Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I’m your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is marching band season, and that means a season of hard work and dedication to music and marching will come to life on the football field and beyond. On this episode of the Supercast, join us as we go behind the scenes with the Herriman High School marching band. Simply put, this will be music to your ears.

We're here at Herriman High School with the director of bands. I'll let him introduce himself and then we'll talk with some of his students and maybe even experience a little marching band for ourselves.

Brandon Larsen:
My name is Brandon Larsen. I've been at Herriman for, this is now my sixth year here. It's clearly my dream job or else I wouldn't still be here. I really love it here because I get to be with these nerds all the time. We get to make music together, and compete, and I get to see them grow and become better musicians and better people.

Anthony Godfrey:
In a band program, nerd is a term of endearment.

Brandon Larsen:
Yes, I think we were saying dork is better. I don't know, but either way.

Anthony Godfrey:
My son is a budding band nerd/dork as evidenced by the marimba that I purchased on KSL and put in my basement. What do you love most about being director of bands here at Herriman High?

Brandon Larsen:
The kids. Hands down, the kids. Watching them grow. Some of the kids that are here, like, I've known Kaden since he was in fifth grade. I taught his older brother and watched him grow. Each and every one of them from barely being able to make sounds on their instrument when I'm visiting them at the middle school to now we have all-state musicians here. They're very, very high class and hard working musicians. It's fun to watch them grow and see the things that they accomplish. That's a hands down, easy, easy answer.

Anthony Godfrey:
And when you're working with students, the progress is obvious when they're becoming musicians. Because like you said, you can see what they could do before and what they can do now. That must be very rewarding because you don't always get that outward result as a teacher.

Brandon Larsen:
Right, and it's not always obvious to them. So it's fun to be the person who says, "you're doing great. Hang in there. I'm seeing progress every single day. I'm proud of you." It's fun. It's fun to see you grow. That's the fun part because at this level it's so incremental that sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees, but I'm the third party that can come in and say, no, absolutely, "think of the music you were playing even last year and what we're doing this year" and help them reflect.

Anthony Godfrey:
It's true. We don't give ourselves enough credit for the progress we make. We stay focused on what we still don't know, and yet when we look back, we've made more progress than we realize.

Brandon Larsen:
That’s the fun thing about music too, is that we're never done. We're never done improving. We're never done getting better. We have, like it says on the wall, we have a motto and a credo of  ‘nothing worth having comes easy.’ So, we really pushed through those kinds of things. So not only are they getting musical skills, but they're also getting skills that they can take into their lives as contributing members of society, and to their jobs and to school. That kind of resilience that comes with continuing to improve