Tiger Band Blogs

Much to the Great Larson’s displeasure, almost an entire month has passed since my last post.  These past few weeks have been so incredibly intense and band-action-packed that even the abridged version would have your eyes falling out of your head before you finished reading, so you might want to wear goggles, because here goes.  The weekend after Cap City, we had our first two-part contest, Westlake.  The week leading up to Westlake was definitely our most focused week up to that point, and even this past week may not quite beat it.  It can safely be said that we owned at Westlake, sweeping our class completely and ranking fourth overall.  Besides the performance aspect of Westlake, we all enjoyed our lunch at Brodie Oaks.  I had an extremely satisfying burger at Fuddrucker’s, along with the best chocolate shake I’ve ever tasted.  Wouldn’t you know that, with our extra time, half the band decided to go on a foray to the most entertaining store in the area- Toys R Us (I’m pretty sure we freaked out the parents shopping there by our mere presence, but you can’t help reminiscing a bit when you see huge stacks of Lego’s).

The next week of practice started out rough.  Heads slightly bloated from Saturday’s triumph, Monday’s practices were less productive than they could have been.  However, focus returned to the band quite abruptly when it was decided to reinstate the full-band push-up policy.  We had no contest Saturday, and I’m sure we all enjoyed the sleep- except for the admins of Octuba, that is.  The dance was amazing, and come Monday morning, we dance-goers were limping and hobbling, legs debilitated by Saturday night’s constant movement and numerous bouncing moshpits.  Our performance at UIL Monday night was, apparently, typical for the occasion, and not in a good way.  After the glow of praise that accompanied each performance at Westlake the previous Saturday, the disappointment we felt coming off the field Monday was particularly sharp.

Starting bright (or dark) and early Tuesday morning, we somehow overcame Monday’s scattered concentration and managed to clean and add to the show like fiends.  Saturday at USSBA State (a contest of a good 15 bands- you’d think it was Rhode Island) we were finally not the one band that had no GE.  Saturday’s morning practice was another best for the year- we seemed to be inspired.  After two long hours on the road to Schertz and however long it was that we languished in the buses due to our punctuality and the contest’s lack of it, we went and warmed up in a gym with just about as bad an echo as Hendrickson’s.  the second we stepped on to the field, band-wide groans went up.  It seemed that Schertz high school had managed to  procure some strange and magical turf which actually sucks the life out from the bottoms of your feet.  Yet, even while the spongy turf drained us of our life force, we were able to reproduce to intensity and concentration level that had characterized our morning practice.  Our score was at least five full points above the second place winner in our class, and when thrown in with the bands up to six open, our score had us at third overall, beaten by Hendrickson and Steele.

As I’m sure everyone within twenty miles of Dripping has noticed, this morning was the Livestrong Challenge ride.  That anyone at all would, after getting home past midnight the night before, be back at the high school before seven says so much about our band.  After playing at a few different pit  stops for awhile, the separate groups joined together outside the band hall to welcome in the riders, yelling out a ragged chorus of “Hey, Baby” as Lance Armstrong rode past with his police escort.

I can’t quite register the fact that in just one week, all of this will be part of the past- that Three Isms will be nothing but a video on Youtube and a collection of dusty props.  We have one more contest, the culmination of this season’s long, long, long, and hard work.  Personally, I am looking forward to the best week of the season, and the hardest work which can be dredged up from the depths of our sleep-deprived beings.  Centennial could be the perfect end to this amazing season.

I’m not looking forward to putting up my marching horn and bringing out the chairs, stands, and sixteenth-notes, but at least it will be a gradual process.  Our undefeated football team is most definitely attending playoffs, and the new drill and extra dose of Friday nights in the stands is probably better than trying to stop marching cold turkey.  And yes, to me, marching band is not only my cult and my life, it’s an addictive drug.

** Please ignore the totally irrelevant title. Michelle is not good with titles and World Area Studies happens to be what she’s study for right now, so “Africa and Islam” is the best she can do. **

As Mr. Larson kindly pointed out to us, Capital City was the last time someone posted a blog on here, and let me tell you, a LOT has happened since then! Like… WESTLAKE marching festival. We swept captions and came in 1st place in our division, as well as 3rd overall going into finals (beating all of the 5A bands except Cedar Park and Bowie)! We came out 4th at the end of finals (Round Rock caught up), but it was still an amazing day! That was probably one of the most memorable contests I’ve been to, because we did so well, and because of this:

Mr. Woods: “We’re going to go into the stands to watch some bands perform.” *looks around* “Any questions?”
Connor Tester: “You wanna fight?”
Mr. Woods: “You wanna lose?”

