BAND IS MORE

Author Unknown

Band is a SCIENCE:       It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor’s score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once with the most exact control of time.

Band is MATHEMATICS: It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of notes into fractions which must be done instantly, not worked out on paper.

Band is a FOREIGN LANGUAGE: Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English – but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas.  The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.

Band is HISTORY: Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.

Band is PHYSICAL EDUCATION: It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

Band is all of these things, but most of all,

Band is ART: It allows a human being to take all of these dry, technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion.  That is one thing science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.