Back to Basics

As I sit here looking at the morning full moon, I’m reflecting upon what a weird writing season this has been. What? How has this writing season been weird, you ask? Well, I didn’t have to pull any “all-nighters” to get a production out to a client group. I wasn’t in band camp all day and then came home to stay up another 2-3 hours working at the computer. I haven’t had to crank out show after show for my university job due to restrictions on football caused by the pandemic. I haven’t had to spend hours watching video of DCI, BOA, or WGI to get “inspired” (“inspired” = transcription). While all of those things are true, the one thing that probably made this writing season the most weird was my return to the basics. This was definitely the “Back to the Basics Writing Season”.

That was predicated by the need to be flexible in my design work. After all, client groups were going to be dealing with many challenges presented by having a marching band during a pandemic. If nothing else, every activity/segment of learning was going to take longer. Just the logistics of having rehearsal were going to be a challenge. I blogged about this going back to April. So I knew the amount of material and it’s demand would have to be reasonable given this new teaching/learning environment.

I had 2 client groups that were dealing with having band on A/B days. I shared how I went about this task in my August 12th blog, Tips for Designing During COVID #1. I’m not sure why I gave it a number since I haven’t added a #2 yet. But I digress. Bottom line, I needed to be sure I was putting out product that was sometimes simple, but always effective.

With all of the weirdness though, I would have to say I enjoyed my design work this season. Nothing too fancy. I just went with the following priorities. 1. Get the right people in the right places at the right times. 2. Don’t move a section who has the melody. Get them where they need to be and let them play it. 3. Lean on the guard or body visuals from the band proper to help carry phrases where another drill move just wasn’t worth it. 4. No movement for movement’s sake. 5. Don’t move the guard if you don’t have to.

All in all, I was able to make my deadlines delivering designs in a timely manner because the volume of content was lower than most years. My number of designs was 2-3 client groups lower than recent years, but that’s okay. I ended up charging by the set (I purposely kept the set counts down. Hey, that cost me $!), and I think my clients appreciated that. The vast majority of my clients paid far less for their design work this year than they did last. I used a tiered pricing system based upon band size and multiplied that by the number of sets (excluding repeated sets) and that seemed to work well.

Yes, looking back it was a weird season, but by getting back to basics I was able to make the best of it.

I love to hear from readers like you. Please leave a comment.—DB