#10 Marching bands make you a better all-around musician.
Music affects the brain. Hearing it. Playing it. Especially playing it. The math involved in playing music keeps the brain active and growing. Music can uplift you when you’re down or dragging.
#9 Marching band teaches you to grow from adversity.
You can’t win every competition or knock-em-dead at every show. So, you take critical feedback, be it from judges or your director, and use it as fuel to make yourself better next time around.
#8 Marching band is a crash course in time management.
Balancing school work, your actual job, family and practice can be quite the challenge. But again, this is a skill that you’ll appreciate more and more as you get older, it will serve you well throughout life.
As the saying goes “early is on time, on-time is late.”
#7 Marching band provides automatic exercise.
No need to hit the gym from March through to August, You’ll be marching mile after mile carrying anywhere from a 15 oz. tin whistle to a 40 lb. snare drum, controlling your breathing the entire way.
#6 Marching band may just make you smarter.
The neurological benefits of playing music are well documented. Marching and playing at the same time is challenging, and marching band members meet the challenge of marching at one tempo while playing at another. The neuronal connections grown in marching band will benefit the them throughout life, for multi-tasking through school and in the workplace, and for multi-tasking as a parent.
#5 Marching band requires discipline and dedication.
Long rehearsals. Memorise drill. Memorise music. Early is on time; on time is late. The discipline you experience and practice is a foundation for discipline later, through college, in the workplace, as a parent. The discipline of being a part of a team like a marching band is experience that you’ll take with you through life.
#4 Marching Bands make us more Resilient
People can mess up. They keep going. Judges make mistakes or make calls we don’t agree with. The band members keep going. We learn that a dropped stick or a wrong turn during a competition is not the end of the world. Resilience is a hot topic in psychology today, and being able to bounce back after a mistake or setback is an important skill throughout life, a skill that develops by being practiced and experienced, and (fortunately or unfortunately), there are lots of opportunities to practice in marching band.
#3 Marching band shows you how to sacrifice for the team
Band members get an opportunity to see the benefits of sacrificing what you want to do for the good of the team. There is personal satisfaction in knowing as you are walking off the field together, that the group had a good performance. Seeing your scores improve throughout the season or from year to year is rewarding. Awards, medals, trophies from festivals and competitions are sweet tangible payoffs to the sacrifices band members make throughout the season.
#2 Marching Bands teach you to be a better person
Band members practice the habits of manners and respect. Members represent your community when at a performance or competition. Our band is expected to be respectful in all situations, from rehearsals to parades to competitions. While the parents are going nuts in the crowd the band members on the performing remain perfectly still in situations where we all know they wanted to dance and scream. Generosity is also taught, band members applaud other bands at competitions. Our supporters applaud other bands at competitions. Applauding another band takes nothing away from our own band but shows support and respect for your competitors.
#1 Marching bands are the best ‘teams’ around.
Teamwork is a necessity when you’re part of a marching band, no one gets left behind. When you work hard together, each contribute your important part, and trust each other marching forwards, backwards and every-which-way, there’s a camaraderie unlike any other. Plus, you automatically have a whole bunch of friends to share the experience (and commiserate about the scratchy uniforms) with. Every part of a team is important. Every part contributes. There is amazing satisfaction in coming together with a team, working hard alongside and with a team, to perform a show. And the teamwork is very different from that of a sports team, where the goal is to defeat opponents in games. In sports, teams try to go after an opponent’s weakness and to shut down an opponent’s strong scorer. The teamwork in marching band is about individual and group self-improvement, competing with self, comparing results with self over time.