Fata1

Ha, be that as it may, we're the fourth ranked team in our district which I would put money on being the worst district as far as football goes and without our quarterback, we're even worse. I don't mind though. I've been waiting for football season to end. There seems to be so much more time without games every week.

Apparently we're playing Mansfield Timberview on Thursday at Pennington. It's going to be horrible. Our team this year was good enough to make playoffs when we had our quarterback but he happens to be injured. We're going to get destroyed.

Bell 2006 gets the win for me. I absolutely loved the Remaining. The first time I saw it, I was fixated to the screen. When the silk sheet started going over the field and the crowd got silent, I got chills. I still get chills. I never get tired of watching that show. It's easily the most entertaining show, to me personally, that I've ever seen. Another show that I like a lot is Spring 1993. The thing about that show that makes me love it is simply the horn part in the fourth movement of Symphonic Metamorphoses. Everything gets quiet and the horns come in with their big part and it's just a line of horns marching towards the crowd. There are a lot of other shows that I like but Bell 2006 and Spring 1993 are two that I will keep coming back to.

I'm almost positive that I'll be going to see that.

Well, it seems as though Bell isn't too far behind the rest of the pack. With times only differing by about 20 to 30 seconds in most cases, I don't really see an argument. To be quite honest, I never did. Their shows have always contained enough simultaneous responsibility to show that they can do it very well and when they're only one thing at a time, they do it almost flawlessly. I think that's very respectable.

At tomorrow's game, as far as I know, we're doing music for Veteran's day. I'm not sure what we'll do next week.

Ha, thanks for the topic. Anyway, for competition, we're almost definitely going to be playing Mackey's Kingfishers Catch Fire and Hindemith's Symphony in Bb. We haven't decided on the march yet. I think we're going to try and play part of Symphony in Bb at our Christmas concert.

I can't wait for concert season. Someone's going to need to post something about it. We're playing some amazing pieces. It's going to be a fun year.

That pretty much sums it up. As far as I'm concerned, the BOA adjudication process is far more defined than the UIL process and, as a result, far more fair. With BOA, when a band is ranked high in every category except for individual marching, they know that they need to work on individual marching. On the other hand, with UIL, when one judge ranks a band first in marching and ninth in marching, the band has no idea what happened.

Yeah, I realized who posted it after I made my post. I was just thinking about how inconsistent UIL seems to be at every contest and then I read that post about Bell's scores. How fitting.

I hope to God that those aren't the actual scores. That should never happen.

It's on the UIL site now. Here

1. Marcus 2. Bell 3. Coppell 4. Cedar Park 5. Bowie 6. Duncanville 7. Richland 8. Churchill 9. Westlake 10. Hebron Congrats to Marcus and to all of the other bands as well.

Is it wrong that I care more about the state marching contest than the presidential election? Anyway, I'm really hoping Bell will pull through. Marcus had their time and I'd love to see Bell win it. I love their shows.

You all did really good. I didn't see your finals performance but I thought your performance for prelims was really good. It's a shame you all didn't go on to state. You definitely deserved it.

Haha, thanks. Our band was really going for Mansfield. When Mansfield's guard won in prelims, half our band was cheering them on.

Good luck to everyone tomorrow.

I cannot wait until Saturday. It's going to be a lot of fun to watch all of the 5A bands perform. I'm especially looking forward to Mansfield because I've heard so much about them but haven't got to see them. Our band's going to have a hard time making finals. We missed by one two years ago and we're looking to redeem ourselves this year.

I know exactly how you feel. Last year, we didn't even make area. We got a 2 at UIL and no one could believe it. But really, from the two times I've seen you're show, it's been really good. I was rather surprised by the low rating. I know it's not what you wanted but you should definitely know that even though you didn't make finals, I've honestly never seen Paschal as good as they have been this year. And that's a tough thing to pull off with all the director changes you've gone through. Hard as it may be, you should be extremely proud of what you've done this year.

UIL rules that if a band receives at least two first place ranks for music and one first place rank for marching then, regardless of other rankings, that band is first. So, under that situation, Marcus would have overtaken Bell in prelims. On that note, does anyone have the rankings for finals?

The music rankings were all over the place with some bands. I really hope finals is more accurate.

Was about to say the same thing about our band. Our concert program is really strong and our marching program never lives up to it. This year is the first year where I can see a bit of our concert success forming into success on the field. But yeah, our band last year could have been the poster band that represented concert success not forming into marching success. Third in TMEA Honor Band and couldn't even manage to get a first division at UIL. It was crazy. Anyway, I really wanted to drive up to see finals tonight but not a single one of my friends could go with me. Oh well, I have a nice UT game that I recorded to watch.

Our school marches on the parking lot and we use stickers to mark our sets. Usually, we learn a group of sets, rehearse it for a few days, and when we start on the next group of sets, we peel up all of the old stickers so the field doesn't get cluttered with dots. Something new this year are red dots that have been painted on the practice field in between yard lines and every four steps. At first, I thought people might rely too much on the dots and get thrown off on a football field but that doesn't seem to be a problem. Our lines this year are infinitely better than previous years.

On the note of the two above me, a few clicks off not only causes a band to come close to a time penalty, but a band that has been rehearsing eight hours a week at a specific tempo can be completely thrown off by even a couple clicks off the correct tempo. Unless a band is extremely good and well-prepared for an unusual tempo, the couple of clicks can result in huge tears in the music. Using a metronome to set tempos is a very smart move for a band.

Explain to me why a band that plays the best at both contests shouldn't deserve that honor. I'm not saying that Bell will definitely win both or either for that matter. However, if what they put on the field is musically and visually superior at both contests, then they deserve it. The best band will always deserve to win. If Bell wins one, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't win the other. It's not about quantity.