Tales From The Band Room

Ms. Flake and the Metronome

Before I do the story, I just want to point out, in response to the picture, that I play TENOR sax 90% of the time. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

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Ms. Flake is the high school band director. She primarily plays alto and tenor sax, same as me, and so occasionally I ask for her help with an audition.

I was asking her help one particular winter day, while preparing for district honors jazz. At the time, we were both on alto, and I was having trouble keeping rhythm, so she brought out a metronome, the type meant for one person. Unfortunately, we were two people, and two saxophones at that. We were to loud to hear it if it was placed on the music stand, so Ms. Flake had to improvise.

First, she put the metronome on her shoulder. At first she had trouble balancing it, but she got it under control. Until she started counting off. It went something like this:

"One, two, one tw-" Clitter-clatter-clitter-clatter.

That last part was where the metronome fell to the floor.

For a moment, Ms. Flake and I just stared at it, and then we burst out laughing. Ms. Flake picked up the metronome and we got ready to start again.

This time Ms. Flake put it on her head. She took a moment to balance it, and then removed her hands and waited a second to see if it was going to fall down.

It didn't, so she started to count of again. This time she got slightly further, to three or four, before the metronome once again clattered to the ground. This time, though, it broke, and we found screws halfway across the auditorium.

This was probably the moment where Ms. Flake officially gave up on the metronome, whether it broke or not. She went to the band room and got a cart the size of one of those old TV carts with two big speakers and a bunch of wires and techy stuff (that's the technical term) on it. She explained that it was the metronome she used when she had the band onstage. Yes. We ended up having to use the same metronome as the entire high school band.

Luckily (once it was cranked up to about 50 decibels) that metronome worked. Our practice continued as planned... even if I didn't make it in to district jazz...