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70 free Marching Band trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
61 free Marching band trivia questions with answers. Marching band is part sport, part art form and part obsession, and this quiz covers the whole field. Sixty-one questions run from the Ottoman mehter bands and John Philip Sousa through the sousaphone, mellophone and contrabass bugle, the drumline and the pit, color guard and drum majors, drill terms like the dot book and the 8-to-5 step, and on to Drum Corps International, Bands of America and WGI. The college traditions get their due too: Ohio State's Script Ohio and who dots the i, Michigan's Sudler Trophy, the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band, Stanford's scatter band, FAMU's Marching 100 and Southern's Human Jukebox, plus the Rose Parade, the first Super Bowl halftime and the movie Drumline. The easy tier is genuinely easy for a first-year band student; the expert tier asks who built the first sousaphone and who won the first DCI title. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the bands, corps, instruments and events, or the Guinness World Records entry, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Which American composer is known as "The March King"?
John Philip Sousa
He wrote more than 130 marches, and the Marine Band still plays Semper Fidelis at his grave every year on his birthday.
Q 02Which body-wrapping brass instrument with a huge forward bell is named after a famous bandleader?
Sousaphone
Its upright early bell earned it the nickname 'rain-catcher', and versions weigh anywhere from 18 to 50 pounds.
Q 03What is the long staff a drum major carries and spins to give commands called?
Mace
It is beaten with the ferrule pointed down and the dome up, and its tricks include prop-spins, roundhouses and tosses.
Q 04Which section of a marching band performs with flags, rifles and sabres to interpret the music visually?
Color guard
The equipment descends from military escorts for the flag, and the activity later spun off into its own indoor sport, winter guard.
Q 05Since 1987, by an act of Congress, "The Stars and Stripes Forever" has held what official status?
National march of the United States
Sousa said he composed it in his head on Christmas Day 1896 aboard a ship home from Europe.
Q 06Which marching drums are carried as a set of four or more by a single player and nicknamed "quads"?
Tenors
A full set with carrier can top 55 pounds, making them the heaviest drums in the line.
Q 07Marchers learn where to stand in each formation from a small handheld booklet known as what?
Dot book
The charts show yard lines and hashes so each member can find their position relative to the real field.
Q 08In the 2002 film Drumline, who plays the cocky young drummer Devon Miles?
Nick Cannon
The story was inspired by the Southwest DeKalb High School Marching Panthers in Decatur, Georgia.
Q 09Which brass instrument replaces the French horn in most marching bands because its bell faces forward?
Mellophone
It uses the same fingerings as a trumpet, and there is only a single concerto written for it.
Q 10What is the series of formations a band makes on the field during a show called?
Drill
Formations can be pictures, geometric shapes, curvilinear designs or pure abstraction.
Q 11The drum pattern a band plays while marching in a parade between songs is called a cadence, or what?
Street beat
Between songs and cadences a roll tells the band what beat of the measure it is on.
Q 12Which university's band is nicknamed TBDBITL, "The Best Damn Band in the Land"?
Ohio State
It is one of the few collegiate all-brass and percussion bands in the country, and has no woodwinds or auxiliaries.
Q 13Florida A&M University's famous show-style band is known by what name?
The Marching 100
The band is credited with 30 innovations that became standard practice for other bands, including a 240-steps-per-minute double-time step.
Q 21Which drum corps holds the DCI record score, a 99.65 at the 2014 championships?
Blue Devils
The corps has 21 titles and has finished in the top four every year since 1992.
Q 22Which drum corps, nicknamed "The Green Machine", is the only active all-male corps left in DCI?
The Cavaliers
It began in 1948 as a Boy Scout troop activity in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood.
Q 23Which ten-time DCI champion, founded in 1934 as a New Jersey parish youth group, filed for bankruptcy in 2024?
The Cadets
It was the oldest continuously active junior drum and bugle corps in North America when it folded.
Q 14Which empire's army bands are considered the first recorded marching bands?
Ottoman
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all wrote pieces imitating their sound.
Q 15A 30-inch marching step that covers five yards in six steps is known as what?
6-to-5
Step sizes usually run between 22 and 30 inches, and anything bigger usually means switching to a jazz run.
Q 16What theater-borrowed nickname is given to a marching band's stationary front ensemble percussion section?
The pit
It began when Drum Corps International finally let heavy marching keyboards and timpani be set on the ground in 1978.
Q 17What is the marching technique of rolling each foot heel to toe to keep the upper body still called?
Glide step
Some bands wear special shoes with a curved heel that makes the rolling motion easier.
Q 18Sousa's namesake bass horn was created as a modification of which older instrument?
Helicon
Sousa wanted his bass sound to project up and over the band, so the new instrument got an oversized bell pointing straight up.
Q 19Drum Corps International limits participants in World Class and Open Class corps to what maximum age?
21
Anyone who turns 22 before June 1 is ineligible, and DCI stretched the limit by a year in 2021 after the cancelled 2020 season.
Q 20Since 2009, where have the DCI World Championships been held every year?
Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis
The contract has been extended to keep the championships there through 2033.
Q 24An 8-to-5 step covers five yards in eight steps. How long is each step?
22.5 inches
Yard lines are five yards apart, which is why 8-to-5 and 6-to-5 steps are so useful on a football field.
Q 25Which band was the inaugural winner of the Sudler Trophy in 1982?
Michigan
The trophy stands exactly 22.5 inches tall, the length of a standard 8-to-5 step, and no school may win it twice.
Q 26Southern University's band, famous for its Bayou Classic battles, is nicknamed what?
The Human Jukebox
Its rendition of Adele's 'Hello' at the 2015 Bayou Classic went viral, topping a million views in under two weeks.
Q 27Which university does Southern's band battle every year at the Bayou Classic in New Orleans?
Grambling State
Clips of the Friday-night battle air on NBC's national broadcast of Saturday's game.
Q 28The Fightin' Texas Aggie Band is the largest college band of which marching style?
Military
Its members eat together, sleep in the same dorms and rehearse up to 40 hours a week on top of classes.
Q 29Which university's band bills itself as "The World's Largest Rock and Roll Band"?
Stanford
It scatters rather than marches, and NPR's Peter Sagal called it the only university band repeatedly fined and banned by the NCAA.
Q 30Scramble bands, which run between formations rather than march, are found mainly at which schools?
Ivy League
Cornell is the exception, marching in traditional corps style, while Brown's band performs on ice skates at hockey games.