Haha! Enough said. So anyway, we had the weekend after Westlake off because of UIL on the following Monday. I could have (and probably should have) used those two days to catch up on some sleep, but I went to the Austin Film Festival instead. They happened to have a panel for the movie Twilight that day, which was totally meant to be, if you ask me.

Anyway, this past week has been really tiring for everybody. It’s the second to last week of the 2008 marching season and the weekly schedule got flipped, switched, and tossed around. Like I said, we had UIL on Monday, which pushed our Monday-night rehearsals to Tuesday (hmm… would that make them Tuesday-night rehearsals instead?), which meant that we had to stay after for two days this week, plus sectionals. And this weekend we have USSBA State somewhere around San Antonio, two-hour bus ride… whoo! We’ve been working on cleaning the show to make it the best we can be for USSBA and Centennial next weekend. Apparently Poteet (the band who won state last year) is supposed to be there and everyone’s excited to see how we rank against them next week!

This past Friday, Saturday, and Monday were so band-filled that to go into detail on each would mean another drawn-out, four-paragraph blog which would strain any reader’s eyes.  If my own middle school experiences are anything to go by, every seventh and eighth-grade bandy spent most of last week anxiously looking forward to Friday night, when they’d actually get to walk onto the football field at halftime and play with the high schoolers.  It felt strange, being on the other side of the wall that separates our cult from the rest of the world, and watching the often confused middle schoolers brought home just how far I’d come since band camp.  Besides the visit from the middle school, we witnessed a historically amazing game- a blocked kick in overtime and an insane catch for a winning touchdown.

Saturday’s pre-contest practice was horribly reminiscent of our long summer practices under the heat of the June sun, except without the water. At least partly because of the band-wide thirstiness, practice wasn’t as productive as it could have been, but all things considered, it wasn’t our worst.  After hours spent on the bus to Hendrickson, we arrived at the site of our first contest.  We had ample time after our arrival to pump ourselves up for the show, and standing in the block, ready to march into the stadium, the gravity of the moment hit me.  This performance was our first chance to really measure the worth of two months’ hard work.  The culmination of every drop of sweat, every ounce of concentration, every prolonged second of straining to keep a horn in the air, was just seconds away, waiting for us with tape recorders and critical eyes.  My world narrowed to exclude all but the drill, the music, and the drum majors’ steady hands, and the show began.  No one around me tripped, fell, internally combusted, or otherwise killed the performance, and though it is clear that we have marched better as a band, we all made it through the contest alive.

As of Monday morning, we now know every set of our show, and it’s time to begin the process of perfecting our performance.  The prospect of pitted weekly against every marching band has lent some intensity to the band, and the pace of our practices is picking up its pace.  We have the capacity too do great things this year, and we will see in the next few weeks just how much greatness our effort earns.

After another week of fairly good rehearsals, we had put on and begun to clean a few more sets to show our huge homecoming audience.  Because of last week’s strange turn of events, Friday felt like our first home game- a real  homecoming for once.  As we marched into the stadium, the strange feelings of the high, stiff collar and wide gauntlets was washed away by the exhilaration of being a part of the ordered mass of red, white, and black.

First half was pretty amazing- especially as far as the football was concerned.  What was it?  28 - 6 at the first quarter?  Travis’s drill team put on a good show, then turned around and picked up flags to act as color guard for a band smaller then our low brass section alone.  We took the field and played Magnificent Seven for drill team, then scattered to our first set.  I hate to say that I, and the band on whole, have marched the show better, which is true, but it felt like we managed to pull off a decent performance.  If it counts for anything, I played that first note with all the tone I could manage, and our set 18 pentagon was recognizable as such.

Second half felt oddly empty without the battery’s presence, and our stands tunes were definitely affected.  The game was over in no time at all after halftime, and then it was time for the run-through.  The band made of for some, if not all, of our second half behavior with one of the best run-throughs we’ve ever had.  We marched back, exhausted but determined to last until dismissal.  For it being our first experience with uniforms, the process of putting them up went incredibly smoothly.  It’s great to have concrete evidence of what your work has accomplished, and the video of the show showed just how much better we’d gotten.  That huge sound at the beginning of Dada brought me back to that feeling of watching the band as an eighth grader and wondering in awe how they did it. I had to remind myself of the long hours of hard work and of the fact that I was part of that awe-inspiring performance.

