Guard

I’m 6’2 and weigh 180lbs

DON’T spin by yourself DON’T try to teach yourself DO get help from someone who has spun DO listen to what they have to say and be careful

Whether it be for a solo, section, or leadership position in your high school guard or a spot in a drum corps or independent winter guard, auditioning can be scary. Terrifying, actually.

We are performers who spend all our lives expecting perfection from ourselves. When we audition for something, we’re essentially standing in front of people who know our activity better than we do and saying “This is it. I can be taught to reach almost perfect. Here, let me demonstrate." 

It feels overwhelming. How are you supposed to be ready for something you’ve never done before?

How do we live through auditions? 

Here are some tips, tricks, and general advice I dispense on the regular to people who come to me before every season starts. Some of it might apply to your situation, some of it might not. Use your critical thinking skills and good luck :) 

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Educate yourself on what you’re auditioning for.  One of the biggest mistakes an auditionee can make is letting their assumptions and expectations blind them to what reality looks like. If you’re trying out for captain of your high school guard, do you know what your responsibilities would be? If you want to be in a corps, do you know how much dues are? Does that winter guard go to Dayton? If you find yourself unsure of the basic operation, of course you’re not comfortable! Take some time to reach out to a member, captain, director, whoever seems appropriate for your question. If they can’t answer you, they’ll usually be very careful to lead you in the right direction. 

Understand the rules/culture of the spot. Is there a dress code? Do you have to bring your own rifle and does it have to be a certain length? Gloves, no gloves, shoes, no shoes? Do you have to pay an audition fee?  Again, these are all questions that anyone who occupies a spot where you want to wind up can help you with. If you’re talking with a member who fails to answer one of these questions, ask! Remember, people who have worn black to every rehearsal for four years might fail to mention it because it’s second nature. No one will make fun of you for asking a question, even if it feels dumb. Displaying that you’re interested is important!

Try not to obsess over the audition itself. You know what to wear, what to bring, and understand exactly what you’re auditioning for… but chances are, you have no idea what is actually going to happen at the audition. Fear of the unknown might start to kick in.  Try to keep calm. Most audition material in the guard world is kept from you so that instructors can see how you learn, how you take direction, what your strengths and weaknesses are, what kind of natural talent you have, your willingness to try, and your ability to maintain a good attitude while under stress. When you stop and think about it, those are the things that carry a person through their guard career, aren’t they?  Every other auditionee in the room is in the same boat as you. No one knows what to expect. Keep an open mind, listen to instructions, and let your technical skill take you the rest of the way. 

Be present at the audition. I mean this both literally and figuratively. If you make up your mind to audition for something, do NOT let the fear of walking in the door be the thing that ruins it for you. Show up, even if your legs are shaking. You will live.  And while you’re at it, why not try to enjoy yourself? Be engaging, try to meet someone new, try to learn something. If you approach an audition with an open attitude, people will take note. 

Take care of yourself. Don’t ruin your chances by pushing yourself to the point where you’re putting your health in jeopardy (that is both physical and mental health, people). Every good performer knows the difference between a good push beyond a comfort zone and a bad one. Make sure you know your limits, hydrate yourself, and keep your mental state as clear as you can. 

Make sure you know the next step. When your audition is through, don’t just run out the door without any knowledge about what comes next. Be sure that, before you leave, you know how/when someone will contact you with news as to where you stand. There is nothing wrong with asking if no one has outright stated how that process works. 

There is nothing wrong with not liking it. If it’s too hard, if it’s too much work, if it wasn’t what you’d wanted or hoped or expected… there’s absolutely nothing wrong with telling someone that you’re no longer interested. Usually they will ask why. This is both for their own knowledge (to see if there’s something in their program that needs work) and to make sure you aren’t giving up on yourself for no good reason. Be honest with these people. 

Not making it is not the end of the world. Very talented people can have very bad auditions. Maybe the guard is too advanced for you, maybe there was someone better for the spot, there are a ton of reasons you didn’t get what you wanted. Do not let that weigh you down. Keep working hard. Take what you learned in your audition and grow from it. 

I have had so many problems with public schools putting all the emphasis on athletics. When a school’s budget is cut, they don’t choose to take a little from each program. No. They choose to completely eradicate the arts programs, usually starting with the marching band. If you don’t play sports, you’re not a valuable asset, you’re not qualified for scholarships, and you mean nothing. Marching band? Why would we be impressed that you’re in marching band?

Anyone can do that.

