FEATURE 5
Jerry Wang/KANSAN
Drum majors Hannah Wagner, Brian Fassoldi, and Kelsey Lange lead the Marching Jayhawks down the hill to Memorial Stadium. The three drum majors are responsible for setting up practices and acting as role models for the rest of the band.
members of the band start new music, review the show for the upcoming week and always end with the pregame routine. Clemmer says it takes the band about three rehearsals to learn a new song, which is a big change for freshman Maddux.
"The formations can be complicated to learn at times. We learned the same style of marching in high school, but you learn it a different way." Wagner says. "The level of the music is also more difficult than at the high school level."
Not only does the band learn new songs and new routines every week, but they must be memorized by game time. And it is not a simple process.
"It is great to see the band play because
"There was some difficulty learning the routines at first, but after being in marching band for four years it is easier to grasp the concepts and it was not overall hard," Maddux says. "It is a pretty significant change from high school where we would play four songs a year to four songs a week; that has been the biggest part to get used to."
Wagner agreed about the difficulties of learning new music and routines.
you know what they go through to learn the routines," says Whitman, who returns for homecoming most years and plays with the alumni band. "You root for them and you want to be out there playing again."
In the parking lot where the band practices, there is a full football field painted out with all the yard lines and hash marks. They have painted markings for where band members need to stand for different sequences, but also have a system using plastic chips that tells them where to go.
Each band member receives a drill sheet full of their specific step counts between positions and coordinates for each movement are timed out for them. During rehearsals, each of the members will go through their sheets and mark out their spots for the routine before even setting their marching to music.
"We do this so that they can walk onto the football field and do it without the markings using muscle memory and peripheral vision, where they can quickly correct their timing or spacing," Clemmer says.
Continued on page 6
Contributed photo Three members of the Marching Jayhawks take a break from performing to pose for a picture several years ago. The band has had just five directors during the past 100 years.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE WAVE OCTOBER 30,2009