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Drum Major Emilie Hodge (left) directed band members (l-r) Israel Chaparro, Carlos Galindo, Kevin Nguyen, Jaklyn Ramiro and Gillian Crist.
Snyder High School’s Pride of the West Marching Band program had its first full-band rehearsal this week, and Director Dustin Shreve said that he is looking forward to the marching season with his students.
Although Snyder’s UIL area contest will not be until Dec. 5, Shreve has already started his students on the music for their drill. They have held sectional rehearsals since mid-July, and will slowly begin to incorporate full-band rehearsals into their schedule.
“Until school starts back up, since we pushed school back three weeks or so, we’re going to try to keep the groups a little smaller,” Shreve said. “I like to rehearse the different groups separately rather than all together, just because all of them have a lot of different responsibilities. Marching band percussion versus concert band percussion has a higher demand in terms of the parts being more intricate. There’s just a lot more going on, so it’s beneficial and gives them the time to really work through their parts. We’ve got a lot of good work done. The kids are learning the music and they’re picking up on it pretty quick.”
Shreve said that the band already has its marching drill written, although by UIL rules they will not be permitted to begin learning and rehearsing it until Sept. 8.
“The whole show is one singular theme. It’s called Geometrics, and the first movement is called Linear, the second movement is Curvilinear, and the last movement is called Angular. So it’s dealing with different geometric shapes and types of lines,” he said. “It’s very entertaining. It has a nice drive to it. It’s got a cinematic feel to it in a lot of spots and is very rhythmic. It has a lot of contrast, so I think it will be very entertaining to watch, and it’s been a lot of fun to come up with ideas as to what we can do with it visually.”
Shreve said that he expected this music selection to enable the band to do a lot of interesting visual formations, which is where the group has struggled past few years. He hopes to raise their visual scores in this year’s competitions.
There will be some complications for the band this year due to COVID-19, but Shreve said that he expects those will be but minor bumps in the road.
“Out of Colorado, they did an aerosol study specific to performing arts activities, just trying to get an understanding of what’s going on and what the risk is. So far, what we know is that there is very minimal risk in playing wind instruments, but there is still the slight risk of air flow becoming an issue,” he said. “They did recommend bell covers, which are just cloth covers for the end of the instrument to catch anything that may be trying to get through, and the district is ordering several of those for us. Until then, we’ll be rehearsing outside as much as possible.”
Although this year’s band is small, with only 55 members, Shreve said that he hopes to create a program that the students can be proud of.
“For a 4A school, it is small. Band directors typically try to aim for 10 to 15 percent of the student population, but we’ll get there,” he said. “Right now, we’re just focusing on the quality of the program and putting out a good product no matter how many kids we have. I think we can definitely put on a good show and create something awesome.”