The End is Nigh

October is nearing its end. And with it, the final climactic weeks of marching season begin. 

Many of the shows that are left are regional, state, and national championships: shows with major implications. We specifically choose & design our shows to compete well for these weeks. These are the shows we anticipate all year. Hopefully your program is nearing all-time cleanliness.

Perhaps your show is learned, you students continuing to work hard, but they just aren’t getting “clean enough”  at transitions in specific charts of the show. If your band’s improvement has plateaued, use dot math to clean these transitions to a whole new level. 

Using Dot Math

The argument to use dot math is simple. The transition from one staging to another is (at least) just as important as the staging itself. By staging, I usually mean “drill page”, but it can mean other types of moves. Moving to props, to an elevated platform, using body to transition, or flutter stepping into scatters are all further examples of “staging” elements. 

4 years ago, I taught a marching band that had strong “dot recall” abilities. They understood the field well and could hit their dots with great accuracy by mid October. But they struggled to control their step size, and usually arrived far too early. They would be nearly marking time by the last 3 counts of the exercise. The picture was clear, but the pivotal motion was often ambiguous.

For the record: my lesson was learned. The next year, I prioritized training this skill and developed a series of exercises to better teach step size control in August. But that was the long term solution. I’ll write more on that another day, or you can contact us and I’ll share with you directly.  

I needed an answer to help them during the current season, not just next year. The solution that helped us was dot math.

Step 1: Know Your Dot

Dot math doesn’t work unless you prioritize dots. Prioritizing dots means focusing on the coordinates indicated by the drill page/ coordinate sheet or choreographer. This is to say, you prioritize this for a substantial chunk of the season and your students are familiar with marching “to the dot”. I’m not interested in the dot vs. form argument. If dot-focus is not your thing for your group, dot math definitely won’t be your thing, and that’s okay.

Whether you use charts (shown below) or coordinate sheets, dot math only works if students have a meaningful way to reference their exact position in the show for the section you want to clean.

Step 2: Calculate the Distance Covered

Below is an image of a geometric transition for the trumpet section. We have 16 counts to transition from the starting staging to the ending staging.

Let’s take a look at T9 for our example:

T9’s Starting Coordinate is 10 steps in front of the front hash, 2 steps outside the 50 on side 1.

T9’s finishing dot (16 counts later) is 16 in front of the front hash (AKA 12 behind the front sideline), 2 steps outside the 50 on side 1.

How far did T9 move over those 16 counts? 

6 steps front to back (moving forward), 0 steps side to side.

Step 3: Calculate the Midpoint

Since we are trying to calculate our midpoints, we must first determine what count the midpoint occurs. We divide 16 in half, and get 8. Count 8 is our midpoint.

T9 moves 6 steps front to back and 0 counts side to side. Since we are looking for the midpoint, we will divide those numbers by 2 as well.

6/2= 3 steps front to back

0/2= 0 steps side to side (stays the same in relation to the 50 through the whole move).

So at count 8, T9 will move 3 steps forward, and 0 steps side to side.

Below is an image of T9 on count 8, note where they are. I’ve also included an X for their starting and ending points:

On count 8 in the software (thanks Pyware), you can see that T9 has moved 3 steps forward, and 0 steps side to side.

Want more practice at learning midpoints? There are 15 other trumpet dots here, go through this process and calculate them yourself. 

Your students should be the ones who learn this process. Charts help, but this can be done with coordinate sheets as well, just make sure to pay attention to markers such as hashes and “inside/outside” of the yard lines if you use coordinate sheets.

FAQ: “What if the dot is not on the grid, such as 5.75 steps from the front sideline to 10.5 from the front sideline?”

I always say round up to the nearest quarter step. This will get your students incredibly close. You can adjust that final quarter step by hand as you hit the subset if necessary.

Step 4: Rep What You’ve Learned

Now that you know how to use dot math to move cleaner than ever, it is time to put it to action. Start with the 2-4 foggiest transitions and clean the midpoints. Your first year doing this, it may be hard to do many more than that given the rehearsal time you have to focus on these subsets. 

When I do this, I usually pick sets where step sizes are a 7-to-5 or smaller. This exercise helps train students to understand that their step sizes need to be a  little smaller in general. Your brightest students will take this and run with it themselves, calculating their midway points for more and more of their show for the rest of the season. 

What’s Next?

Dot math isn’t a catch all for the whole season. Using dot math is a tool in your belt. If your students are clean on count 16, but not from counts 1 to 15, pull out dot math. Now they’ll be clean on count 8 and 16, and you have cut the transition time in half. That’s a huge improvement to their margin of error.

When you use dot math to move cleaner than ever, your students get more reference points, better understanding of pace, and draws their roots of understanding deeper than ever.