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I don't know the music or anythin', but I am a second year marcher so I guess I could be of some help.
-If ya'll do what we do, ya'll would spend the whole or most of the marchin' season goin' over the music in your band class, so that's a big chance there.
-Again, if ya'll do what we do, what most of us do is while we're settin' drills, we fold up the music, put it in our pockets, and take it out and look over it then or whenever we get a break.
-Plain and simple, after goin' over the music a few times, it will be stuck in your head. I started learnin' our closin' piece [which is what we're startin' on workin' on this year first] last week and had about 8o-9o% of it down within the first couple of days of band camp.
-If there is some kind of recordin' avaliable, like if your director or someone has a CD of the music, it would help if you asked them if they could make you a copy of the CD, and you could listen to it at home or whatever. That way you know what it sounds like and have an idea of what your part sounds like.
-Don't memorize the whole piece at one time. Just divide it up into parts or phrases [what my assisstant director last year called 'chunkifying'] and memorize it bits and pieces at a time, and eventually put it all together.
-Compare other sections to your own part. If you listen to the whole band, you'll probably find a section somewhere that has a similar [if not the same] part as you. Listen for that part and you'll have an idea of what you're supposed to play. If you just can't find somethin' like that, just listen for little key points in the music. For example, if the flutes have some sort of run of eighth notes [that's just somethin' random that popped into my head], mentally point that out, see what you have at that same time in the music, and when you hear that, you'll know what your part is.

I hope that these tips will be some help. Good luck to you this year.

We ahve a recording set on our band site so I listen to it all the time and I'm able to remember how the music goes. But I'm a first year marcher as well.

I dunno, I'm just really good at memorizing, so it's never a problem for me. And I really don't know how I do it, so I can't really give any tips. Once i've played through a piece a couple of times, I can usually play it from memory.

But, we haven't even gotten our marching band music yet. Grr.

Yup. We play the music so many times during camp that it just sort of memorizes itself. I just got back from camp, and I've pretty much got the first show memorized. Then again, us tenor saxes either have the bass line or the melody.

Play measure one 3-4 times then turn your stand around and see if you have it memorized. After that go to the second measure and play that 3-4 times put them together and play it 3-4 times. Basicly Practice makes permanent. So just play the song over and over and over again untill you can turn your music stand around. Another thing you can do is tape the how the song should sound and play with it. After you have the song down tape yourself play and compare the two tapes. Another thing is get another person from band to come and help. If you have someone from the same section that would be good so you can help eachother and fix mistakes. That also helps you both memorize the peice. After you have it all the way down go to your section leader and play for them they may be able to find a mistake that you never knew you were doing.

I'm doing music by key poulan too. (just a diferent one.) um....keep playing it until your no really paying attention anymore, then start looking away from it.