Eh. I figured I need to put something up here. This is a rough draft of a project i'm doing for band class to get it weighted. Anywho, it wasn't planned at all, I just wanted to write. Read it if you want to.

(I decided to write a story for my project. I guess this could be called a “behind the scenes” story of the band for a performance. I am writing out what the students think of band and what they wish it could be like. Also, it is sort of a critique of the band’s performance, but in a story format.
NOTE: The conversations are not direct quotes, but they are pretty close.)

Night of a Football Game

I finished assembling my instrument, and I sighed as I watched everyone else getting their music and instruments ready. I thought it was a sigh out of nervousness rather than boredom. I hope we sound good tonight, was one of the thoughts running through my head.

It was another football game tonight. Again, we would “march” out onto the field and play. It could hardly be called “marching” though, because we just walk out there, play, and walk back off. We don’t do any of those fancy formations you see in the movies and TV shows. Maybe the other kids will be more enthused about “marching band” if we did that stuff, I thought and let my mind wonder to daydreams. I could see this high school band being larger and doing real formations out on the field after much practice. I could imagine all the students have smiles on their faces as they looked out to the crowd to show off their school spirit.

“Don’t forget to sign in on the sheet,” Mr. Adams reminded us, snapping me back into reality. I carefully laid down my trombone and went to gather around the stand along with everybody else. I watched how the students just walked in front of each other and pushed their way up to the stand to quickly sign their initials. I hid a snicker as I remembered how we all used to line up in single file for this sort of stuff in elementary school. Wow! How awkward a single file line would look with high school students! I thought as I pictured the image and a smile broke out on my face to hide my laughter.

I waited for my turn, signed my initials, and went back to my instrument. I made sure all the songs were in order in my flip folder. SSB, School Song, Drive My Car, and Day Tripper. Yep! All in order.

I picked up my trombone, attached the flip folder, made sure everything was assembled tightly, and headed out for the stands. The band’s section is reserved at the end of the bleachers. As I walked to our seats, I heard many different conversations. I felt left out, so I stopped and waited for Jill to catch up to me. Jill is another trombone player. Luckily, she wasn’t too far behind me, so I didn’t have to look like a complete weirdo standing by myself and waiting.

“Hey,” I called to her, “nervous yet?” She shook her head and smiled in response.

“You?”

“No. I’m excited. I hope we sound better than we did at practice this morning.” I remembered how off we sounded.

“Yeah, I hope we don’t mess up too badly,” Jill agreed with me.

We went and sat with the rest of the band in the stands. I found myself being left out again as Jill was catching up with another friend of hers, Kim. I didn’t really want to jump in their conversation, so I sat quietly and waited for the game to start.

“And now rise as Mr. Will Adams leads Springfield’s band to play the national anthem,” I heard the speaker say. As he said this, Mr. Adams was getting ready to signal us to play.

He signaled for the drums’ roll-off. Then we all played as he gave us the downbeat.

I played the loudest I could, and I felt kind of ashamed. My thoughts were going back to the old arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner I used to play at my old school. I thought about how fun that version was. Luckily for me, I am an excellent multi-tasker; I played the version in front of my face as flawlessly as I could while I could see the ghost of the old version in my head.

After the Star Spangled Banner, we sat down for the teams’ starters to be introduced. As the Springfield football team starting players were introduced, everybody in the stands screamed and cheered. I’m still not used to so many people in one place cheering for one team, I thought as memories of my old school’s games were flashing in my head. At my old school, we didn’t have a football team, so our biggest sport event was boys’ basketball. At those games, there were probably around 300 people cheering on the team in the packed gym; here there was probably around 1000 people cheering for the Lions.

After the players were introduced, we played the school song. As we play, the cheerleaders do their thing. I noticed that the school song is our best song. We sound very well blended and confident as we play. It is most likely because we know this song the best. Jill, Dane, and I end the song all together very loudly. We all begin the rag together and end it with a loud, powerful punch. See, trombones are awesome, I boasted to myself.

