The mission of the Croatan High School Bands is to provide an experience which promotes personal pride and integrity through performance, thus enhancing the enrichment of our organization, ultimately developing the skills necessary for success in band and in life.

Croatan High School Bands Purposes:

The purpose of the Croatan High School Bands is to educate young people through music performance. The organization:

Provides each student with a comprehensive music education by teaching the skills and attitudes necessary to succeed as a young musician and as a young adult.
Benefits the school and community through the public performance of quality music while promoting and enhancing the dignity and reputation of Croatan High School.
Fosters the development of essential character qualities to include a strong work ethic, a commitment to excellence, personal integrity, leadership skills, and a respect for self and for others.
Provides each student with a healthy social experience, a positive means for self-expression, and a worthy use of leisure time.

Croatan High School Bands Vision:

The vision of the Croatan High School Bands is to create a community of informed consumers of music and the arts.

Croatan High School Bands Motto:

Because our school and our band program are still in their infancy, it is more important now than ever that we recognize and nurture those traditions we are developing. To that extent, we will be guided by the motto: "Building A Tradition." This simple statement will uphold a vision for our program and provide guidance for all the endeavors we will undertake. It shall appear on our masthead as we continue to grow and build a comprehensive band program second to none.

Croatan High School Bands Creed:

Music was our first love,
and it will be our last.
We're climbing to our future
on steps built in the past.

The passion that unites us,
in performing with one heart,
builds friendships and memories
that never will depart.

Each member is our strength
when we give it our best shot.
What we give is what we get,
so let's give it all we've got.

Why We Teach Music

Music is a Science - It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once – and with the most exact control of time.
Music is Mathematical - It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions, which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Music is a Foreign Language - Most of the temrs are Italian, German, or French; and the notation certainly is not English – but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.
Music is History - Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often reflecting the country and/or racial feeling.
Music is Physical Education - It requires fantastic coordination of the fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to the extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
Music is all of these things, but, most of all, Music is Art - It allows a human being to take all of these dry, technically boring (but dificult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing that science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion – call it what you will.
THAT IS WHY WE TEACH MUSIC!
Not because we expect students to major in music... Not because we expect you to play your instrument all your life... Not so you can relax... Not so you can have fun...
BUT... so you will be human, so you will recognize beauty, so you will be sensitive, so you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world, so you will have something to cling to, so you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good... in short, more life.

Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?

THAT IS WHY WE TEACH MUSIC!