With only two months of summer left, football season is just around the corner. Soon enough, the streets of East Lansing will be crowded with Spartan fans and MSU students heading to the first game of the season. Whether tailgating on or off campus, the sound of the Spartan Marching Band echoing through East Lansing will leads directly to the gates of the Spartan Stadium.
Without the Spartan Marching Band, MSU football games wouldn’t be the same. The chants, MSU fight song and the half time performances wouldn’t be possible without practice, staff and directors preparing the marching band before football season.
John T. Madden has been director of the Spartan Marching Band since the fall of 1989.
He supervises all aspects of the rehearsal and performances of the band. He is active as the primary drill designer and music arranger. Madden is also a graduate of the MSU College of Music, where he received his Bachelors of Music Education Degree.
Summer time is prep time Madden said.
There are three main areas in prepping the Spartan Marching Band:
1. Show planning and programming halftime shows: this involves staff and students in a committee brainstorming ideas, as well as feedback, given by students in the Spartan Marching Band at the previous season’s year-end business meeting. They offer show ideas to be considered.
2. Auditions: new students to MSU can audition to be an instrumentalist, a percussionist or a color guard performer. These auditions are competitive. Once someone warns a position in the band, they retain their spot for the rest of their time at MSU. Open positions are created when seniors graduate, or one is unable to return to the band for other reasons.
3. The last step is drill design and arranging music. The bulk of the work is done in creating music arrangements, writing drill formations for pregame and halftime shows, and writing percussion arrangements. The directors and percussion coordinator do the bulk of this work.
This will be Madden’s 28th year as director of the Spartan Marching Band.
“Marching Band became apart of my life as a high school student in the ninth grade, when band students were also part of the school’s marching band,” Madden said.
Without John Madden and the Spartan Marching Band staff, there would be no Spartan Marching Band.
“To experience the roar of the crowd, the excitement of the game, and the feeling of impacting the environment of the stadium through music, marching, drumming and visual precision.” Madden said.
