We do 8 to 5 at our schools. On the count of 8, everyone yells "Hit it" so that we all should be saying hit it together and we should all be hitting the line together. Obviously if the band is yelling hit it and you are nowhere near the line, you are probably going to be doing some adjusting. It works pretty well.

Well, we've switched directors so many times in the past few years and each had a different style they liked. I was just wondering about that.

Most of the successful schools that I see have a standard step of 6/5. This way, they move more and cover more ground, creating a better GE Vis.

we do 8/5 but there was this one point in one of our shows where the drill called for 6/5 fro crabstep straight to the side then we had to switch to 12/5 and start going diagonally back crab stepping it was fun but really hard but our normal stepping is 8/5

When I was in high school we used only the 8 to 5 steps. Now that I'm teaching I will even used the 8 to 5 steps. Occasionally we used 6 to 5 steps. But that is rarely.

Are band uses 8 to 5 marching. To me that is the easiest one

In the OSU Marching Band (a traditional style band), the fundamental step of our marching style is the 8 to 5 step. We use this step along with our high leg-lift chair step style of marching. In that "traditional" style, we also use adjusted step, essentially taking as many counts as is necessary to get to the spot. They could give us any number of counts in which to reach the spot, and the technique used to make it there in a uniform manner is to split the distance into halves. Obviously, in an 8 to 5 step, you reach halfway in four steps. In a 6 to 5, you'll reach half in 3, 32 to 5 you'd reach half in 16 and so on and so on(we're all smart enough to do basic math). The trick is to keep that idea of halfway in your head on non 8 to 5 steps. Something that many people do not notice about the OSUMB is that we also have what's called the "stride step," which is not a corps-style roll step, but is essentially one's normal walking gait. The standard distance measurement for our stride step is 6 to 5, although we do adjust that step as well.

8 to 5 should be easier since the step sizes are smaller but many corps use 6 to 5 for backwards marching. They both serve their purpose.

I think that you have to be versatile. At my school we learn and use frequently 8 to 5, 16 to 5, 12 to 5, 6 to 5, and even an occasional 4 to 5. We do this because we move alot a lot and we have a lot of gaps that we have to get thru so the step size changes often enough that we have to have so many