band tek marching band drill design
Drill & show design

FREE show design tools

Pre-designed (stock)
marching band shows

Music Literacy

Chorales for band
 in 12 major Keys


Free chorales for band
in B flat and E flat


Instrument jokes

Free scale sheets

FREE metronome/tuner

FREE service band CD's

FREE finale notepad

FREE music games

Music ed links

Music industry links

Free fingering charts


graduate studies
survival guide

Welcome to Bandtek, a marching band drill design service with more than 20 years of experience. My name is Victor Neves.  I'm a music teacher, band director and drill designer and I've been writing marching band drill since 1982.  In all I've designed pretty close to a hundred and ninety marching band shows.  That's a lot of marching band shows.  For a band director to gain equivalent experience writing marching shows for their own band, they would have to survive six careers.

     The number of shows matters because learning to write drill involves a lot of study, plus trial and error.  I designed a career's worth of marching in my first few years' teaching and the bugs are pretty much worked out of my design system. The result is that my drill is easier to march.  My drill design is more musical. My drill design is more enjoyable for the audience.  And my drill design earns higher general effect scores.

     When I begin to design a marching band show, my first priority is to serve the music education needs of the band. Each custom designed show is created to meet the needs of individual students in an individual band. That helps small band programs grow and helps large band programs get better. It really works. 

     Even though competition is never the top priority, every year Bandtek bands win first place trophies in several states, sixteen total so far.   Of course winning isn't everything, but it sure is fun.

     In addition, I've found some useful stuff online over the years.  I've been online since 1988 and have seen a lot of the best of what's out there.  I've linked up the best of what I've found.  So, check out the downloads, the list of bands that send out free cd's, the humor links, and while you're here, download some drill samples, check out the music literacy project and try the chorales.  The music education and design philosphy might change the way your band learns and performs.

New In 2007 - The Music Literacy Project
     William Revelli is purported to have said "if you want to see how good your marching band is, close your eyes and listen to them.  Rick Clary put it another way when he taught that the secret to having a successful marching band is having a great wind ensemble.  Marching music must be music first.      The great mistake of many band directors is that they focus their attention on marching, forgetting that students must succeed musically before they can succeed on a football field.  Students who are well developed concert musicians are better equipped to succeed outdoors.
     Of course that's much easier said than done.  Developing each student's individual musical talent becomes increasingly difficult as the size of the ensemble grows.  Fortunately there are some techniques that the NCLB crowd calls "research based best practices" in music pedagogy.
Click here for information on these research based best practices in music as content literacy.