Everyone knows this section. If you look at the standard high school front ensemble, the auxiliary kids (aux) are often the students that were either cut from the drumline, not considered "good enough" to play a mallet instrument, or have some other challenge with filling a more "important" position. I have never been a fan of this impression, but it is the impression held by many directors and marching band staff around the country. There are many challenges that come with working with this section and many of them lie outside of the membership's control. Once you change your and your students’ mindsets about these positions, they become game-changers for your pit and the entire ensemble.
The auxiliary section in the front ensemble poses more than just membership challenges. Just the sheer variety of instruments causes difficulties at times. Depending on the size of your band, this section could range from a single synth player to multiple electronics members, drum set, timpani, bass and electric guitars, and rack (which unfortunately, has the worst reputation of them all). If you find suitable membership to fill these positions, you can take an entire ensemble to the next level of performance and skill.
The challenge is always, “How do I make this happen in my ensemble?"
Obviously, this is a much easier question to type than to put into practice. Still, with enough time and dedication, you can promote your front ensemble to the upper echelon of auxiliary performance. Here are the steps pertinent to achieving this level of success. While I don't claim to be an expert in the marching arts or the front ensemble, these are tips and tricks that I’ve picked up over my years of marching and teaching that I believe have made my auxiliary sections shine.
Stop treating aux as a section to put your worst players... Do I need to repeat this for anyone in the back?
For this section to be successful, you cannot treat them how many band directors view the front ensemble- as just the place to put students who would be unreliable on the field. If you have a band director who chooses to do this, there are much more effective ways to involve these students than to put them on one of these aux instruments for the sake of including these instruments.
Think of these sections how you would in a true "wind ensemble" of one player per part. Would you want these students, who often act as “soloists” on their instruments, to play alone? No! Putting a challenging student into one of these positions will only set them up for failure as the season progresses. The number of times I’ve witnessed instructors struggling to get a student to play a concert bass/tam-tam hit in time, when they knew from day one that the student struggled with timing, is incredible.
Look at your members' strengths when going about the audition process at the beginning of the season. Priority one is timing. Many of these instruments (rack, drum set) have rhythmically driven music. If a student struggles with rhythms, there could be better positions in the front ensemble where they can grow and have the support of people on the same instrument. Having an extra vibe player can be more beneficial than having a student on rack playing their cymbals out of time.
For electronics students, I tend to look more for the willingness to learn the "logistics" of the position over someone who is just there because their mom said she'd take away their Xbox if they didn't show up to band (yes, this has happened...). Electronics are becoming a beast in the marching activity and are progressively more challenging to keep up with. BUT, if you have members who know your system and can troubleshoot when necessary, it saves you a much bigger headache in the long run.
Timpani is the instrument I often get the most pushback from directors on including in the front ensemble. They're big, expensive, a pain to maintain outside, and, in short, a logistical nightmare.
But
I believe Ian Grom said it best: "Timpani is the most important secret weapon of the entire front ensemble, and you should do everything in your power to keep it in your ensemble". If you are willing to deal with all the challenges that come with this instrument, it is a game-changer for an ensemble. Not to mention that it is the single best ear training tool for percussion students. I am a major advocate for having an underclassman with a passion for the instrument play the drums to invest in their growth through their remaining years.
With the variety of these instruments, there is a different set of challenges besides personnel. This brings me to the second point…
2. Have staff members who know how to teach these instruments.
Every school is different. I am incredibly fortunate to have come from and taught many programs that can afford to have more than one staff member for the front ensemble. However, I know this is different for many schools throughout the country. The reality of the situation is that your students can only be pushed as far as the staff can push them. If the staff is unable to teach the music, then there are limitations being put on your student's potential. If you are unable to bring in additional staff who are "experts" on an aux instrument, that's okay! As the instructor, you need to put in additional work to learn the basics of the instrument to push and challenge the student. If you decide to include an instrument, it is your responsibility to ensure the student receives instruction equal to that of the rest of the front ensemble.
