A Band that Marches to its Own Beat

Building a strong marching-band foundation before students start juggling practice with Tech’s infamously difficult coursework is extremely important, Andrews says. The grueling schedule also prepares new marchers for the lengthy football season, in which game days—both at home and on the road—are usually weekend-consuming marching band affairs. “I just tell any group projects in advance that they’re not going to hear from me at all on Saturdays,” Andrews says. “My weekends are entirely for football.”

Andrews is just one semester away from a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, and she credits the marching band with helping her create a healthy work-life balance. She looks at serving as a drum major in the band as a creative outlet that reduces stress built up during the week.

Passion for the Music and the Institute

During the game, musicians are nearly always playing music. Moore is quick to point out that on-field marching during pre-game and half-time only accounts for around 17 minutes of a six-hour day of music making, so musicality and endurance are equally important elements.

The full Yellow Jacket Marching Band breaks up into smaller units to cover different sporting events during the academic year. Concurrent with football season, smaller pep bands play at volleyball games, while the spring semester is mainly reserved for basketball.

Student musicians travel with those teams as well. In particular, Moore will never forget conducting a cohort of band members in San Antonio on April 5, 2004, as the Tech men’s basketball team challenged the University of Connecticut for the NCAA Championship. “It’s one of the biggest stages we can have as a band and as fans,” he says.

Moore adds that while such trips are fun and are unique experiences for the students, the marching band, in all its myriad forms, represents the Institute as a whole.

Likewise, the band is populated by a cross-section of the Tech student body who are committed to its mission, despite the demands of Tech’s challenging academic programs. Since membership is strictly voluntary, Moore says his musicians are some of the most dedicated and passionate Yellow Jackets on campus. “They’re in marching band because they love to play music and because they love Tech,” Moore says. “A lot of them come to us to feel a little bit of peace at the end of a long day of coursework.”

Moore knows that to keep the band operating at the highest level, he must continue to engage sports and music fans alike. In recent years, he’s experimented with adding more technology into his football halftime shows. And during basketball season, he’s even encouraged the crowd to vote online just how fast and loud the band plays certain songs. Bringing the audience into the band experience is one way to keep things fresh, he says.

“We’re not in a competitive environment like high school bands are, but we’re constantly striving to keep the music challenging and the movement interesting,” he says. “We’re a traditional college marching band but also one that tries to stay current, contemporary and looking down the road into the future.”

Humble Beginnings

The Georgia Tech Marching Band started almost on a whim with students who were simply looking for a musical outlet. In 1908, a small group of 14 Tech musicians got together to play school songs and support the football team. What began as an ensemble dedicated to informal music-making has since evolved into a band embedded into the fabric of the Institute.

The band existed without a director for a couple of years, until the students convinced leader Mike Greenblatt to come on board officially, albeit only on a part-time basis. (The direction of the band remained a part-time gig for nearly 70 years.) Greenblatt is most famous for writing the first arrangement of Tech’s legendary fight song, “Ramblin’ Wreck,” in 1910.

In 1914, Frank “Wop” Roman became the next to oversee the band and remained at the helm until his death in 1928. Under Roman’s tenure as director, the Georgia Tech Band Club was formed, and the Iota chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi, a national honorary band fraternity, was founded. Roman is credited with having arranged and copyrighted a revised version of the “Ramblin’ Wreck,” as well as “Up with the White and Gold” and the Georgia Tech “Alma Mater” which are still performed today. (Roman is also credited as the composer of the “Alma Mater.”) Roman’s Tech Band became the first band to broadcast live dance music over the radio, playing a dance concert on campus that was transmitted via wireless radio to the Capital City Club in Atlanta.

The Georgia Tech band grew and changed over the decades, and included the development of a traditional marching band, as well as an orchestra, symphonic band, dance music ensembles, pep bands and other iterations.

When Tom Billings, CE 74, joined the Yellow Jacket Marching Band as a freshman in the early 1960s, member-ship had ballooned to 100. Billings had played clarinet in his high school band and wanted to continue honing his chops at the college level. For him, the marching band also served as a release from his daily class load.