Okay, fine. Anyone can do marching band. Anyone can spend hours on the field doing the same forty-second section over and over and over and over. Anyone can hit over 75 precise dots on the field with the correct step sizes, the correct amount of steps, the correct timing, without being so much as an inch to either side, in order and without looking at the yard line markers or the field. Anyone can memorize all of those extremely specific points on the grass and varying counts for steps and then execute them with a shako visor pulled down over your eyes and looking up at the press box the whole time. If you look down at the yard line markers to see where you are, congratulations, you just lost points for the group.

Anyone can memorize eight pages of notes, rhythms, dynamics, phrasing, and tempos. (But of course, before you do that you have to learn an instrument with hundreds of different fingerings and learn how to make slight changes in your lips to change notes and stay in tune.) Memorize all seven and a half minutes of music and then marry it to the seventy-five pages of drill you memorized. Do them both perfectly and at the same time. But you can’t just do what you memorized. You have to do it in perfect sync with everyone around you and know how to make the slightest adjustments to fit perfectly within the group. If you’re an inch to the right or barely a thousandth of a step sharp, it’ll throw everything off.

But anyone can do that.

Then add in the fact that you don’t get any individual credit for doing this. The closest you’ll come to recognition is your identity lumped into “The Such-and-Such Marching Band” as you all march onto the field looking exactly the same. You don’t have a number on your back. You have a uniform intended to erase you and turn you into dot T14 and nothing more.

But, for some reason you can’t explain, you love it. You love throwing everything you have into this ridiculously precise pursuit and then not getting any credit for it. You start thanking people when they call you a band geek. You start taping pictures of marching bands into your locker. You start wearing your band shirt everywhere you go. Because you look at the person in an identical uniform next to you and you know that you’ve done this for them and they’ve done this for you. This is more than just a team, this is a family; and if one person is missing from the form, the show can’t ever be the same. 

It costs so much money, so much time. You’re out there on the field in the blazing sun for fourteen hours a day during summer band camp, out in the street getting frostbite on your fingertips during the holiday parade. If anyone knew what you went through for this, they would wonder what made it all worth it.

And the truth is, what makes it all worth it cannot be described. It’s the camaraderie between you and the center snare, the colorguard newbie, the tenor sax player in the set in front of you. It’s the sunset behind you lighting up the back of your plume. It’s the hazy nostalgia that racks your chest with emotion. There’s something about the family you’ve chosen and the experience you’ve internalized that gives you the passion to throw everything down onto that field like nothing else matters in the world… because in that moment, it’s true. 

Your nerves are damaged from the cold. Your skin is damaged from the sun. Your joints are damaged from marching and marching and marching. You’re physically and mentally drained, your body is irreversibly compromised, you’re broke as hell, and all you have to show for it is a polyester jacket and a couple of blurry photographs.

But sports are what require hard work and dedication, not marching band.

Even though you complained basically the entire time you marched and even though you’re done with it, you pull out those photographs and you remember. You remember your first day of high school band camp when you had absolutely no idea what you were getting yourself into. You remember your first final retreat when they announced your band’s name as state champions, and you wanted to cry with happiness but you weren’t allowed to move, so you just clenched your fists so tight that your fingernails dug white crescents into your palms. You remember coming back the next year and thinking you knew everything as a sophomore, only to realize there was still so much to learn. You remember the band trips you spent months fundraising for, all the lame tourist attractions you visited between performances, and how you wouldn’t trade those memories for all the money in the world. You remember being a junior and getting nervous because people looked up to you now: as an upperclassman, as a section leader, as a friend. And then you were a senior and you cried on the final day of band camp. You remember how your life became a series of lasts. You had to decide which of the freshmen would inherit your band cubby, your lucky bottle of valve oil, your bus seat. You went to graduation but it didn’t mean anything because you still had one last band trip coming up. You didn’t shed a tear when you tossed your cap but you cried like a child after your last parade. You remember on the plane ride home, you expected to feel devastated and heartbroken, but you just felt… empty.

You remember printing out what seemed like the most difficult solo in the world. You remember driving up to your college and entering a room with a chair and a stand and a couple of people giving you skeptical looks. You remember getting an email from the college marching band with your audition results and reading it with tears of joy in your eyes because you realized it was starting all over again.

But marching band doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t matter.

Tell me that it doesn’t matter. Tell me as many times as you want. You could scream it in my face and I still wouldn’t hear because the music we’re making is too damn loud to let anything else in. 

Tell me that it doesn’t matter when I’m standing on the field for the last time, knowing that everything behind me will last forever and that nothing will ever mean more to me than this… and all you’ve got is some money and a jersey with a number on the back.

Do not ever tell me that marching band isn’t important. It is everything to me, and it is everything to millions of other band geeks across the world.

When you refuse to support kids because they participate in the arts rather than athletics, you’re no better than the football player who takes lunch money from nerds.