Band is a Family

Pit/ Front Ensemble

They don't get nearly as much credit as they deserve. And you don't get to judge them until you've been a part of them.

My freshman year I decided that I was doing more harm than good with my marching, and I was in extremely poor shape. Well pit whipped me into shape for the next year. Not to mention it was probably by far the funniest year.

Disclaimer: My school might do things different than you. Omg shocker right? And I'm pretty sure we do things differently now.

So when I was in pit we started out having a percussion instructor, but then he left right after signing us our parts. We essentially had no percussion instructor. And we kinda did our own thing. Least to say percussion during that time sucked. We did end up getting one twords the end of the season and we improved a lot once we had someone who had a degree in music helping us with stuff. Even if he mostly focused on battery.

We ran ourselves, but we disiplined ourselves. If we didn't we would die by band director.

Here is where I get to the part where you need to give pit more credit...

While the band is running laps around the practice field, the pit is dragging heavy instruments downhill to the opposite side of the school. Because the band room has to be located as far as possible from the rehearsal field due to logic. (And your school layout might be different too.)

When we stayed inside because of rain or the band was doing fundamentals or something where we weren't needed outside. We would run laps around the school, unless you were in pit for an injury.

Now I'm not saying pit works harder than the band, in fact the band most definitely works harder. I can say, because I've done both. And I'm scared to do guard. That's a whole nother chapter. I can confirm being in pit is much easier physically and mentally, all you have is music to both do and think. But if you can't play piano, congrats you now learned something new. Or at least where middle c is and you can work from there.

Funny story time: (Well maybe not so funny idk what you think)

We had two base drums, two gongs, two vibes, three marimbas, bells, chimes, crash cyballs, toms, a synthesizer, ect. I played the bass drum and gong, we called it the TamTam. And someone else did too. I also played the big golden chimes, crash cymbals and other auxiliary things. We had horrible wheels on our chimes, and whoever was responsible for moving them, would end up with their ankles bleeding afterwards. Because the wheels were sharp and would hit your legs. Eventually we put padding on them.

I was thankfully responsible for moving my base drum. It was an old one who's wheels didn't work that well. Hey lots of problems with wheels. Thanks band dad's for fixing those this year. Anyway as we were exiting the field during prelims of a competition the base drum got caught on a wire and it tipped over and fell on my leg, almost breaking it. While I was still on the field. This happened again during the warm up for finals at state that year. It fell yet again on my leg because of a crack in the road. Yet again almost breaking my leg finalizing my fate in pit for the next year. (I switched if you haven't already guessed, I really wanted to march.)

Breaking malets: (Idk how some of these happened.)

One girl managed to break 6 plastic malets during band camp. And like 12 wood ones. She was still told she wasn't playing loud enough. And later in the year her record of unbelievableness was shattered when the other guy who played the bast drum and gong hit the base drum so hard during the impact he broke that malet. Not the sticks that drum line uses, but the concert band ones you can barely fit your hands around.

Speaking of breaking and things falling. I also managed to tip over a marimba. Only once though. But our pit section leader continuously tipped over his vibe. Almost every competition it would fall over and we'd have to realign the keys. Speaking of our section leader. He was dared by our percussion instruction, who joined us at the end of the year, to play his tambourine so loud at the first impact that he broke it. Being a high school boy this was taken as a challenge. He broke it during song one of prelims at state. Good thing we brought an extra.

It was the year of breaking things. Because the marching base line section leader broke her drum head right as we were going on field. We had to borrow one from another school. So in the middle of silver drums you just see this green one.

Literally only one interesting thing has happened to me sense I left pit and started marching. The way our school does pit is also completely different now. The only thing that's happened to me is that I fell during a competition. It wasn't even during hard drill. Thank the lord. It was while we were exiting the field. I tripped over nothing and fell on my face. And that's all that's really happened sense.

Back to the importance of pit. Honestly this year our show would not sound 10% as cool as it does without pit. So they are there for a reason and they do work hard still.

I'm on a streak aren't I? Posting every day for the past 3 days since I have returned. Not too shabby. I'll try to keep it up, but no promises once school starts and I have no free time. I feel like this is turning into more of a rant book. I'll have to post a puny joke soon or something. And stay tuned for the tuba section... coming soon.