Band Camp was Band Camp. Some good, some bad, and of course, some ugly! Things started off really slowly. Most people came without having looked at the music over the summer and didn't have a clue how to play it. I can't really blame them. There are a ton of crazy rhythms and whatnot that needed to be explained. I have to admit it was a little depressing. Come on, senior year is supposed to be great, and no one could play the music! But that was only because I forgot the small fact that no one ever knows how to play their music on the first day of band camp. So it really wasn't that bad. The first few days I helped out the sax section during drill, which was fun, but then they were doing fine so I stuck to my podium. Tuesday night it rained, I managed to screw things up somehow (I can't recall what I did wrong, I just remember that I went up afterwards to apologize to Benson for whatever reason). Then there was that whole mess with Jaime, the brass instructor. Tim made of movie of it; check it out on YouTube. It basically sums up everything that happened. Except for the screaming parents, and the massive apology part. But that's the boring stuff. Anyways, everyone seemed to be learning the drill rather easily (considering it's all lines and diagonals). But when we tried to put music and drill together, everything just fell apart. And that happened more than once. We managed to make it through the first three segments by the end of the week, but they weren't good. We took Friday night off, only because Butler and Benson both couldn't make it. We just did the music for the ice cream social and the next two nights we learned segment four and re-learned segment 2 and most of segment 3. The Ice Cream Social performance sounded great! I think it helped that for once, everyone was close to each other and could hear all the different parts. And Seg. 1 went well, especially considering Tim had to sight read the alto sax solo.
I have to admit I was a little concerned about the start of the season. I know that we always manage to pull it together in the end, but it's still really hard to watch people struggling and unable to help them in anyway. That's the most frustrating part of being a drum major. I really want to help, but there's not much I can do. Then Thursday night happened. Oh My Goodness. Everyone worked so hard, it was astounding. I was completely amazed at the turn around. It looked great and sounded great! And no huge train wrecks!! It just goes to show that our band can do amazing things when they put their minds to it. There's still stuff that needs to be cleaned up, but we're on track to placing in the top 3 of SS3.
We've got 3 more nights in which to learn segment 5 (10 drill sets) and re-learn segment one. think we can do it. The section leaders have already had sectionals to work on the music, and I'm having one on Tuesday to work with the drum majors. Plus the color guard has been putting in a TON of extra hours. It's really neat to see how hard those girls are working this year. And it's great that they're not having huge conflicts like they used to.
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On Friday I went an visited James East, the clarinet instructor at Fredonia. He's a really nice guy. He helped fix my posture, air support, and hand position. It was really informative. He also told me I need to work on my embouchure.
Hopefully this week I'll hear about the All-State results.
And this week is the last week of band camp.
Oh yeah- I almost forgot. Someone filled the band office with balloons Thursday night!! We don't know who did it, so if you did it, please confess so we can thank you. Here are some photos:
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