QuadraticBeats

The silence is killing me...

Our show (Vista Ridge) in the video media has been strangely replaced by S.F. Austin's show in the video media (Basically, when you click "download" on our show, it opens up S.F. Austin's show instead). I know how to fix it though... http://keye.dayport.com/viewer/content/spe...t_ID=2&Obj_ID=4 Put the above hyperlink in there... the link is currently addressed to this (below). http://keye.dayport.com/viewer/content/spe...t_ID=2&Obj_ID=4 Thanks for your time.

How nasty is the cold weather in your area? We have some sleet and such, but that's light... the wind is nasty.

Hahaha... I'm subconsciously thinking of our marching show... I meant Key Poulan. Ahahahaha... that just made my day.

Yeah. It's a wonder we even sometimes do well at all... I remember overhearing a conversation last year between our old percussion director and our assistant director talking about the little "cliques" they noticed... they thought it was pretty funny. I find the whole situation particularly sad on an entirely new level... I find it hard to bear. I wonder if it has anything at all to do with our band director's tendency to randomly yell at people? It seems like a lot of new section leaders thought he was a good example. I fear becoming as arrogant and foolish as they are...

I concur with Moose... besides that, I'd like to mention that I have come to hate the current saying of our band as an excuse for mediocrity rather than an inspiration for hard work, as it only seems to have been said by us on days when we, as usual, don't make the finals round. "We're only freshmen and sophomores." (Changed this year to "we're mostly only freshmen and sophomores.") It seems that, overall, when humbled, we prefer to give up. There are a small number of exceptions.

Hmm, I've noticed a general attitude problem with Martin too... just from these forums, anyhow. Thankfully, our school is sitting here in Central Texas, so we don't really care. Everyone around here doesn't look much farther than... well... the Central Texas area. Unfortunately. And another thing... does your school have a sizable number of people with "gangsta" attitudes? If this is true, I'd like to know why.

It's funny... I didn't practice this year at all besides the band-camp practices for All-State, and our section leader this year made 5th, three off from progressing to Area. Given that he was beaten only by seniors, he'll probably be first next year... but I've heard that some Leander percussion section leaders thought I was the best drummer on our line. Hmm. It's a bitter thing to swallow.

Very few people, perhaps 1-3 are planning on marching in a drum corps this summer, and unfortunately its just that new one here in Texas called Trinity. We MIGHT have someone make the Bluecoats contra line, but probably not... My optimism about our band has gone down quite a bit this year... last year, at least we had the excuse of being only freshmen and sophomores, but I've really lost hope for us being exceptional... the pain of mediocrity! It burns! (Being a "founding member" of a school is freaking overrated.)

Our band director has a great fondness for original marching show music written by M.C. Escher... my favorite thing about him. So as a result, I'm rather leery of music that has been played in another marching show before. Of course, that doesn't stop anyone from winning with such music... And what I mean by "watered down" is that I just think that something is not as good as the corps variation.

Depends on the show... Planets, Phantom, etc. But still, the idea of playing music like this seems to be derived from what drum corps have played... the thing about it is once its a commonplace show, it just loses some of its original identity. It can preferably be made more original, but still... it's just not quite the same feeling, since alot of inspiration for marching band shows comes from Drum Corps. Personally, I prefer just snippets or perhaps a part of a movement or a whole movement rather than an entirely watered down version of shows, noble as those attempts are. The Planets, among others, are definitely a probable exception, though... given it being roughly one hundred years old.

I find it particularly strange that so many bands play excerpts of Vanguard music. Westwood... Bowie... both this year, and probably even more throughout Texas...

If you want to know why I put "preferably college", it's because I feel like the majority of we percussionists in the state of TX don't want to be reminded of Marcus High's existence and therefore be induced into a puking fit. So, without further ado... Cadets tenor features '00, '05. UNT '96. (If you want to see the madness, click this link to Bill Bachman's site) http://www.billbachman.net/media/video/nt_2.html Heheh... Timothy Jackson... heheh... (BD ownage!) Bill Bachman is by far the best ageout tenor in the world right now Snare feature... hmm. Possibly Devils '04, but I haven't seen enough to make a fair judgment. Snare soloist... Jeff Queen. Tribute.

You have a drum building?

Okay, it must have been Connally... urg... I don't remember very well except that they were the best saxes I'd ever heard.

