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Memorial Day Music

• Posted by Kara Cook May 26, 2015 - Filed in Music - #marching band  #  #middle school  #memorial day  #America  - 19,179 views

  Memorial Day is really a beautiful day to celebrate, and can be quite sad if you know someone who served. That being said, the music played in the parades should reflect that feeling. Of course, it should be patriotic, but it should also be well-written and at the level of the students playing it. My co-worker and I have discovered that there is not much good repertoire for a middle school marching band. It is all either too hard, or makes the students too tired playing it 10 times in a row.

  Yesterday, I conducted the band in the parade from the middle school that I work at. They had worked for weeks on the music, and it all finally came together in this one 45-minute parade. They probably played it about 10 or 11 times. Sometimes, they played it 3 times in a row with little break in between. They have just barely been trained to march (because this is the only parade they march in), so they are trying to think about quite a bit at once.

  It turned out really nicely, and they kept it together every time. They listened and watched their lines and fixed what needed fixing. But by the end they slightly fell apart because they were getting so tired. I can’t help but feel like that could have been avoided if the music was a bit easier.

  Now, like I said, the music ended up sounding really nice. But there were definitely notes and rhythms that were new to some people, and there was little room to breathe. So they went all out every time they had to play it. Someone needs to compose “the middle school marching band patriotic book of songs.” It should have small and scattered rests for each group of instruments, and it should be at the level that anyone in 5^th-8^th grade could play it without having to learn more than one new idea/note/rhythm. This way, students will sound good the WHOLE way through the parade, and not just for the first ¾. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. Also, I think if the parts were a bit more scattered, it would sound nice as a memorial.

  The parade was really wonderful, though. At the end, everyone congregated in front of a church in town, and they had a firing ceremony and a fly-over, and they hung a wreath on a grave for the fallen veterans while my co-worker and a student echoed each other playing ‘Taps.’ The winner of a “What Memorial Day Means To Me” writing contest read her poem about what it would be like to find out someone close to you had died in war, and it was incredible. I don’t really remember the Memorial Day Parades I was in during high school, but I don’t recall such nice festivities after the actual parade. I thought this was a really nice touch.

  But my overall point is that we need good music that takes into consideration the level and the setting in which it will be played. Someone could make good money doing that! Just think of all the middle schools out there. Any good composers/arrangers out there?