“I was apprehensive about joining the band because Tech’s a hard place, and I worried about if I would have enough time to do the band and my studies as well,” says Billings, who served for years as the band’s official photographer and videographer. “But I realized that I needed an outlet, so I wasn’t just studying all the time.”

Billings was among the students who journeyed to the Sun Bowl in 1970—a memory that still stands out in his mind. His experience with the band so enhanced his college career that Billings helped found the band’s alumni association in 1979, serving as its first leader and rallying band alumni to help fund band trips. For instance, the group raised $10,000 to help the marching band travel to Ireland in 2016 for the Aer Lingus College Football Classic.

His position with the band has allowed Billings to study the group’s progression from casual gathering to world-class ensemble. “The band’s prestige has certainly in-creased over the years,” he says. “For a school that has never had any traditional music majors, I think the Tech band has done amazingly well.”

Sound Direction

Christopher Moore has been involved with the Georgia Tech Marching Band since 1995, first serving under James “Bucky” Johnson, the band’s first full-time director, who retired in 2001. During Moore’s time leading the Tech band, he’s seen the group’s membership and prestige swell. In 2016, he led a record group of 370 musicians with a staff of assistant directors, student drum majors and assorted student support personnel.

The Georgia Tech Marching Band has become the soundtrack to Tech football, and its omnipresence at games is glaringly apparent only when the band is absent. But thankfully, Moore can only recall one time when the band failed to travel to a football away game. The economic collapse was in full swing, and at the time, administrators had made the tough decision to leave the band at home.

It turns out that forgetting the band was a bad idea.

“The very next week, the coach was like, ‘Nope. We’re never going to do that again,’” Moore says. “When the football team runs out on the field, they expect to hear the fight song.”
A collegiality with the Athletics Association and Georgia Tech’s sports teams is important, Moore says, and he’s worked hard to nurture this symbiotic relationship. Moore will occasionally invite various coaches to talk with his musicians, and he says the entire athletics operation is enthusiastic about the marching band and what it brings to the college sports experience for players and fans alike.

To freshman band members, Moore emphasizes that fostering school pride is the band’s driving focus. Many of his marchers were involved with competitive units in high school, and he wants them to bring their competitive spirit wherever they march and play. “Our No. 1 job is to inspire the fans and support the team,” he says.

On football game days at Tech, the band congregates three hours before kickoff, playing in various small ensembles throughout campus to get students excited about the game. This culminates with a final mini pep rally featuring the entire band. “We pied-piper the fans into the stadium,” Moore says.

During half-time shows, you’ll find her perched atop an aluminum ladder on the side of the field, mirroring director Christopher Moore’s hand motions as she marks tempo, leading the band through their paces.

During the game, the marching band huddles on bleachers in the stands, a sea of white uniforms accent-ed by shimmery bands of gold. As a unit, the band writhes and shakes with an unabashed intensity, working the surrounding crowd into a frenzy with their infectious energy and unmistakable sound. These student musicians are having a good time, and this liveliness translates to the crowd.

“We’re with all of our friends, we’re playing music, we’re at the football games—it’s absolutely a blast,” Andrews says.

In the middle of August, a full week before most Georgia Tech students arrived on campus, Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket Marching Band drum major Dawn Andrews walked up the steps of the Couch Building for the first work-out of the school year.

Andrews spent the next five days as one of 340 student members learning new music, honing marching motions and committing half-time shows to muscle memory from 9 a.m. to noon, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and again from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Practicing non-stop for an entire week marks the start of the season for the marching band. The rigor of this presemester band camp is some-thing this veteran marcher knows well, but she also relishes it as a time to bond with her fellow Yellow Jackets.

“I love the way that marching band gives us all a chance to build a community before school starts,” Andrews says. “The band really gets a chance to know each other and find their way around campus.”

She admits that while the intensity of band camp can be a little daunting, once classes begin, the frenzied pace relaxes, if only a little bit. During the fall semester, members practice together for two hours three times a week, gaining elective credit for their effort.