Marching Band: Marching Side-to-Side

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Matt Goms, again we're talking about marching band, choreography. We've been discussing the basics of marching and what you want to teach to the students, or whoever it is that you may be teaching this to. Some of the basic things we've talked about already are marching forward, marching backwards. What I want to discuss now is side to side, sliding, any variation thereon. Instrumentation is very important on how you hold your instrument. This for instance, is a trumpet, and the trumpet is a very directional instrument and wherever the front of this bell is facing, is where the majority of the sound is going to go. So, if the audience is where you are, and I'm the performer, I don't want my instrument to be facing over here. It's going to have a very different sound if I'm marching this way, than it is if I'm marching facing you, the audience. I'm going to want to rotate my shoulders, so that my shoulders are parallel with that front line there, which we call the front sideline, o.k. And, then from my body, I go from there. I go, o.k., my feet are going to want to be thirty, sixty, ninety, you're going to want to rotate as much as possible at the top, and just a little bit at the bottom. And, then you're going to want to move your feet in that direction, keeping the bell of your instrument, or the front of the instrument towards that sideline, so that the music and all the stuff that you're playing is going towards that direction. It can also be done going the other direction, as well. And, these are called forward slides cause I'm moving and marching forward, but still on a slide going sideways, from side to side on the field. And, that could be done at any angle, I could be moving on this angle towards the camera, I could be moving farther up towards this way, or straight across. Once you've gotten past a point, certain point you're going to have to switch, and do what's called a backwards slide where you switch your feet and you're doing a backwards march but, you are still keeping that same focus point with your instrument, so that I could go any direction and my instrument never moves."