Percussion
The recent announcement of the Regionals pieces for 2025 has once again highlighted an extreme inconsistency in the number, range and difficulty of percussion parts in selected test pieces, from year-to-year and from section-to-section.
We would like to draw attention to some of the impacts of test piece choice on individuals, bands and banding, in the hope that you will consider changing the way pieces are chosen in the future.
Too Much
Pieces demanding more players than a typical band could reasonably be expected to resource create difficulties finding (and signing) enough players of the required ability. Bringing in short term deputies can be costly and is not in the spirit of competing as an integrated team.
Pieces demanding more equipment than a typical band could reasonably be expected to resource creates problems sourcing, borrowing, hiring, storing, purchasing, or – in extreme cases – constructing instruments. Again, cost is an issue.
In terms of difficulty, whilst recognising there are benefits to a piece being challenging, something ‘unplayable’ or way out of step with the band’s section grading is demotivating and unfair.
Too Little
Whether percussionists will have anything to play at the Regionals each year seems to be a lottery. Pieces with undemanding percussion parts are often chosen, sending the message that percussionists are ‘nice to have’ or ‘spare’, which does not help widespread player recruitment and retention problems.
Percussionists are equally as likely as all band members to have arranged their work and other commitments to accommodate band. This may include arranging childcare, possibly paid. Where applicable, percussionists pay subs. Percussionists are likely to spend much longer at band than other members, setting up and packing away where bands don’t have an exclusive rehearsal space.
Yet pieces with too little percussion leave players with the following options each January and February:
a) Suck it up – All those hours in the band room just to endure the mental torture of there being just enough notes in the piece to necessitate almost constant counting of bars rest. Where applicable, also the time and effort over many weeks setting up and packing down equipment but hardly using it.
b) Sit it out – Go ‘on the bench’, stay at home whilst the rest of the team play on, perhaps watching their social life play out without them through their phone screen. Band is valuable for players' mental health; it feels awful to be left out and is the antithesis of team spirit.
c) Someone else sit it out – Impose (b) on others in the team, which is horrendous for the morale of all involved and overall team spirit. Often this would not provide a much better playing outcome anyway – see (a)!
d) Help another band – Indeed ‘flexible registration’ for percussionists has been suggested as possible means of addressing this issue, players could temporarily sign for another band in need. This may be logistically difficult or impossible depending on other commitments and is not in the spirit of bands competing as integrated teams.
Which would you choose?
Just Right
The number of brass players is standardised for contesting, why not percussion?
Acknowledging the breadth and history of the repertoire, and difficulty in defining exactly what represents one player’s worth of percussion, but some improvement on the seemingly random swing between extremes must be possible.
Some have suggested designating “optional” percussion parts, but surely percussion is either part of the band, or not. Is the flugel part optional? The bass trombone? This could also exacerbate the existing problem of a perceived ambiguity around whether missing percussion parts count against the band’s overall placing in any given adjudication.
We would greatly welcome if you were able to offer clarity on:
- Does consideration of percussion feature in your test piece selection process?
- Is there a panel member with specific remit to advise on percussion or, if not, could there be?
- Is there the possibility to consider changes to the piece selection process to improve the experience of all band members?
Yours sincerely,