The game then began. Everybody starts talking, and some friends of the band players come sit with the band to talk. I see faces of last year’s seniors come over. And I realize that I’ve come to know many people at this bigger school. I could recognize pretty much every face I saw, even if I didn’t know them.

“Hey…want to know a secret,” I whispered to Jill, starting our game. “I’m kind of getting nervous.”

“Me too.”

“Remember, act like it is just another practice,” I told her. She nodded.

“But, I hope we don’t sound like it’s practice.” Her eyes got bigger with worry as she remembered the slip-ups we had this morning.

“Oh, we’ll do fine. Want to know another secret? You’re my friend!” And we busted up laughing. Our “secret” game helped the time pass quicker.

“You want to know a secret? You’re my friend too!” She beamed.

“Yay me!” I said as I clapped my hands. Again, we laughed.

“So, what songs are we playing at half time?”

“’Drive My Car’ and ‘Day Tripper’,” I replied, making a disgusted sound on Day Tripper. Her eyes questioned my sound. “I don’t like it because it jumps around, and I think it’s our worse song,” I explained to her.

“Hmm, we are opposites. The songs you like, I don’t; and the song that I like, you don’t.” We were laughing again.

We continued our “secret” game and talked about random things. We also played the school song once more when the team scored a touchdown. We talked to each other and the others around us until Mr. Adams told us to go down to the sidelines.

“Well, here we go,” I said mainly to myself as we all were walking toward the gate. I looked over at the scoreboard to see the clock. There was a little over four minutes left of the second quarter. I could feel my stomach doing somersaults, but I calmed myself down by telling myself that nobody in the audience could hear only me.

We lined up in our three lines on the track facing the stands. Drums were in the first row. Brass and saxophones were in the second, and flute and clarinets in the third. On the sidelines, we played the school song once more while the cheerleaders did their routine for it again.

After we played the school song, we lined up in our marching lines. Again, confusion was stirred, but not as much as last time. We at least knew what we were doing this time.

“Dane, do we have to be in the same order?” I asked him, hoping that he wasn’t sure either.

“Yes,” he replied in an aggravated tone while nodding his head.

As we got ourselves situated in line, the pom squad started their routine. I enjoyed watching the girls dance in syncopation. They are doing a lot better than last year, I thought as I noticed not one person was completely off.

A few minutes later, the poms were done. The band was next. I breathed in deep as Mr. Adams gave the mark-time whistles. We then “marched” out on the field and got in our formation the best we could. We were then given the roll-off. One, two, three, four, I counted our first measure of rests, then I jumped into playing “Drive My Car”. I was so nervous that I could only hear myself. When I got to another measure of rests, I quickly calmed myself down and took in everybody else’s sounds. We sounded decent. I then resumed playing and finished the song. Need to work on that ending, I noted to myself. Then next roll-off started, and I began “Day Tripper” way too loud. I couldn’t hear the drums with the beat. I could hear Dane, though, and I decided to follow him. In the middle of the song, again, I only heard myself and panicked. Then I found myself following Dane, or he was following me, but we were going very fast. I then backed off some and could hear the mess. We were going too fast, and some players were behind. Darn it! This is what we all hoped wouldn’t happen, I thought as I continued on with the song.

The song was over and we were walking off the field and back to the band room. I wondered if Mr. Adams would address that sped-up section. AS we walked off the field, I heard many band members complain about speeding up. I also noticed some were blaming the brass section, my section. I hoped it wasn’t our fault, or mine.

I didn’t talk on our way back to the band room. In fact, I walked up to the band room the quickest this time. I waited for the others behind me to catch up because somebody had the key.

“Did anybody grab the key, guys?” Dane asked us as he realized he forgot to get them. “Here, hold this,” and handed his trombone to a saxophone player as he turned around. A minute later, he was back, and with the key.

As we all entered the band room, we all rushed to put instruments away and take our uniforms off. I first took off my uniform (outfit), which consists of a pair of pants and a jacket. I, again, found myself not talking, not even making any comments about our performance. Oh, well, maybe we’ll be better at our next game, I thought as I took apart my trombone and packed it in its case.