Split Decisions: How Much Do Splits Matter in Brass Band Competitions?

This post might be slightly controversial but after watching a recent episode of That's Not Banding, which discussed some people's obsession with 'split notes', I decided to try a little experiment with the National Brass Band Finals, a competition held in the Royal Albert Hall in October 2025.

Any musical performance can have mistakes and there are many different areas which have an impact on how successful a performance is, but when those dreaded splits happen, do they matter?

As a player, I find worrying about making mistakes just causes mistakes to happen. But try not worrying as you walk onto the Royal Albert Hall stage! We are only human and everyone can make mistakes, it is acceptable, it is essential in fact for growth and development, so on the one hand, you might encourage more mistakes to be made, in order to facilitate future perfection.

As a player, if I found myself making loads of splits, I would evaluate my practice. Surely I must be doing something wrong. I would also spend longer with my Arban Method book. But as all brass players know, sometimes they just happen, completely randomly.

The 'Split' Experiment

I decided to conduct a simple experiment: Listen to all the performances from the contest, count the splits and see how those results compare to the results from the official judges on the day. The band with the least splits is the winner! Is there anything to learn from testing this out? Let's find out.

Tally of splits 😲

What Counts As A Split?

For any none brass player readers, a split is basically when you hit a wrong note or mis-pitch a note. You might end up on the right note eventually but you clipped another note on the way there. A bit like hitting two nearby keys on a piano when you are aiming for one. More splits might happen if a player is nervous or under prepared.

For splits, I am going to count wrong notes (surely there were none), audible cracks and clips from individual players and scrappy bits where multiple splits happen at once. If a split doesn't distract from the flow of the music, I am still going to count it.

I am not going to count any on stage noise such as dropping a drum stick and I am not going to count poor tuning, not playing together or overblowing. I am not going to re-listen to any recordings and if I am unsure if a note was a split or not, then I will not penalise it. It is likely some clips on the stage would not even be heard by the judges and the story of how suitable the Royal Albert Hall is for contest acoustics has already been a hot topic.

Just to be sure, I am not obsessed with listening for splits, I never would normally but I see this task as a useful listening exercise for me, especially as I try new ways to develop my own conducting skills.

Keeping Respect

I appreciate how hard it is to perform at the highest level in brass bands and I have massive respect for everyone who played in the contest. No players will be named in this article and no negativity at all is being sent out there. It is just what I hope might be an interesting piece of content.

Likewise, regardless of the data I gather, nothing will take away the real results provided by the judges on the day and the bands in the prizes deserved the prizes they received. I am not trying to suggest anything by doing this so please don't read into it that way, as I say, it's just an idea for content which I think my readers might find interesting.

Official Judges Comments

Something which is great to read, are the judges comments for the top three bands. Where they state that performances were not perfect (one wrote "it is live after all") and other comments related to the brilliance of the interpretation and musicianship of the top placed bands. One comment about the winning band which summed it all up was:

"It wasn't faultless - minor edges - but the vision and reading was compelling."

Clearly the judges on the day were not counting splits and were 100% looking for musical magic and not just looking for errors. This is what we want to hear I think as banders at any level and should make those bands (and conductors) that did make the prizes feel immensely proud of their achievements.

The problem is, interpretation is personal so how do you know that your interpretation will be met with success from the judges?

Brilliant Test Piece and Midland Winners

The contest took place on the 11th October 2025 and all the bands had to perform the test piece, Symphony in Two Movements by Edward Gregson, who is my favourite brass band composer by the way. So while listening to 19 versions of the same piece might seem dull, I probably wouldn't be doing this unless it was music I like a lot.

The Desford Colliery Band were the winners on the day. A band not unfamiliar to winning this title and being brought up on Midland banding, I was happy to see them take the top spot. I hope that any friends I have in the band will still be my friend after this experiment 🤞 ❤.

