USNA Drum and Bugle Corps

USNA '16

10-Year Member
5-Year Member
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Mar 4, 2009
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Hi, I am currently a sophmore and part of my school's marching band. i play in the pit and plan to audition for the winter indoor drum-line. I am new at percussion but plan to work hard and become the best. I saw videos of the NA's D&B and am highly impressed. I was wondering if anyone can share stories and/or tips on how to prepare for thier audition. I realize I'm early but want to prepare as best I can if I get in. I read thier web page and they didn't mention anything about women in the drum-line. Any response is appreciated.
 
Hi, I am currently a sophmore and part of my school's marching band. i play in the pit and plan to audition for the winter indoor drum-line. I am new at percussion but plan to work hard and become the best. I saw videos of the NA's D&B and am highly impressed. I was wondering if anyone can share stories and/or tips on how to prepare for thier audition. I realize I'm early but want to prepare as best I can if I get in. I read thier web page and they didn't mention anything about women in the drum-line. Any response is appreciated.

They are usually very quick to put together the Drum & Bugle Corps - starting very early in Plebe Summer. It is an all-Plebe D&B. For obvious reasons they solicit for those with brass and percussion experience to try-out.
 
If you want to be in dnb you'll get in. They struggle to get enough people in the summer (especiallly people with experience) and struggle even more to keep them after the summer...its like a little cult.
 
If you want to get in you will as the other person posted. My son never played in a band in his life and he was able to walk on. He was self taught on the drums and he did fine. Good Luck!
 
wannabe2013, would you elaborate on why the D&B Corps struggles to keep members after plebe summer? Is the time commitment too much to handle the first year? How about the staff? Do they have a good reputation with mids? I was reading another thread about the USAFA corps and the two issues above were mentioned.
 
wannabe2013, would you elaborate on why the D&B Corps struggles to keep members after plebe summer? Is the time commitment too much to handle the first year? How about the staff? Do they have a good reputation with mids? I was reading another thread about the USAFA corps and the two issues above were mentioned.

I don't know anything about the staff. It is an unspoken point of pride in my company that we have no DnB kids. I know 3 people who were in D&B during the summer and hated it because they had random things to do and just practiced the same songs over and over again. If you do it you don't do a sport. However I know plenty of people who actually like it.
 
All my classmates that did it eventually quit it. Said it wasn't worth the time and hassle. There are some strange birds in that D&B crowd.
 
There are some strange birds in that D&B crowd.

Understood. I am getting a sense that you may be referring to a:

Band Geek (definition from urbandictionary.com): "A person involved in band who enjoys it so much that they constantly have band on their minds.

Known to date other "band geeks," roll their feet outside of band, generally have random and/or strange thought processes, are generally some of the coolest and most talented people ever, while some are quite possible (sic) the scariest people ever."

Cheers...
 
USNA '16,

As a former D&Ber (I played in the pit) and letter receipient I can tell you that you don't need to stress about tryouts. It's a fairly time consuming especially during the fall (getting ready for the band competiton against Air Force, which is our biggest competetor, and other bands during the week of the Navy/AF football game.

As long as you can maintain your grades you can get some good trips out of being part of D&B. I enjoyed my time in D&B and made some great friends. There will always be tryouts for certain spots/solos. The staff (civilian) is good and your lead by the 1st class mids for each section. The best part of being in the pit is unless you are on xylophones or something you wont be marching to football games (plebes usually get stuck w/ this duty) and you'll be bused over w/ the equipment for the pit.

Best of luck and glad to see such enthusiasm early.
 
USNA '02, thanks for posting about your D&B experiences! My daughter (2014 hopeful) is also considering D&B. She just got an email response to a question from the director, who was in Hawaii with half the corps for football.

About the dark side, she asked me to post the following:

"Come to the dark side, we have cookies..."
 
Righto, the old brain is not as nimble as it once was... it took a while...but I looked up USNA terminology and acronyms (Dark Side= a phrase connoting the dating of another Midshipman).
I guess there is more than one dark side (<;
 
Righto, the old brain is not as nimble as it once was... it took a while...but I looked up USNA terminology and acronyms (Dark Side= a phrase connoting the dating of another Midshipman).
I guess there is more than one dark side (<;

Its normally a male midshipman dating a female midshipman. I've never heard of a girl darksiding before. There's just not as much of a stigma attached to it for females as males.
 
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