 On October 7th, 2023, the Cow football team played against Oregon State in an offensive showdown, with the final score being 52-40 Oregon State. This game was part of homecoming weekend, where Cow welcomed alumni and parents, hosting events, rallies, and of course, the football game. Between different events, rallies, and the game, what could be seen at all is the Cow Band. Performing across multiple days and multiple events, their biggest show came during halftime, with the band playing and marching to the songs of Rihanna in front of 35,000 fans. Danielle Payope is the student director of the Cow Band. I spoke with her on the planning and selection of music for each show, alongside the general structure of the Cow Band. A lot of what I do is coordinating our performance schedule, so I will have people reach out to the Cow Band saying, hey, I'd like to request a performance, I'll be the one to coordinate that. During the football games, you'll see me conducting on the podium during those, and we'll do everything with a team of six members. We are called the Music Activities Committee. We will organize all the musical logistics, so we'll run rehearsals. We'll arrange music sometimes. Anything that's music related is my business. Most of the people who do the marching, that's our stunt committee that's led by our drum major, Chloe Souter, show work with each member of the stunt committee to plan the charting for the shows. For this show specifically, we have a very specific set of arrangers that come from our alumni. They're our director, and sometimes our students. Our last half-time show is actually arranged by students in my committee, which is really cool. And we'll sometimes work with the stunt committee to make sure some of these transitions fit really well with the music. I really love our leadership structure. It's very unique compared to other marching bands, because we are one of the only student-run bands in the nation. We work through what's called the committee system, and each committee is on a different step of the pyramid. So as student director, I am on our executive committee with the drum major, our public relations director, our director, Matzodowski, senior manager, and executive secretary. Each member of XCOM leads another committee, and then each single member of those committees leads another committee. So you can see that it's like a pyramid. While planning and selecting the music is one part, there's still a matter of planning and charting the marching performances. I spoke of Chloe Souter, the drum major and head of the stunt committee, and Marianne Hahn, who was responsible for charting the halftime performance on the seventh. I'm the drum major of CalBand this year, so I'm basically in charge of coordinating the stunt committee, which Marianne is a part of, and then also just basically all of our marching and visual aspects that we put on the field. And I'm a stunt member on our committee. All of us help her do everything, and each of us on the stunt committee also charts a halftime show for each home game. With the performance being based on the music of Rihanna, I asked Marianne how each show's theme is selected. In March, around March, we have a whole thing called cut tape voting. It's which any band member is open to submit a cut tape. And what a cut tape is, is like a collection of songs under a theme. And we vote the whole band votes on which cut tapes they like best. And then from there, we finalize which seven cut tapes we want for the show. For this upcoming show, the first thing that I was considering when charting it is the fact that we only have one week to rehearse the show. There are certain techniques in our halftime shows that are harder to execute than other techniques. So I tried to put in the most straightforward ones in our show. And I also tried to make the show intuitive in terms of the transitions. And finally, I asked Chloe and Marianne what they were most excited for in the upcoming show. Marianne has put in the Tom Holland Umbrella dance block, which I am so grateful to be a part of, so I'm very excited to show that off. I'm also really excited to see the dance block, because we've been doing rehearsals since last week for the dance block specifically also. While the result of the football game was not what some cow spectators had hoped for, the cow band performance still remained. There to entertain spectators week in and week out. With CalTV News, this is Christian Sam. I'll see you all soon.