Reminiscing

Senior Speeches
This year's seniors didn't cry as much as last year's did.  I only have one more year until I'll give mine.

Thinking about what I'll say, I started to reminisce.  Here are a couple memories.
1) The first time we ever connected two sets my freshman year, I didn't know that my shoulders were supposed to face towards the sideline.  My whole body faced the end zone.
2) When we learned the tag during the middle of the season, we had to learn how to march pinwheels.  I was the center of mine.  Two brass seniors told me to be careful since they had the dress to me.  I told them that I was only a freshman.  They told me not to say that because it goes so quickly.  They were so right.  Where have the seasons gone?

LOL.  One hybrid guard/drumline girl had to stick her head halfway out the window and have the kid behind spray her head with hairspray.  At least the bus doesn't smell too badly.  Only in marching band. :)

I guess marching band is what you make it!

I'm so glad one of my best friends is in marching band with me.

Afterwords

Our performance was great for everyone.  Even our tough instructors said that everything gelled.  I'm so glad our last performance was good.  I just hope our last performance next year is as good.  As I get more experienced in marching band, I make less and less mistakes.

I told all of my instructors that this was the first time I've played at this field.  I've been at this field twice before, but I couldn't play and march at the same time.  Marching clicked my second year.  All of my instructors were shocked.  The main band director said that I'm a good marcher now.

The energy on the bus is so high right now.  Everyone's excited and happy.  I love this feeling.  This is one reason I keep joining marching band.

I enjoy yelling and cheering random things at the award ceremony, the feeling of community, and the sense of accomplishment after a good performance.

Post Awards:
I'm disappointed, like last year.  We got sixth place.  It's so frustrating.

The fifth place band members acted very rudely and unsportsmanlike.  They cheered when they beat us.  Ugh!  How blind could they be?  We sat right in front of them.  Ugh!  We beat them all season by several places.  How could they have passed us?

I heard that they practiced so much just to beat us.

I'm too competitive for this.

When I get frustrated, disappointed with my performance, or mad, it drives me to work harder.  For my last year next year, I want to whip the band into disciplined shape for my last year.  It would be a shock to the people who weren't in band my first year.
We've just been so undisciplined the past two years.  I feel like the band is less strict each year.

Our performance was the best it could possibly have been.  Why did we get sixth?

I'm exhausted.  It's late at night.  Last night we got back from a really far away football game.  I have to get up early tomorrow.  I only have a day to recover before going back to school.  I'm going to be exhausted.

Even though I know it's not true, I feel like the judges are biased against us.  Our show was the best it could be, yet we didn't score too well.  Oh well.

One girl told me that scoring is partly political.  If the judges like your directing staff, they score you highly.  It's so frustrating.

I guess I could always find something to be frustrated about, even if we got first.  Score not high enough, not enough special awards, etc...

First By Default

We're not even at the host school yet, and I know we're going to get first place.  We're the only band in our size division.  We could march on and stand there and still get first.  The competition drives me.  It pushes me and makes me work harder.  Oh well.

I feel like our band is strangely decent.  We don't have a drum major, and our band is many freshman and newbies, yet we got second out of seventh at our last competition, and our forms are coming together.  Sometimes, our arcs actually look like arcs and our lines are sometimes straight.  I feel like that didn't happen last year or the year before.  We also follow dynamics at certain parts in the show.  Past years, we would only follow dynamics at our directors' prompting.

I'm energized by an intense, fast-paced rehearsal.  Today was cool weather wise, but naturally long.

I love the suspense during the award ceremony waiting to see what place we got.  I'm hoping that they're giving out special awards for guard and percussion and stuff.

As we warmed up musically in the arc, I looked around taking stock of all of my fellow band members, and I wondered how much better life could get.  I mean, the band fights and argues and some people can grate on my nerves and not be serious, but the communal feeling prevails.  The weather was gorgeous.  How much better could life on Earth possibly be?  I am so incredibly blessed.  This is one reason I love band.

Right after performance thought.

I've upgraded from writing with pen and paper and typing into the computer to typing a note on my iPhone.

I was focused, but I wasn't totally in the zone.  In other words, I could have been focused.  I stopped too soon for a hold, and I stepped off too soon during a hold.  Those are mistakes I shouldn't have made.  Oh well, I'll never march the perfect show.  It's frustrating because I'm a perfectionist sometimes.  My other band members felt good about their performance.

