A multiplicity of changes are occurring for the De Soto High School band. The marching band has split into concert and symphonic band as they typically do, but the two bands are arranged differently than they typically are.

“What we are doing is in the symphonic band instead of having several people on one part, we have one or two people on each part so it made the band smaller,” band director Matt Bradford said.

The symphonic band is now composed of about 40 students from a variety of grade levels. These students were given their audition piece of music at the end of the 2012-2013 school year. They were allotted the summer to rehearse the pieces and auditioned in August during band camp.

“In the past they had everyone audition to be in either band.  This meant two weeks of wasting class time to listen to people play. Now, we made it so only the people who wanted to be in symphonic band had to audition,” Bradford said.

Traditionally the symphonic band was considered a band reserved for seniors, however, Bradford intends to change this by choosing by skill level rather than by age.

”Whoever made the group this year were the people who played best. I wanted to change the concept that if you were a senior that you were automatically in the group.  By doing it that way it brought the level of the symphonic band down. Doing it the way that we do it now, the symphonic band is playing a level higher and playing  more difficult music that concert band,“Bradford said.

Bradford believes that these changes will improve the quality of the band overall.

“We thought by doing this it would make both bands play better and that’s the main reason why we did it,” Bradford said.