Scores Are a Snapshot. Growth Is the Goal.

What more than 25 years of teaching, marching band, and adjudication have taught me about competition, scores, and student growth

By Christopher Keniley

Competition has been part of my life in music for a long time.

I have experienced it as a student, performer, instructor, percussion educator, staff member, and now as an adjudicator. After more than 25 years of working with students and marching bands, I have seen competitions from a lot of different perspectives.

And one question has stayed important to me through all of them:

Was that your best performance?

I ask my students this after performances.

If the answer is yes, I want to know why.

What went well? What felt different? What did you accomplish that you had struggled with before?

If the answer is no, I want to know why then, too.

The same thing happens during rehearsal. After a run, I might ask students:

Who thought they did well?

Who didn’t?

Why?

Those questions are important because eventually I don’t want students to need me standing in front of them telling them whether something was good.

I want them to know.

Teaching Students to Evaluate Themselves

One of the most important things we can teach young musicians is how to honestly evaluate their own performance.

Did I give my best effort?

Was my preparation enough?

Did I recover when something went wrong?

Was I listening?

Was I watching?

Did I contribute to the ensemble, or was I simply worried about my individual part?

What can I do differently on the next repetition?

Those questions matter whether a student is performing with a marching band, concert band, jazz ensemble, percussion section, choir, orchestra, or taking a private music lesson.

That’s where real improvement begins.

A score can tell students something about a performance.

Self-evaluation can teach them something about themselves.

Your Staff Probably Already Knows

Something else I’ve learned from working with bands is that directors and staff usually already know many of the discrepancies within their program.

They hear the balance problems.

They see the visual inconsistencies.

They know where timing becomes unstable. They know which musical phrases aren’t speaking clearly. They know where students are struggling with technique, movement, tone quality, intonation, dynamics, or confidence.

Then another voice comes along on Saturday.

The judge.

Often, we’re reinforcing things the staff has already been teaching all week.

A student hears a judge mention balance on a recording and suddenly realizes:

“That’s exactly what our director has been telling us.”

Sometimes hearing the same concept from an outside voice helps reinforce its importance.

That is one of the things I value most about adjudication.

A judge shouldn’t simply be someone assigning a number. The commentary should help reinforce good teaching, recognize achievement, identify inconsistencies, and give the director and students information they can use when they return to rehearsal.

That educational philosophy isn’t unique to me. Bands of America’s criteria-reference approach, for example, describes achievement as the combination of what is being performed and how well it is being performed, with the system intended to encourage continued improvement.

So What Does the Score Mean?

Scores matter.

I don’t believe we need to pretend they don’t.

Competition can motivate students. Placement can be exciting. Winning your class, earning a caption award, or seeing your score improve can be a tremendous accomplishment.

Generally, higher numbers should represent greater demonstrated achievement and consistency according to the criteria being evaluated. Lower numbers indicate that the demonstrated achievement isn’t yet at the same level.

But a score still represents an evaluation of that performance at that moment.

That’s why I become cautious when students, parents, or even staff begin chasing numbers from one Saturday to another.

A band might receive one number this week and another number next week.

That doesn’t automatically mean the ensemble improved or declined by exactly that amount.

Different competitions can use different systems and sheets. Different judges may be assigned. Different captions focus on different responsibilities.

And even within the same criteria, judges are human beings.

Everybody Likes Different Pizza

This is where I sometimes use my pizza analogy.

Everyone has a different kind of pizza they like.

Maybe you love pepperoni.

Someone else wants sausage.

Another person wants cheese.

Someone wants everything on it.

And maybe somebody doesn’t particularly like pizza at all.

Adjudication can sometimes feel a little like putting your pizza on the table and asking:

Did this person like the pizza we presented today?

Obviously, judging is more structured than ordering dinner. Judges have sheets, criteria, caption responsibilities, training, and standards they’re expected to follow.

But there is still a human being doing the evaluation.

One week, a Music Ensemble judge might respond very positively to your sound, balance, musical shape, dynamics, and overall approach.

Another qualified judge the following week may notice pitch concerns, harshness, balance issues, limited dynamic contrast, or inconsistencies that deserve more attention.

That doesn’t necessarily mean one judge was right and the other was wrong.

They may have experienced different performances. They may have been evaluating from different perspectives. And different aspects of the performance may have drawn their attention.

Even as a judge, I find myself looking and listening for different things depending on the caption I’m assigned.

That’s why a single judge’s opinion should be treated as information, not as the entire definition of a program.

Look for Patterns

Instead of obsessing over one comment or one number, I encourage programs to look for patterns.