I've learned that the memories are the joy of performance and the feeling of community.  I honestly wouldn't remember the mistakes I made my first year in marching band.  I do remember working hard and enjoying the company of the band, especially during the award ceremony.

Life is good.

Our score went up two points.  I love the cheering wars the different bands do.  Basically, each school has cheers they traditionally do, and each band tries to be as loud as possible.  I love it.  That's one of my biggest band memories.

First Competition!

Marching Band Blog 9-22

I'm writing in third person today.

It was a hot day for the middle, almost end of September day where Alexis lived.  It felt like another day of band camp and not a competition rehearsal.

Unlike the rest of the season, the upperclassmen were more intense.  They actually tried to correct and help the freshman.

Alexis felt like the band was going down hill in dedication, sense of community, and intensity, so this rehearsal was a nice change.

Now, switching to first person...

My part of the show was really good.  Our first set where the band first comes in, I noticed the volume of the winds.  We pretty much all stayed together, and we all remembered the visuals.  Everyone felt good about our performance.  Our length may not be long enough.

We tied for second place.  It was amazing.  Ironically, the directors would say to us, "...in seventh place (my school)...". to try to motivate us to rehearse better.

On the walk back to the buses, some of my fellow band members joked about things our directors would say that we should have done to get first.

"...If you guys would drink the rain water instead of getting a gush..."
"If band camp would be twelve hours a day instead of nine..."
"If you guys would have marked time during warmups/done step outs."

Lessons I've Learned in Marching Band

So, we had a football game yesterday, as usual.  I don't think I've posted since the end of band camp.  I though of an interesting topic for my senior speech,"Lessons I've Learned in Marching Band."  I'd have some funnier ones along with some more sentimental ones.

1) I've learned how to follow the bare basics of football.  If anything unusual happens, I don't know what's going on.

2) How to fix my piccolo.

3) How to put others before myself.  The pit always needs help transporting around instruments because the instruments are so big, so I've helped them this season.

Okay, so the freshman this year seem to be doing decently.  They seem to know what's going on.  During the run on Thursday night, we had a nearly perfect final line.  Of course, no line is truly perfect, but it was great.  I think that the freshman need more help with general marching technique than the show.  I sometimes see poor shoulders or backwards marching.

The student section of the other team was obnoxious yesterday.  During our half time performance, they blew stupid plastic instruments.  Our band director said that he was happier with that performance than championships of his best show.  We really listens to each other.

One thing drilled in our head this year is to look to the press box as we perform.  I find that I naturally look kind of at the ground.  I kept reminding myself to look up.

Premiere Night

I'm blogging less and less as the years pass.

This week, I just felt like I didn't care about band.  I just wanted to get through the rehearsal.

One day, we tracked the ballad.  Tracking is a technique used to learn where one set ends and the next one begins by playing the music and marching the correct number of steps in a block.  I mostly had it.  I still don't know the ballad music because the directors didn't give it to us until a few weeks ago.  If they gave us the music a couple of months ago, I would have it memorized.  I'm not quite gelled on one set.  I just remember how hard tracking was freshman year.  We tracked warm ups, and I couldn't do it. 

We've done a total of two complete runs.  Me, personally, I've done okay.  As a band, it was pretty bad.  I really wish we had a drum major.  We wouldn't have to listen as carefully, and one person would direct us. 

Learning More Drill

I really like being one of the older ones in marching band.  I know what I'm doing (for the most part), I'm usually not on the hot seat, and I have more 'authority' in decision making.

Most of the way through rehearsal, our director told us to go back to the arc.  One freshman's expression was priceless.  He was so worried because he didn't know where the arc set was in the show or where to go.  Truthfully, I didn't know where the arc set was either, but I know to drift towards the people I know I'm around, and somehow we'll find our set.

The flute section makes decisions in a democratic style.  One person makes a suggestion and others affirm or disregard it.  I feel like people listen to others' suggestions more, and more gets done.  The flutes haven't made T-Shirts (a marching band tradition) for the past two years, but we did this year. 

End of Band Camp Thoughts

I felt so out of the loop yesterday at band.  I missed so much the day I was sick. 

