If you want to take your school's marching band to the next level, you need to have a firm grasp of the fundamentals behind what makes a marching band great. If you want to have a great marching band, you need to focus on the airstream and embouchure.

#1 Airstream

Airstream is about knowing how to control your breathing. The key to controlling your breathing when marching is being in control of your posture and knowing how to produce a steady amount of air.

To start with, focus on improving the posture of your band. This is a very simple first step that can go a long way towards turning your marching band into something great. When you have good posture, your lungs are able to fully expand. Bad posture crunches your lungs up and impacts your ability to breath, which is crucial to almost every instrument in the marching band line up.

Teach your students how to stand up straight, how to hold their shoulders, how to hold their head and wear to focus your eyes. Let your students know that it takes strength and practice to be able to maintain good posture while marching with an instrument. Be sure to emphasize the physical nature of this endeavor.

Second, you need to focus on helping your students produce steady air, not just more air. For most instruments, you need to be able to produce a steady stream of air. This may require focusing on the stomach muscles and keeping them firm in order to produce a steady stream of air. Once again, it takes physical strength and muscle tone to excel as a marching band.

#2 Embouchure

The other major element you need to work on is embouchure. This varies for different types of instruments. Embouchure is about having the right mouth placement to produce the correct sounds.

For your flute players, help them learn how to spread the air just right. They need to work to not be too thin nor too spread out when they play their instrument.

For brass players, the key is to keep the corners of the mouth tight while playing, but keep the middle loose. A steady stream of air is needed to produce the right tone. One of the best ways to master this skill is by playing scales and sirens with your brass players.

For single reed instruments, it is all about keeping the right mouth posture once the reed is in their mouth. It is import to keep the lips stretch out and corners firm, like with brass players.

If you want to have a great sounding marching band, start with the fundamentals. Improve your marching band's posture, air flow, and embouchure, and then move on to hiring a marching band arrangement services to put together great music for your routines.

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