Kind of Off Topic - Why do all college bands play the exact same songs?

FLTech

Georgia Tech Fan
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91
I have heard Apotheosis, Thunderstruck, schools out for the summer, and several others which I don’t even know the titles of the songs - watching football all day and night, I have probably heard these songs played in different games... 250 times, maybe 300 times? With of course a few school related songs thrown in

This might be a dumb question, but does the NCAA regulate the songs the bands play?

Every single game sounds the exact same and what’s crazy to me about it is band 1 plays a song and then band 2 plays the exact song a few minutes later

It’s been like this for years. How come bands can’t come up with their own songs to play? Why can’t they get creative and each band play their own selected songs?
 
Sarrick

Sarrick

Ramblin' Wreck
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Band Alum here. 3am word vomit.

I don’t believe the NCAA regulates anything, but i know they can tell you to stop playing something *see the history of LSU’s band playing talking out the side of your neck*

I haven’t really noticed too much of the same material between at least Tech and our opponents, but there is probably 2 or 3 mutual things. I’m not familiar with teams who we don’t play. But there are reasons we don’t rotate music out after a few years.

Defensive and offensive cheers don’t really change much over the years because the purpose of them is more fan engagement and encouragement to be loud (at least for ours). All of our cheers have something the student section does with us or the whole crowd says with us. “Let’s go tech” “go Jackets” , schools out hand movements. Adding new stuff is rally hard for the students to catch onto add it to the things they do. We’ve tried adding new cheers a couple of times, but not that effective.
 

Animal02

Banned
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Southeastern Michigan
I don't know if at the college level if it is similar, but at the H.S level (having had a daughter in a band that went to lots of competitions), there are services that sell arrangements, half time shows etc. specifically for marching bands. Makes it easier for band directors than trying to do something on their own. At many of the competitions, there were multiple bands playing the same sets, marching in almost identical formations. Even bands with vastly different sizes so the services must have options based on band size as well.
 

Deleted member 2897

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This seems like a good thread to remind everyone that uGA stole their logo, mascot, and yes - their fight song. When your university was born out of theft, kind of explains how that type of behavior is just in their culture pulsing through their blood.
 

Texas_Wreck53

Georgia Tech Fan
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59
Animal02 said:
I don't know if at the college level if it is similar, but at the H.S level (having had a daughter in a band that went to lots of competitions), there are services that sell arrangements, half time shows etc. specifically for marching bands. Makes it easier for band directors than trying to do something on their own. At many of the competitions, there were multiple bands playing the same sets, marching in almost identical formations. Even bands with vastly different sizes so the services must have options based on band size as well.
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Another band alum, I believe the directors at Tech create our half time sets and arrange the music. Stand tunes are normally bought unless there is a cultural phenomenon and they arrange it during the season to learn and add to the stand tune list as long as it’s up to snuff.
 
Vespidae

Vespidae

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bwelbo said:
This seems like a good thread to remind everyone that uGA stole their logo, mascot, and yes - their fight song. When your university was born out of theft, kind of explains how that type of behavior is just in their culture pulsing through their blood.
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Everybody steals. Auburn got their colors from Virginia. Clemson got their colors from Auburn. Auburn plays the original Glory Glory, uGA plays an uptempo version. uGA did borrow the Packers logo because they had none of their own through the 60's (wow ... amazing).

What bothers me most about uGA is their predisposition to cheat. Remember Jan Kemp?
 

cyclejacket

Jolly Good Fellow
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Gainesville, GA
bwelbo said:
This seems like a good thread to remind everyone that uGA stole their logo, mascot, and yes - their fight song. When your university was born out of theft, kind of explains how that type of behavior is just in their culture pulsing through their blood.
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And they named their band after colonial oppressors
 
plangineer

plangineer

Jolly Good Fellow
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Not a band alum but did play in the orchestra in high school. I think the copyright laws are the underlying reason. (I believe) directors cannot pick songs off the internet for free, but have to pay for the arrangements, rights to play them in a public setting, etc etc. I'd wager the same songs are picked because (1) they're cheaper to get (2) they're well known / fit well in a football game setting and/or (3) there aren't a lot of websites/companies that provide sheet musics/rights.
 
vamosjackets

vamosjackets

GT Athlete
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I think the band songs are pretty unique. There are some that are fads that all the schools play for a while (the espn theme for a while, etc), but GT plays unique stuff ... I can't think of any other bands that play the budweiser song, "Put On", or any other fight songs that are like our two. I think of Auburn - their fight song and the 3rd down mini-version of it is pretty unique, Florida and the Jaws theme and the Emperial march. Even ugag with the bad leroy brown/junkyard dog, their glory glory themes ... I guess I feel like if I hear a band play while not watching the TV, I can often know what team is playing, which means they're unique.
 
plangineer

plangineer

Jolly Good Fellow
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233
Vespidae said:
Yeah. We’ve playing Ramblin Wreck since 1908. Let’s get some Black Eyed Peas in there ...
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667294c7ccacb7d57dfdfacb5b168207.jpg
 
TromboneJacket

TromboneJacket

Ramblin' Wreck
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As another band alum, the cheers have to be short and recognizable. That limits the candidates. Also, in the era of up-tempo spread offenses, the band ends up playing “School’s Out” and “Thunderstruck” a lot because at any given point they can be cut off at a second’s notice (Thunderstruck is like 2 measures repeating and School’s Out has at least 3 possible cutoff points). Unfortunately, as I learned in one drum major audition, we’re probably going to be seeing less of “Put On” as it does not have a nice neat quick cutoff (I hope I didn’t cause Chris Moore to get too much of an earful from CPJ).
 
majorQ9

majorQ9

Jolly Good Fellow
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iceeater1969 said:
The night the band refused to stop playing ramblin Wreck at end of 09 Virginia Tech victory was legendary . And down came the goal posts.
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Unfortunately that’ll never happen again as the band is no longer allowed to play if people storm the field
 
laoh

laoh

Ramblin' Wreck
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I'm glad we have two fight songs and they're original. The crappiest fight song goes to Climpsuns and they repeat that stupid tiger song over and over and over and over... it's really like water drip torture. And F$U has a pretty dumb fight song too. Any fight song where you need to spell out the school name is quite unimaginative and just dumb.
 
rfripp68

rfripp68

Georgia Tech Fan
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57
laoh said:
I'm glad we have two fight songs and they're original. The crappiest fight song goes to Climpsuns and they repeat that stupid tiger song over and over and over and over... it's really like water drip torture. And F$U has a pretty dumb fight song too. Any fight song where you need to spell out the school name is quite unimaginative and just dumb.
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538 did a study of fight songs and that was one of the cliches: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/college-fight-song-lyrics/
 
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