Here are the official results from the contest:

1. Desford Colliery (David Morton)

2. Black Dyke (Prof Nicholas Childs)

3. Flowers (Paul Holland)

4. Whitburn (Chris Shanks)

5. Brighouse & Rastrick (Prof David King)

6. Hepworth (Ryan Watkins)

7. Tredegar (Ian Porthouse)

8. Ebbw Valley (Matthew Rowe)

9. the cooperation band (Katrina Marzella-Wheeler)

10. Oldham Band (Lees) (John Collins)

11. Foden's (Russell Gray)

12. GUS Band (David Thornton)

13. Leyland (Daniel Brooks)

14. Aldbourne (Glyn Williams)

15. NASUWT Riverside (Stephen Malcolm)

16. East London Brass (Jayne Murrill)

17. Zone One Brass (Richard Ward)

18. City of Hull (Jonathan Beatty)

19. St Dennis (Darren R. Hawken)

The judges were sat in a boxed off area, they cannot see the bands. I am listening to the bands after the contest using the official recordings and I will not have any favourites.

I will play the tracks on the same device (over a few days) and use the same headphones. Bare in mind, the official judges listened live and did not use these recordings or hear the exact same balance that the recordings provides.

Before writing my results, I want to share a few findings from this experiment.

• Listening for splits is not very enjoyable.

• Despite the above, listening for splits makes it very easy to judge a band.

• Listening for splits removes opinions.

• Most splits were found in the more exposed parts of the test piece.

• Most splits came from the soprano cornet, Bb cornets and trombones.

• Very few splits were from euphonium players! 😜

• Very few splits happened in the last section of each performance.

• Listening for splits means I am not checking correct tempos, dynamics and other important things.

• Generally, better sounding bands had fewer split notes.

• Generally, bands who had intonation issues, had more splits.

• Some bands sounded less secure but didn't technically have too many splits.

• One single split note negatively impacts a performance more for a band who have fewer splits than a band that already have many splits.

Here are my results:

The top 6 bands based on my experiment would be:

Black Dyke, Fodens

Flowers

Leyland, Whitburn

Hepworth

What Can We Take Away From This?

• Never give up on a performance if there happens to be splits at the very start or somewhere in the piece.

• Work at ways to practice under performance conditions.

• There are some seriously brilliant brass and percussion players in our brass band movement, and many amazing players in lower ranked bands who out perform their counterparts in higher ranked bands.

• Could one judge use this method in conjunction with other judges who are not listening for errors in the same way? So each judge has a specific thing to listen for and they compare after the contest.

• Taking risks is 100% worth it, splits will not distract from quality musicianship and sound.

• It is possible to be the worst sounding band at a contest and have zero splits.

• Splits in slow music are generally far more distracting than splits in fast music.

• This judging method is not affected by the draw (order of play).

• Splits become very distracting to the flow of music when lots happen in a row.

This experiment has thrown up some interesting stuff but overall the answer to whether splits matter has to be YES THEY DO, because 4 of my top 6 were in the official top 6, but using this method is obviously not ideal.

For a 20 minute test piece, if you are in single digits for splits then you could expect to be in the prizes. But, if you are the most out of tune band in the contest, then the number of splits in your performance is probably irrelevant.

My Opinion

So far, my results have not had anything to do with my opinion. I would hope almost anyone could listen to the bands in this way and get very similar results. By all means try it and let me know. However, based on enjoyment and excitement of performances, The Flowers Band were my personal favourite. Hepworth were another band I noted as having a performance full of energy, which I liked.

A Final Word - SUPPORT

A final word I want to make is that, as we know, when mistakes happen it can feel horrible. I would totally beat myself up for weeks if I made the slightest mistake on stage but, it happens. When it does happen, it is important to support our fellow bandmates and not make the situation worse. The real show of character is how a player comes back after having a bad performance and believe me, I know, that is not easy to do.

Again, big congratulations to all the bands that qualified for London (my band didn't manage it) and regardless of the result, I have enjoyed listening to your performances.

Thanks for reading ❤

Mark Glover

17/10/25