We did some run troughs of the opener.  The runs were the first time I marched the entire piece.  I know the opener in chunks, not as an entire section.  My feet knew where to go, but my brain did not.  I got a quick lesson on the visuals, but I was a count later than everyone else because I forgot were they were.  The runs were awful for me.

We also learned the ballad.  Drill wise, it's so easy.  We don't move that much.  I joked that there are five sets and ten holds.  Our director didn't give us the music until two weeks ago.  I didn't get the music until a week ago because of vacation.  Not very many people know the music, and only the brass can play because they can hold the music in one hand and play the music with their other hand.  It was really bad.  I mean, I COULD HAVE worked harder to learn the music, but I've been at rehearsal most of my time.  I need to learn the music so I can learn the show by the music.  The ballad is the first place I've missed having a drum major.  The drum major would start each piece, which was nice.  Now we have to listen to the bag pipes.  At least we'll supposedly score more points for performing drum major less.

By the end of rehearsal yesterday, my capacity to learn new drill was shot.  The directors pushed us to learn sets of the closer.  It isn't too difficult.  It's all in sets of sixteen, and the music phrasing is in counts of sixteen.  That means that every time we start a new musical idea, we move to another set.  I know this music a little, but I doubt I remember the drill.

I feel like I knew the show at the end of band camp better last year.  Oh well, I'll get it eventually.

Band camp Day Four

One REALLY frustrating thing about band.  I woke up today with an upset stomach, yet I pushed myself to go to band because it's expected.  My mom tried to dissuade me from going.  We got there, and I went to tell my band director.  He told me I could just sit where I could run to the bathroom.  I stayed.

When my stomach hurts, playing flute or piccolo is one of the worst things.  I ended up throwing up.  I stayed a little longer, but I didn't do anything that everyone else did. 

I missed a lot of visuals.  I'll have to make it up tomorrow.

One of the parts of marching band I do love is the people, and most of my friends are in the band.  It's fun to be a part of something big with them.

Yay! Band Camp 2012!

I missed the entire week of band last week because my family went on vacation.  That was a total of twenty five hours of band.  Unlike the past couple of years, the band learned drill during that week, so I had to catch up.  Fortunately, there were a lot of people not there last week, so the directors re taught the drill. 

It's so different being one of the older ones in band.  Less experienced band members sometimes look to me to help them.  It's almost pressure.  Their expectation is that I know what's going on and how to help them.  I notice more now if a newbie doesn't know what they're doing.  I'm getting it relatively well. 

It's frustrating, though.  Instead of having individual drill sheets with coordinates for just one person, we have big drill that shows a picture with everyone's set.  I'm better at reading drill sheets because that's what we had for the past two years.  I've made a bunch of mistakes reading the big drill. 

My first year of band, I didn't know how to think.  I counted each count of the show, and I memorized the counts of all the direction changes and visuals.  The past two years, I've memorized the show by the music.  I think like, "wen I get to this E-Flat, that's when the direction changes."

 I also know most of the tips and tricks.  One freshman wore flip flops.  All of the older kids commended her for lasting the whole day without complaining or stopping.

The Beginning of The 2012 Marching Band Season

Marching band started.  I'm posting less and less as the years progress.  I'm one of the 'older ones' in marching band now.  It's so weird.  Now, I'm almost expected to now what I'm doing all of the time.  I don't have that many people I can ask questions to anymore.  My marching band mentor graduated last year.

Today, we did some basics and received the closer of the show.  Our director changed basics from the past two years.  We're doing different exercises than we've done before, but a few still remain.  I had trouble with the last couple counts of 'Move D.'  'Move D' is a movement eight steps to the right and then eight steps to the left.  Of course, it's marching band, so we have to slide.  Feet pointing in the direction we're going and shoulders to the front.  Stopping is unnatural.  Seeing the incoming freshman showed me how far I've come in the past few years.

We also did music.  The closer is based on the theme 'Ode To Joy.'  One section is syncopated.  I don't like syncopation and all of the off beats.  I penciled in beat slashes.  After practicing it a few times as a group, our director asked me to play the section.  I didn't play is stylistically correct, but I played it in time. 

Basically, it's so weird being one of the 'older ones' in marching band.