If multiple judges over several weeks identify similar concerns, there is probably useful information there.

If balance keeps appearing in the commentary, investigate balance.

If several visual judges are discussing timing or clarity, investigate it.

If judges consistently recognize improvement in an area the ensemble has been working on, celebrate that too.

The commentary can become another tool in the educational process.

Iowa’s State Marching Band Festival makes a similar point in its guidance: scores represent an adjudicator’s evaluation of specific criteria at a particular moment, while commentary is intended to help identify strengths and opportunities for continued improvement.

That’s a healthy way to look at competition.

The Time We Won—and Then Stopped Working

I learned another lesson about scores and placements years ago from one of my own percussion sections.

We competed early in the season and did extremely well.

We won percussion.

The students were excited. I was excited. It was something they had worked for, and they deserved to enjoy it.

But then something happened.

They stopped working as hard.

In their minds, they had already won.

There wasn’t the same urgency in rehearsal. There wasn’t the same hunger to improve.

Meanwhile, students in other programs had experienced a completely different Saturday.

Maybe they didn’t win.

Maybe they went home disappointed.

But they also went home motivated.

They practiced.

Their staffs kept teaching.

Their shows continued developing.

Their students became better.

And our placement?

It went lower.

Then lower again.

And lower again.

I’ve remembered that experience for years.

Winning early in the season doesn’t guarantee anything later.

And struggling early doesn’t determine where a program will finish.

The score tells you what happened during one performance. The season tells you who continued working.

Was That Your Best Performance?

That brings me back to the question I ask students.

Was that your best performance?

If you can honestly answer yes, there should be something worth celebrating regardless of where a number landed.

Maybe the band finally performed a difficult section successfully.

Maybe the drumline achieved something it hadn’t achieved in rehearsal.

Maybe the winds produced their best sound of the season.

Maybe the guard had its cleanest performance.

Maybe students recovered from mistakes instead of allowing them to affect the rest of the show.

Maybe the ensemble simply walked off the field knowing:

We gave everything we had today.

That’s important.

Then we go back to work.

Because next week, I want another best performance.

And then another.

Sometimes the Audience Tells You Something, Too

There is another measurement that doesn’t appear anywhere on the recap sheet.

The audience.

Your director usually knows when you’ve had a great performance.

Your staff knows.

The students often know before anyone says anything.

And sometimes the audience makes it very clear.

There are performances where the final chord happens and the crowd is already on its feet.

The applause is roaring.

Students come off the field knowing they connected with people.

That matters.

A standing ovation isn’t an adjudication score, and it shouldn’t replace one. But music and performance are ultimately forms of communication.

When hundreds or thousands of people respond emotionally to what students just created, something meaningful happened.

Students should be allowed to appreciate that.

Competition Is a Tool

I enjoy competition.

I believe competition can be extremely valuable.

It gives students goals. It creates accountability. It exposes performers to other programs. It provides outside feedback. It can motivate students to accomplish things they didn’t realize they were capable of doing.

But competition should remain a tool for education, not become the definition of education.

Music for All similarly describes competition as a motivator and an opportunity for learning, while warning against allowing winning itself to overshadow personal growth.

Years from now, most students aren’t going to remember whether their band received a 72.4 or a 74.1 on a particular Saturday.

They’re going to remember the show.

They’re going to remember their friends.

They’re going to remember rehearsing under the lights.

They’re going to remember the bus rides.

They’re going to remember the performance where everything finally clicked.

They’re going to remember hearing the crowd erupt.

And hopefully, they’ll remember learning that when something wasn’t good enough yet, they could work at it and make it better.

That’s one of the greatest lessons music can teach.

Scores Are a Snapshot. Growth Is the Goal.

So celebrate the trophies.

Celebrate the caption awards.

Celebrate the high scores.

Those accomplishments represent real work and deserve recognition.

But celebrate something else even more:

Improvement.

Teach students to ask themselves:

Was that my best?

Why?

What improved?

What didn’t?

What did the judges hear or see?

What did my staff hear or see?

What did I notice myself?

And what am I going to do differently at the next rehearsal?

If students learn to answer those questions honestly, we’re teaching them something much bigger than how to win a marching band competition.

We’re teaching them how to learn.

We’re teaching them how to respond to feedback.

We’re teaching them how to work with other people.

We’re teaching them that achievement requires consistency.

And we’re teaching them that yesterday’s success doesn’t excuse today’s lack of effort.

A trophy tells you what happened that Saturday.

Growth tells you what happened during the season.

So put your best pizza on the table.

Listen to the feedback.

Then go make a better one next week.