Why aren oboes in marching band

This obviously creates a problem for oboe players. Several months before you start high school, a little research is necessary. Contact the high school band director and find out if marching band is required and under what circumstances. Each high school is different. Click here to see a sample letter you may send.

Most schools only do marching band in the fall, and if the oboist wants or needs to be registered for regular band, marching band participation is the only way to accomplish that. If you inadvertently come across as an immature kid who is simply trying to beat the system and get out of marching band, your requests for bending the rules are likely to be ignored.

If you determine that you must participate in marching band category three , you must now figure out exactly what you will do in the marching band since you cannot play your oboe. You have three options. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Marching band is like being on a sports team; it takes up a tremendous amount of time in addition to all the homework and other responsibilities faced by high school students.

However, please keep in mind that once the marching season is over, the regular concert season begins. The rest of the band will be in great shape, as they will have already been playing their instruments since August. If you neglect your oboe during the marching season, you will be lagging behind.

Your endurance, embouchure, and technique will suffer, and you will have to work very hard to get back to where you were. Should this occur, you can either postpone lessons until marching band is over or come to my house during the week for your lessons. If you are forced to postpone your lessons until the marching season ends, it is even more critical that you still make time to practice the oboe. If you are not required to participate in marching band and you still want to be involved in your school music program during the marching season, see if you can join the orchestra.

In the 60s it was an open band. Then in the 70s it was probably one of the best musical bands in the country - and had musical try outs to get in. The tryouts were extremely tough for the "basketball band". But, that was a time when the University President Lyman returned a million dollar donation to the University with the attachment that he needed to censor the band.

The ones in '72 and '74 were by far the best. The trumpet solo David Ruiz was a professional musician at Disneyland now a doctor. We think it'll be better than the last one. If she ever played a recorder or flutaphone when she was a kid, a sax has similar fingering and she can learn to play music written in the key of C in about an hour, I swear.

If she is a serious oboe player, playing a single reed instrument can be hard on her embrochure and she should go for the glockenspiel - that is what the oboe players in my D's band do. My D plays bassoon in wind ensemble and sax in marching band, but she is not exactly a very serious bassoonist.

She can just play clarinet in the marching band. Piece of cake. She'll have fun with it! All Rights Reserved. Oboes in Stanford Band? Please enter a valid email address.

Thanks for subscribing! Be on the lookout for our next newsletter. In an effort to lower the pitch center of the oboe section, band directors may ask student to pull their reed out of the oboe a bit.

This logic may be sound for the flute or clarinets but may cause more problems than it solves for the oboe section. Pulling the reed partly out of the reed well will change the intervallic relationship all over the instrument. Just because it lowers the pitch of the tuning note does not mean the student will have an easier time playing in tune.

Often the opposite may happen. While many professional players may pull the reed out a little in an absolute emergency they have the control to compensate for the other notes that may no longer line up. Instead, ask the student to switch to a better reed. The oboe can be a very niche instrument. This is true for players and for technicians. Some instrumental repair people pride themselves on their expertise of the oboe or bassoon and often specialize on only these instruments.

Local repair shops are great for moving a large number of instruments quickly and may be suitable for brass, flutes, clarinets, and saxophone, but oboes may demand too much time to do a really good job. Save yourself the headache of getting non functional oboes back from the shop and find a specialist who can guarantee their work or at least let you know if an instrument is beyond repair.

The most common piece of advice from veteran band directors was to know when you need to call for help. Do not hesitate to call in a clinician for you oboe players or look around for the advice of professional players. While many Music Ed programs thoroughly prepare future band directors for many of the issues that come up. The scope of issues that can arise from oboe and bassoon playing is simply too large to cover by a single person.

Make sure you are willing to call in help when needed. I hope this information was helpful! If you have more tips worth sharing please let us know in the comments below. If you find this useful please share it with a friend. Selecting Students for the Oboe. Transfering students from different instruments Pros and Cons. Oboe students usually get to learn and double at least one other instrument. Cons If you plan on switching a student from another instrument onto a double reed instrument be aware that you may have to convince their family to trade in their instrument.

Practical Tips for Band Directors. Take lessons. Many band directors who contributed to this article got a lot out of taking a few lessons with a professional double reed player to brush up on their understanding of the instrument. Their pedagogy was based on real experience and not just repeated from a book or method class. Taking a few oboe lessons also makes band directors more empathetic to reed issues or the pressure required to play the instrument and how this can become painful over time.

If you would like to take a skype lesson with me click here for more info.