Marching Band: Standing & Posture

Video Transcript

"Hi, again, my name is Matt Goms and I'm here talking about marching band and choreography. One of the first things that I usually like to teach students about once I've got them on the field is to teach them about their posture, how to stand and those two things are pretty important. Especially the posture, the posture is how they’re going to carry themselves throughout the show and what's going to make them look the difference between a really good band and or a really bad band. Standing, I've got my trumpet here, I'm a trumpet player so I'm going to use that as my example. When you're standing, you want to make sure that you can hold your trumpet in an upright position, making sure that your elbows have got this little bit of a triangle that happens right here. Holding it close to your chest about a fist length apart and the mouthpiece at about eye level. For any trumpet player, things like that, you can do this with about any instrument, except maybe tubas and some of those larger instruments like that. For the most part, this will work for the majority of your instruments. Styles will be different no matter where you go and depending on how you want them to stand. Usually the way that I start, the technique that I have learned from, being with the Blue Devils, is to keep your feet apart at about a forty-five degree angle, which is more of a natural way to do it than to keep your feet together. They don't want us to be standing with our feet apart like this, that's a little too relaxed and natural. Standing at attention would mean that they would have their feet either together which some people like to do; I like to do it with, the technique would be about a forty-five degree angle, make sure that your heels are together and that your standing up straight, that you want to try and get everything up straight so that your butt isn't sticking out. That it's in and not forward so you’re leaning back and sagging this way. Make sure that your back is straight. You want to think about a string from the top of your head, that somebody is pulling it up and you're able to hold that and keep that good straight posture up. Put out your chest just a little bit to make you look like your standing a little taller and a little straighter."