Band Geeks Rule

The Not So Great Year

Ugh! My sophomore year. Can we just skip over this year? I mean it's bad. Do we really have to talk about this? Really? . . . Sigh. Fine, whatever, let's get this over with.

Starting with band camp. It was a new year for me and I was excited to be back. I had listened to the new music in the spring and was pretty excited. It was a spooky kind of sound, so I thought it would be pretty cool how our show would be horror themed. The show was titled The Trees Have Eyes.

This year, I was back in the pit with two section leaders again, but only one of them actually showed up. In the pit with me, that year was Avedis, who was on the xylophone, as well as being my section leader, Scrub who would be on marimba, Calen who was on the vibraphone, Justin a new freshman who whined himself onto the keyboard, Kerra a senior percussionist who would be on the vibraphone, and , a super talented freshman who was more skilled than anyone in the pit that year and any following years, sharing marimba with Scrub. I was back on my baby: the rack. Later, we switched instruments between songs, but we'll get to that later. Since it was just me on the rack this year, I got the whole thing to myself. One of the biggest changes for this year was with the new high school came a new practice field and although we still had to compete with soccer, scheduling was much easier. The only issue was the practice field did not have any lights, so if practice went late into the night; we played in the dark.

The music we played that year was pretty cool and I had loud parts which I always played quietly. Will also came back this year, but since he graduated, he only came back as an instructor. He tried to help me with my music by writing "play louder" on the top of the sheets. Speaking of which this year the music for the rack was pretty lame so Will and Mr. D. both agreed to write their own music for part one. I got to switch between different cymbals and the concert bass drum.

The pit probably would've had the music down if it weren't for the fact we were screwing around. We had a few birthdays in August, including mine, so we for some reason learning how to play "Happy Birthday" on our instruments seemed to be a thing. But all it did was waste time when we should've been learning our actual music.

There's one good thing that came out of all of that. Since there was no music for me, I had to make up a drum beat, and I did something better, I created the "Joseph Special." What's the "Joseph Special", you ask? Well, sit right down and I'll tell you a tale. The legend goes something along the lines that a very handsome, young percussionist who needed to come up with a beat to keep the other scrubs in time. As the young man stood there playing the drums it came to him... the most epic drum beat of all time. The beat was so good it was as if the gods themselves had made it!

Now while the show music was easy-ish for me, it was hard for pretty much everyone else. For two weeks we practiced that music and for the end of band camp for the Parent's Showcase performance we did not have the song ready for the field. There is a video online and you can even hear how bad it really was. You can hear the horns out of tune, the pit out of time, and everything was just bad.

The show was not ready, so Mr. D. continued practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays before school even started. One interesting thing happened at one of the practices. We had one practice on my birthday, I didn't tell anyone, of course, but somehow Mr. D. found out and while I was packing up, he put band members in the band room and when I walked in, they all sang "Happy Birthday" to me. Another good thing that happened at camp was that this year we got new t-shirts and, on the back, they read; Marching Band: If it were easy, it would be a sport.

Our first competition was Music In Motion in Everett, Washington on October 1, 2016. Unfortunately, we only had two songs of the three songs ready on the field that day. Everett is north of Seattle and after we performed for preliminaries and finals and finally retreat, it was very, very late by the time we returned to the high school.