Marching Band in the South

Sparkybuzzed

Just heard you talking about the Mississippi State Marching Band. In the South, college bands are almost all over 300. The University of Georgia marches 350 and Florida State marches almost 500. In fact, most high schools carry 200-300 members and even my own Georgia Tech fields 300 without a music major at the school.

Andrew

EDIT: Sorry I got a little excited there.

But yes here at GATech we have about 340 members, none of them being music majors.

Rym

That's insane. The largest corps I ever went to field with topped out at around 250. I can't imagine trying to chart a band that big.

Andrew

Its not really that hard. We drilled three songs plus the enitre Pre-Game in about 8 days. It helps that everyone has at least two-three years experience marching, most 4+. Whats awesome is the sheer volume of sound that we can produce. Albiet its nothing compared to the top tier DCI Drum Corps, which only top out at around 120ish.

Andrew

Here is a video just to show our band's size. You can see me too haha

GT Band in front of Stadium

thaneofcawdor

Oh yeah, I thought that was you! You were the one dressed in white, right? Or were you the one with the hat?

Andrew

Oh yeah, I thought that was you! You were the one dressed in white, right? Or were you the one with the hat?

Haha I was just thinking out loud...

Rym

I'm still trying to dig up copies of the archival footage of our shows. (Our evil VCR ate several of the tapes over the years). I particularly remember a local "battle of the bands" event where all four of the major local corps began entering the field at the same time, single file. The other three finished and marked time for a solid five minutes while we continued to pour into dense formation in a neverending torrent.

Of course, there's also the time I finally convinced our band director that I was insane. I think I'll save that one for the show ^_~