Due to our drill writer’s living in Ike zone, we’re dedicating next week to cleaning drill before our first contest Saturday.  Besides that looming test of our accomplishments, next Friday is senior parent night, drill team parent night, and 7th and 8th grade night.  How we’re supposed to fit that multitude into our new stands is beyond me, but if all else fails, we can just stick the woodwinds under the stands to make room, right?  Guess not, but next Friday is sure to be interesting, especially with the new home game battery dealio.  Which, by the way, is one of the most awesome things the band has ever done.

Luckily for the band, we got to sleep in as late as we wanted after our fifth win on Friday night. Good thing too, since my voice was shot the first quarter with the middle schoolers there. I got tiger of the week too, which was pretty sweet. I was able to be introduced to the other band as well as introduce Kyle, the trombone player from the other band. Kyle is a junior, his favorite color is blue, he plays baseball, he is taken, and his favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate. After the game we marched our half time show and all the football player stayed to watch, which was really nice of them. Anyways, back to Saturday… Rehearsals at 2 were really, really ridiculously hot but thankfully it was really short too. Otherwise I may have passed out from heat exhaustion. Once we got inside and were done with inspection and such, Mrs. Hughes and the directors lectured us on PDA (Public Display of Affection) and soon we were on the road.

Every time we have a contest one of my favorite parts is to see all the other bands. And for all you parents that didn’t attend, some bands played one heck of a show. My favorite was Hendrickson, since they are always able to do such awesome stuff. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see many others, but it was still a great experience for everybody to see what others are accomplishing. We managed to take home second in class and best color guard, which is really super sweet. Unfortunately, there were no finals at this contest, but I’m sure just about everybody had a fun time. Hopefully we will be able to dominate at Cap City next week and be better than we were yesterday.

I am proud to annouce that, as of today (Monday, September 29, 2008), we have officially finished learning all of the drill for the show! All 92 sets of it!

Of course, a ton of cleaning has to be done before we can actually perform it at a game or contest! I’m willing to bet money that the last couple of sets are a blur of cloudy-greyness in half of the band’s minds, mine included. I’ll admit, the drill moves much faster this year and has crazy direction changes here and there, which means you’ve got to be 100% focused when learning sets or else it all goes out the window the next rehearsal. Last Monday night, we attempted to learn a few sets of the closer on the actual football field, without the handy-dandy yellow and orange dots. In my mind, that was not a very clever thing to do, but we only had so much time left, so it was our only option. Let me just say that you don’t truly appreciate the yellow dots on the parking lot until you’ve had to learn drill without them!

This past Saturday was the USSBA contest at Hendrickson, aka our first contest! We preformed the Opener, the Overture, Dada, and about half of the Closer. For a first contest, I thought we did pretty good. I’m just happy we didn’t get run over by a tornado again! I’m sure you’ve all heard that we came in second place in our division. Connally, who came in first, beat us (and everybody else) by a good number of points. But, like I said, it’s only the first contest, we definitely have a good chance of improving and coming out strong in the end!

So yesterday was our third Friday of the school year- the day we were to  first put on our uniforms and march at home for the first time.  So how was it that I was home by five yesterday, hanging around on a Friday night with nothing to do?  We came to school Thursday prepared for morning practice, (which was our best morning practice of the year) but nothing more.  When we were told, just after lunch, that- surprise, the varsity game is tonight!- well, it was a bit more than mass confusion.  At the beginning of fifth period, we were all pulled form class for a meeting in the band hall, where we were told that yes, the band would be at the game.  It really says something about the band’s flexibility as an organization that we were actually able to gather 100+ people for a game on a few hour’s notice, for almost all of us attended.  True, we didn’t get to wear our uniforms, and we didn’t have all of our band aids, but we pulled off a fairly decent half-time show.

Being the awesome band we are, we couldn’t settle with just having proven beyond all doubt our last-minute capabilities.  Too few hours after dismissal  from the game, the band was assembled in the parking lot, showing an unsurpassed and almost insane dedication to getting in every bit of practice we can.  Most of us walked into the band hall half dead Friday morning- I know I did, but after an intense, focused, and surprisingly productive morning practice, I was practically fit to be on my feet. As soon as I got home, however, I did collapse to sleep until dinner.

So due to the evacuees from hurricane Ike, we didn’t wear uniforms, or have quite the crowd we expected, but we did manage to put six sets on the field which would have waited until the following week.  Next week is made all the more exciting now, by the prospect of uniforms Friday night.

So its been quite a while since I have posted.  We have had two awesome football games and two awesome performances.  It has taken a while to get used to the band schedule, before school and after school.  It can tend to overload you.