One of the benefits of things you can do with a large staff (or strong student leaders) is to have sub-sectional time to focus on cleaning individual parts. One of the questions I often get asked is, “What do you do with the aux kids in subs?" The answer varies from rehearsal to rehearsal, depending on the staff available. Sometimes (as in one time in my teaching career), you can do "mega subs". In this case, we had six staff members at a rehearsal and had marimbas, vibes, synths, guitars, drum set/rack, and timpani, all in their own sub-sectional spaces. While this was highly beneficial, I understand this is not the norm!
If I were in a situation where I was teaching subs with the complete auxiliary section, I would start by focusing on basic things (especially early season), such as making sure basic rhythms are lined up, are each of us playing with the proper technique for our instruments, and realistically in the early season, I'm already troubleshooting electronic issues. As we move further throughout the season and students begin to master their parts, I start focusing on musical interpretation, shaping, and thinking in bigger picture ways, such as “How can we accentuate this accent pattern in the battery more?” or “How can we make this clarinet line more present?" The beauty of these instruments is that you have millions of opportunities to add more textures and colors into your ensemble. This also gets the creativity flowing in your students and allows them to have some creativity in what they play.
In my last year of teaching high school marching band in Michigan before starting my master’s degree, I was blessed with string players in my front ensemble for the first time in 4 years. For anyone who doesn't know me, I couldn't play anything on bass or guitar if my life depended on it. Thankfully, I had two incredible staff members I could bring onto my team who could take the lead on teaching these instruments. I am forever guilty of telling my students "rule number 8" (iykyk) if they ask me a question I don't know the answer to and I'm incredibly thankful for my staff that season.
On the basis of all electronic students, it is essential for all members in this sub-section (synth and guitars) to know how to run every aspect of the electronics. It is important to have a staff member who is able to teach the students how to use this equipment properly, and it is even more essential so that your students can help promote the longevity of the gear, too. I don't know a single band director who wants to shell out an extra couple hundred bucks a season to buy new XLR cables because of how many times students rolled things across them. If you can find a staff member who can take the extra time to teach your students the “why does this work” side of things, your electronics section will be unstoppable.
Again, timpani comes to the forefront with staffing challenges. As I said above, timpani is much more than just playing the drums in the marching activity. The best timpani technician I've met in the marching activity always has joked that when he was on tour for drum corps, he "spent more time fixing drums and resetting heads than (he) did playing". If all your student gets out of their first season is drum repair and head clearing, they will be set up for immediate success the following season and seasons down the road.
This brings us to the final point...
3. Make sure your aux students have things to do.
This seems like it should be self-explanatory, but we have all been in the zone of cleaning that one marimba lick, and we look over to see the aux kids playing Minecraft on their phones and playing with fire (unfortunately, both are still true).
One of the best ways to keep these students engaged early in the season is to have them learn mallet technique with the rest of the keyboard players. You never know when you could mount a glockenspiel on the rack (or drum set...), have a four-mallet timpani lick, or include a Malletstation for the first time. It is incredibly beneficial for ALL young percussionists to have that foundational knowledge.
Another good way to keep them engaged is to ensure you have parts written for ALL instruments in ALL exercises. If you want the rack player to play 16th notes on a shaker during green scales, write it down. Don't be that person who verbally teaches the aux kids their parts while the keyboard players get sheet music.
For rack players, it always pains me to walk past an ensemble and see a single concert tom, a crash cymbal from 1923 that was run over by a bus, and a triangle with a pen for a beater. The equivalent of this is taking away half of the bars on a mallet instrument and asking a student to play the exact same way. Similarly to staffing, I understand equipment is a challenge in some schools. BUT, if you give a student the worst that your school has to offer while the acoustic keyboards have the best-suspended cymbals you own, that is not setting the aux students up for success.
I have become known for going what some may call "overboard" when it comes to building racks for high schoolers (as you can see by the picture to the right). However, as someone who likes many timbral options, I often supplement the school's equipment with my personal gear to get the sounds I want. Given my background in world music, I would also include lots of hand drumming into the rack (and the front ensemble as a whole). I promise you, if you make your auxiliary students feel valued, they will want to succeed.
The auxiliary section is a challenge to work with at times (speaking as one of the aux kids who frequently played with fire back in the day). However, If you set this section up for success with these tips, you will notice a difference in their performance, rehearsal, and attitude.
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