Where is Coppell again? I just know that there were some very good saxes at the auditions yesterday at what our principal loves to call "The Ridge". I forgot what school they were from, but I think it might have been Coppell... stupid 300-people bands. I hate it when HS marching bands number more than 250ish. Anyhow, I got to monitor in the tenor/bari sax room instead of percussion for some reason undiclosed to me by the band director. Some of those tenor saxes made me crack up at how good they were. Besides that... Congrats to Bronson Armijo (bari sax), Tony Bokaie (trumpet; unfortunately, our second best and section leader (definitely not by playing ability) got 15th, and our other trumpets got even lower. It'll take more than just wheaties for our trumpets to compare to other schools), Ryan Cooper(bass/?tenor? trombone(and the whole t-bone section... arguably the best wind section overall in the band)), Sean Havrilla (English horn and possibly oboe... definitely at least 2nd place.) for making 1st places. I don't know if anyone else made first. Flutes also only had one of us make high (Lucy Hires). Funny that the one who acts like section leader all the time just because Lucy isn't there all the time made lower than those who she tries to "lead". Enough ranting... congrats all.

When this thread has lasted six months.

Personally, being a drummer obsessed with competing, I'm more interested and jealous of Marcus High School (Their percussion director was a 3 time P.A.S. Collegiate Snare Champion, Adjunct Professor at University of Arlington, and apparently has a vast number of connections to very good percussionists... in other words, it's very, very hard to possibly compete with that. Dallas drumlines are scary and make we poor Austin area lines look like crap).

Neat.

Mr. Christian seems to be rather tense during rehearsal (he's also mildly sexist at times). He seems to withhold his annoyance about whatever it is that annoys him so much about rehearsal until he reaches some sort of threshold of annoyance and picks out some random person (sometimes section) who usually happened to screw something up just a moment before and make them feel like crap... sometimes threatens the offender(s) with a removal of a part if they continue to screw up, and does so. When it comes to him allowing the person to redeem their part later, I have no idea, but I haven't seen it happen yet. Kind've ironic that the band seems tense at rehearsal... I'm glad to be in our lower band for at least that, as our assistant director teaches the lower bands. He has high standards, can be sarcastic, but he is funny about it and is not so intimidating or taunting. He might mock someone or a note sometimes, but he doesn't demean the player. I personally think he'd be a better director, but he doesn't have the degree that our head director does. (HD has Master's, AD has Bachelor's) Alot of the time, though, I feel like our BD neglects fundamentals... it's our band's biggest problem. I think he doesn't understand how weak our fundamentals are... Our percussion instructor is like our assistant director, a bit more harsh sometimes, more serious, but still funny (His biggest problem with us is the immaturity of the freshmen in the percussion section acting like dorks, but he tolerates it most of the time; doesn't really mess with them unless they're causing trouble). He wants us to do well, and doesn't tolerate us playing like crap- he will cut off if we have bad attacks. If a section has trouble playing a part, he works it out or changes it if that fails. Unlike our head band director, though, he allows for sections to regain their parts at trouble spots if they can come and prove that they can consistently play it. Unless of course, it's been a while since it got cut... I wish the winds were directed more like the percussion section.

http://keyeimg.dayport.com/htm/keye42player.htm?Art_ID=2928 Since apparently no one has been able to find anything to do with our show, the best thing I happen to know of is this link. I forgot which show it was, but it was probably one of the UIL ones.

"darn it feels good to be a gangster." That's our tenor line's motto this year... we DID have a really good black kid (no racial offense intended), but he got kicked out after missing about 9 rehearsals. So we ended up with just 2 tenors instead of 3.

Hey... you've followed almost the same path as I have so far through marching band, except for the differences in that I played marimba in my first year, and according to the post above this one, did not fail this marching season. Not to be rude, but are you the ranking tenor? I'm just trying to see how much of a parallel there is. Our band was just freshmen and sophomores last year too. Unfortunately, I feel like we did better last year than this year (besides our drumline)... the freshmen overall just aren't quite the same as we were when it comes to work ethic. It's disappointing. Our assistant director did express this one time after coming in from practice... I don't know why they've been worse than us. Maybe we didn't do enough to integrate them... that's probably it, come to think of it. I have not seen any of the upperclassmen generally be socializing with freshmen willingly. Our band is rather divided... it's a sad waste of potential.

I was going to audition for a division I... the Crossmen. Until YEA! decided that the Texas audition camp was a stupid idea and canceled it. Pity. Now I'm just trying to join whatever I can... hopefully I will make Arizona Academy (they have a very impressive staff), a very new division II corps, and barring that, a corps planning on its first competitive season this year called Trinity... which will probably end up being Division III, maybe II.