of “procedural fairness” was pointed out to be a more successful solution to become collectively more successful and therefore share a piece of the satisfaction of succeeding competitively.
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Both of my kids were in marching band at Centennial High School. They each started with clarinet. The younger one switched to base clarinet after a couple of years. So I've seen many performances done north of the school's parking lot and a couple of times at the Football games. I've also heard the teachers who ran the Band talk. And when I was a kid I was in band, but only the symphonic kind, no marching.
ReplyDeleteSo I have some idea of this on the playing side, but not as much on the marching side. It seems to me it is different if a kid is off with the marching, because that will be more obvious to the whole section. With the playing, the other kids may not know who produced the clunkers.
During the summer is there individual time for practice, or is it all group time? It may not be exactly the same thing, but in a play the actors need to learn their lines ahead of time. Did that happen with the band? If so, then there is the question why somebody makes mistakes. Is the music too hard for that person? Or does the person get out of rhythm with the rest of the group?
All of this is to day that while the Haidt piece on procedural fairness does matter, it nonetheless seems to me that each member of the band needs to be prepared. People can still make mistakes when they have prepared, and then your methods make sense to me. But if they aren't prepared, it doesn't seem to address the issue.
During the summer, there is individual time for practice that is largely up to the individual to practice outside of set marching band practice times. During actual practices, it is all group practice time. And player needs to know their individual parts but there are intricacies with music that go beyond the individual part. In order to take the leap from playing the music to playing the music successfully in a competition, players must match each other's pitches and the overall balance of the ensemble (just two of the many different intricacies).
ReplyDeleteAssuming a person knows their individual part, these little intricacies are what separate the good from the great and those who make the cut from those who win. I argue that the procedures that I discussed here could certainly be used as methods to fix the problems with these larger-picture, group performance ideas in the music.