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Hey folks,

Our band is having band camp July 25-Aug 5. This will be the first time that out school will have a "marching band" that performs a fieldshow at the football games. We are very proud of the fact that our program has grown (from scratch) in less than 2 years.

In late June/early July, my wife and I wrote out our first field show. It took a couple days of creative planning and a stack of paper with a football field printed on it (it was a screen capture from a Pyware DEMO).

Unfortunately, neither the band, the school nor we have the budget to purchase Pyware drill software. In my experiences with Pyware I have found that it is a great program, but there is a bit of a learning curve (it's not directly intuitive). I wrote to a computer forum, hoping to find some ex-marching band computer geeks that would be willing to work with me on a simplified marching drill program. Most of my ideas feature bits and pieces of other FREE (open source and cross-platform) software. I thought that maybe....just maybe, we could Frankenstein a program. But alas, no one wanted to help.

So, necessity is the mother of invention. I figured out a way to do drill and the software was FREE....yes....FREE!!! Most of you are familar with Microsft Office. Well, there is a FREE...yes...FREE Microsoft compatable office suite called OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org). I have a beta copy of version 2.0 running on my main machine (the older version would have done the same). I used the spreadsheet program called Calc (compatable with Excel) and made a footbal field grid IDENTICAL to the grid from Pyware. Then I used the drawing tools at the bottom (and featured on the right of the screenshot below) of the screen to draw shapes. I could have chosen different shapes or used color. Since I need to make photocopies I chose to use shades of gray. This method of drill design doesn't have animation, but you can easily point, click and drag the little people anywhere on the chart with ease, as well as add or delete sheets anywhere in the drill.

Here is what the first drill sheet looks like. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.



Please let me know what you think of this method. In addition, if anyone else has ideas on other methods of doing computer generated drill design....on the cheap....let me know.

Cool, interesting...

Is there a way to calculate intervals, step sizes, and stuff like that? That data, and animation (used by the writer to find potentially dangerous pathways), are the best reasons for drill writing programs.

Very creative solution!

Pyware is definitely the current industry standard. As someone who makes a significant portion his living writing drills, i would use nothing else becuase my customers almost all have it. It is nice to be able to email them "proofs" and updates so I can work more collaboratively with the band directors.

However, if you are not writing drill professionally, there are a few other choices out there. There is a new product called "V-ware" or something like that. It costs about $200 bucks and is available from Arrangers Publishing Company. I have never tried it and have no opinions on it, but I doubt APC would want to be associated with a poor product.

On Ebay, there is another product from Raven Labs that is downloadable for cheap... $50 I think. I tried the demo and found it cumbersome, but that may be because I am so used to Pyware. It looks like it would work well if I was willing to take the time to learn it.

Leland wrote:Cool, interesting...

Is there a way to calculate intervals, step sizes, and stuff like that? That data, and animation (used by the writer to find potentially dangerous pathways), are the best reasons for drill writing programs.

Well according to the grid on Pyware, there are 2 squares for every 5 yards. If we are using a standard 8 steps for every 5 yards, that means that a square is 4 steps in each direction. Since my grid is based on the Pyware chart, my grid has 4 step squares as well.

I imagine my method would NOT be suitable for people doing this professionally. Since I am writing a rather simple field show for a band who is marching for the very first time, this solution is practical and economical...........or to use Mr. Stanislaw's (my 9th grade English teacher) favorite word.....pragmatic!