But starting this week we get Tuesday mornings off, which is going to be very nice.  Some people think that taking a morning off is going to hurt us, but since we add 20 minutes to all the other mornings and we have Thursday mornings on the actual field, I think it will help.  The band doesn’t need more mornings in a row, we need more time each morning and that’s what we are doing.  So I’m excited to see what happens, but not excited about waking up 20 minutes earlier…

The football games at Gonzales and Wimberley have been really fun.  Lots of excitement and good energy going around.  The stands tunes also sound REALLY good (for the most part).  The football team is winning too, which makes it fun to watch.

But the laugh of the night had to go to Tate Foster when he did the “lean back into a screaming high note” on the trumpet in front of the stands.  It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, just keep an eye on Wes, he does it every 4-8 minutes.

Well I will try to stay more ontop of my blogging, but until then I’m heading out.

PEACE

Upon Mr. Larson’s orders, I have come to blog again.  It takes a lot of reminding for me to get back on the blogs.  So luckily with Mr. L’s reminder email I decided to post!

So two days ago we had our second game against the Wimberly Texans, as you all probably know.  That game had to have been the loudest and craziest game I have ever been to.  By the end of the 4th quarter I was half deaf and my voice was shot.  I’ll start in chronological order with my view of the game/halftime/everything else.  The whole first half of the game was nothing exciting, we were losing at that point so I’m skipping that part.  Half time for our second game was…interesting.  We had this weird timing lag or something between the drum majors and the pit/drumline and everybody else.  Thursday we just bumped the opener up to 160 bpm and we were doing pretty well during rehearsals, but its hard to sustain that tempo in such a short period of time.  I personally thought I did okay, except for my set of doom.  That would be the same one since summer rehearsals.  We go into the asterisk formation and I’m closest to the pics so I travel the farthest…  Not fun .

Anyways we watched the Wimberly band march and it was kind of odd since the first half of the show they stood there…  I don’t know whether they just haven’t learned that drill or that’s part of it.  After we started heading back to play in front of the stands Michelle and I both betted that we would lose the game since we were already down around 13ish points.  We eventually filed into the stands and in the third quarter Kevin (another flute player) remind Me and Michelle that we haven’t heard his joke yet.  We have been asking for this joke since band camp and he wouldn’t ever tell us because it takes like 10 minutes to tell.  So kevin came and sat next to us and told us the joke in between songs.  That was bad time to tell a joke.  Because in the 4th quarter things started really picking up in the game so we had to play the fight song every five seconds.  Literally Kevin said one or maybe even two sentences before he was cut off by the roll off.  Thankfully he eventually finished the joke by the end of the game and we won!  Then we all went home… the end :)  I’ll hopefully remember to blog about our first home game next week!

We’ve been in school now for two weeks, and the  weird thing is it feels like almost nothing’s changed since the summer practices.  Not, of course, by way of progress or the way we practice, because those are way different, but it feels like my days are just as devoted to band as they were when that’s the only thing I was doing all day.  School, it seems, is just an addition to band, not the other way around.  It makes me wonder what people who aren’t in band do with their time!

Since last week’s game in Gonzales, we’ve added some10 or 15 sets to our show.  We didn’t do this, plus clean the opener, by sleeping in and relaxing inside- no, we’ve been hard at work all week (except Monday, which I’m sure we all needed) and it’s payed off.  One of the best band-induced feelings I’ve gotten this year came from watching the video of our drill yesterday night.  Having been raised by bandies, I’ve been watching marching bands almost all my life.  I’ve watched in awe, unable to see how so many people can be orchestrated into a living breathing form of art and music- and knowing that I was part of the sounds I was hearing and the huge pictures I was seeing… It was crazy.

As for what happened in the stands, well I’ll tell you- there are few things as awkward as doing negatives among the baritones while facing your grandparents.  Besides that bit of fun, we did Metal Shop for the first time, and managed to end the song right for once.  My fingernail is probably bruised from flicking tabs off soda cans- there has to be some logic to that game, but I just can’t figure why it’ll be just right- almost completely off- and it manages to hang on through your flick and come off on the next one.  Second half was a blast (with good sound, of course) fest, especially the last four minutes.  I hope we keep winning- playing at a winning game is so much more fun.

I can hardly wait for next week- donning that uniform has been one of the brightest expectations of mine since fitting day.  But before I can do that, there’s work to be done- fifteen sets of Dada to learn and clean, grades to keep up, and, perhaps the most pressing, region music to pass off.  What in the world will I find to do when marching season ends?