Just take small chunks of the music at a time (maybe 4-8 measures depending on difficulty), and commit that to memory. Then move on to the next chunk. When you have the two chunks memorized, work on putting them together. Then add a third and a fourth, etc. Also look for repetition. Lots of music has little sections that are the same as other little sections somewhere else in the piece. If you recognize these parts, it becomes easier to memorize, because once you have one you have them all. Pure repetition can do it too, but I think the music should be analyzed and worked over bit by bit, and then when the whole piece is stored mentally, you should just repeat it over and over to be sure it's there (and will stay there) as a whole.

Actually I did try telling them that there would be a music check at the end of the week and that seemed to encourage a few to work on it, and one actually started to cry. But I never thought about the learn-by-chunk idea. I usually just remember it after I play it. Our band has a serious time issue, we only practice 3 days a week after school for about an hour and a half each, so it seems that sectionals are in the near future!

yeah you do hafta be pretty scrict on them. wow. you do seem to have it easy. we have practice every other day (cuz marching band is an actual class at my school every other day for an hour and a half) and we have practice tuesday nites from 6-9, plus we have a woodwind sectional on wednesdays from 3-4:30, and a sax sectional on thursdays from 3-4:30. so yeah...my weeks are busy...
and then the section leaders will schedule days that they will test us on our music, and its actually part of their grade. that can tend to be an incentive for some students.

Yeah, I wish that we had practices during the actual day (like any other class), but our district would never go for such a thing. At our school band is starting to die because the "important people" don't really see band as having a real purpose. So we just kinda practice whenever we can fit it in. But this year is coming along better than the past few years.

Music programs all over the country are beginning to die for lack of funding and support. It's a terribly unfortunate trend, but undeniable.

WOW!!!~~~two years ago we played a blockbuster show featuring "Ghostbusters", "Spiderman", "Mission impossible"

last year our show was something in spanish and we played "Maleguenia" (spelled wrong), "Perfidia", "Manbo #5", "Brazil"

This year, im not in the band, but their playing a seventies theme thing.

Our show this year is "Les Miserables". It includes:

Work Song/At The End of The Day
I Dreamed a Dream
Master of the House (Majorette Feature)
On My Own/Do You Hear The People Sing?

after everyone of the football games, we go onto the track, then we march from there to the band room. the drummers play a cadence and our sax's and clari's play "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goooood bye..." that song...forget what its' called...ooops...lol...and as soon as we get into the hallways, it echoes sooooooooooo loud...its awsome!!!

My band director chose 'Jesus Christ Superstar' Parts 1, 2 and 3.

It's really cool sounding out on a marching feild. Part two even has four measures of JUST flutes playing. It's pretty neat.

my schools fiddler on the roof ( I hate it) but later were going to doa Shakira tribute which will be awesome

My marching band is doing a show called "A Brand New Day." It's an arrangement of Awakening Hills, On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss, The Witch and the Saint, and Persistence. I really like this show. Compared to last year this year is going to be awesome. We had our first competition at Gilroy on 10-14-06. Today we learned and changed oure drill for part of the opener.

when i told my band director that i had all of my music memorized, he looked at me like i was from another planet...i don't know how you can't!! lol

anyways, our show never really had a theme this year, but for the first half our order was: Estancia, Mustang Sally, A percussion feature, and then Land of 1000 Dances as our closer. We later changed out Mustang Sally for Funkytown. For our last home game, we added Patriotic Spectacular and God Bless America. For our new set, our opener is Devil With The Blue Dress. Today our director passed out Monster Mash and Watermelon Man for our senior show..Monster Mash made me wanna scratch my eyes out it was so easy...oh well, gotta amuse the old man!

My school is doing "An American in Paris" by George Gershwin... it's so much fun! Unfortunately we're about to retire it for the season.