Blue Thunder Marching Band transitioned from paper dot sheets to the Ultimate Drill Book Pro (UDB) app as a new way to visualize performances and boost learning efficiency.
UDB displays a football field plotted with color coded points, representing students’ positions. The app has an animated feature that demonstrates the entire choreography along with music to show students where they need to be. Besides illustrating the previous and next steps, the app also records the coordinates and counts of the routine. Although students aren’t allowed to use the app during performances, they are given time during rehearsals to memorize the app’s content.
“UDB it’s really easy [to use]. I think it’s a good change because a lot of professional marching groups use it as well,” tuba section leader and band captain senior Daniel Hong said. “We’ve adjusted to it really nicely. I’m hoping that the rest of the marching band is also getting good impressions on it as well.”
The transition to the app has made rehearsals more convenient as many students already carry their phones and don’t have to worry about losing their paper dot sheets, small slips of paper that indicate a student’s exact coordinates.
“I think the app is actually one of the most useful things we’ve implemented this year,” assistant drum major junior Keegan Beecher said. “It’s a great tool for us to be able to run a rehearsal more efficiently and learn what we’re doing more efficiently.”
Despite these benefits, the app raises challenges for those without access to phones and difficulty in determining the productivity of a student.
“The most challenging thing was getting all of the students signed up with the app and also dying phone batteries by the end of the rehearsal,” band director Corey Wicks said.
In spite of these difficulties, marching band is addressing some of these issues by giving students without phones paper dot sheets or letting them borrow a friend’s phone. Many students are still navigating the many features the app has to offer.
“We’re all still learning. We do get the pro version, so we have all the features, but we’ve only been sticking to the basic stuff for now. Maybe we’ll add on some more stuff so that we could all get a full grasp of it,” Hong said. “I’m looking forward to where our band’s gonna go [using the app].”
