Long weekend, part two: Saturday virtual solo contest
Now for the other activity that took up a lot of my time last week.
I was curious how this was going to happen, pretty much since I first contacted Mrs. S about it in January. It's been a rough year on her. Teaching anything has been difficult during the pandemic; now add in instruments. Her programs are small to begin with, down from the heyday of 20-30 years ago. Families are smaller and not a lot of them want to send their kids to private school, especially when the area public schools are so good. Add to it that one of the schools lost a bunch of kids when free preschool became available in the public schools about 5 years ago; that's the class which entered fourth grade this year. A number of kids would enter that early and stay with the school for years; that's not happening any longer. The schools are done to one class per grade level. If there are only 20-30 kids to pull from, it's hard to create a band from that. You'll always have attrition from the beginners, but it's even worse when they're having to learn an instrument entirely online--no wind instruments are allowed in school per the archdiocese, even though the students are learning in person otherwise. And Mrs. S cannot do pull-out lessons, so she is having to teach band after school in the evenings, and she's doing it from the band room. She has long nights. It's not ideal.
So, basically all last week, we were trying to coordinate how we were going to do this. The students had until midnight Thursday night to get their videos loaded, she said, and then she'd divvy them out to us. When I had gone to look at the website Thursday night during our conference call, I'd noticed folders with our names on them, including a third name I didn't recognize. She did have three judges for all the kids, and she told me the third person was mainly a flute player, so she was going to try to give more flutes to that person. Eh, it's fine. I mean, I'm mainly a flute player, but I can fake with with the other instruments, heh. It's especially easy with the beginners because their music is so simple. Anyway, that person was going to meet with Mrs. S on Sunday.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, we were asked to come right to the band room. This school has doors to the outside for every classroom for whatever reason. The school is sort of an inverted-U shape, and the band room is at the bottom of the U. Funny story, on the memorial website for Mr. C, I shared a picture of the coffee pot that nearly burned down the church where we were teaching at the time, and I mentioned that thankfully the fire station is just around the corner. The current band room overlooks the fire station, that's honestly how close it is. There's even a tiny parking lot back there, and if you turn into the wrong driveway, you'll end up at the fire department. Luckily I chose correctly, and discovered Mrs. S' and Mr. M's cars already there. We were due in by 9 and I think I made it at least 10 minutes early.
Because of Mr. M's technology issues Thursday night, Mrs. S decided it was easier to use her own two laptops and log into them herself, though she did ask that we bring earbuds or headphones if we had them; she'd supply them if we didn't. I'd brought my iPad (baby's first excursion!) just in case but never pulled it out. We were set up at tables across the room from each other, and she was 90 degrees from us at her desk, picking out music for spring.
Now, she had figured we'd move at the same pace we would if the solos were live, so she thought we'd be done by noon and perhaps we could go out for lunch. I can tell you that I sat down at 9 and didn't get up again until about 2:30, when I finished. I had no idea it was that late, truthfully. A bit earlier, Mr. M had gotten up to use the bathroom and I panicked; was he done already? I still had a stack in front of me. Nope; just needed a break. I guess, after my busy Friday evening (in which I stood the whole time), I was just happy to sit and not move. Plus, the chair was comfy. However, this is the thing when everything's on video: You can pause the video to write down your notes, and you can go back and watch it again to see what you'd missed or to check on things. At one point I went back on a video to be like, did I just see someone jump past in the background? Yep. And, with Mrs. S sitting right there, we were able to say to her, so, tell me about this kid. I swear, one of those conversations lasted half an hour. It didn't help that this child, a little clarinet player, was right after another clarinet player who did the same solo. The boy was really, really good; the girl was not. I even said, would you be comfortable showing the boy's video to the girl, to show her how this solo is supposed to go? I mean, that's how much better the solo was. He got one point off perfect for something minor. (Nobody was flawless, though a few kids started off that way.)
As for the videos themselves, they were really interesting. They were supposed to do their scales and solos separately. Most did; some did them in one video. One kid did them second in the video with their solo and I panicked a little. Normally, scales are first, plus that is one of the topmost criteria on the judge's sheet. It's easiest to get that out of the way because otherwise you might smear your words lower on the page. That did happen. They're written in pencil and your hand rubs the graphite. One girl, probably the clarinet girl, had been learning a scale one way, then decided at the last minute to do it in a more traditional way. There was a reason she'd been learning it the other way; she can't make it over the break. Per Mrs. S, she has tiny hands and has a hard time covering the holes. Her low notes come out okay, so she didn't think it was the clarinet, but anything involving the register key was absolutely awful. There's a reason we were discussing her for a while. She also goes between two households, and the good copy (i.e., rewritten so she could play it) was at one house, and the original copy was at the other, and she last practiced the original copy. There might be some attention issues coming into play, too, because the girl didn't realize she wasn't playing on the correct copy. It was just a mess. This is some of what Mrs. S is having to contend with.
Other kids:
--One boy's mom held the camera...then proceeded to count for him out loud. The best part is, she wasn't always correct. He had some counting issues on his own (super common; he needs to hold his long tones full length), but I also mentioned that I needed to see if the musician had his own internal sense of the beat, and that's not possible if someone is counting for him. Nobody else had someone counting out loud. (This boy was super cute, though, bowing to the camera. Dang it, mom.)
--One girl put borders around her videos. The one was gold and sort of bubbly looking. I felt like I was at the Oscars.
--One little flute player looked like she was shoved into a corner. She was basically hunched into a ball. Sweetie, find another place if possible. You need room to your right and slightly behind you so you don't whack your flute on anything.
--A beginner sax player made me wince just looking at him. Honey, you need to be standing straight when you play. Otherwise in no time you'll be a chiropractor's dream. His head and hips were off to the left to an alarming degree.
--Mr. M was concerned about the kids playing their instruments backward! No, no--I figured it out. Sometimes they were able to have someone record them; they appeared correctly there. But sometimes they used their phones or iPads or whatever in selfie mode. This made them appear as a mirror image. I had a flute like that, I think my Oscar border girl, and it was super disconcerting.
--One little trumpet player did a really nice job. Mrs. S then mentioned her mom had gone to camp. Holy cow! Yes, I knew her--the girl's mom is my age and was a phenomenal trumpet player herself. Mrs. S even suggested I put a note on there to say hi to the mom, which I did. Okay, the daughter inherited her mom's natural talent.
--At the end, Mr. M finished first and I had several left to do--I was working on one and had three drummers left. Mrs. S grabbed two of them and got him into my folder so he could view those solos, and in short order I heard them chuckling across the room. What's up, guys? They told me when I was done, I had to read the note on one little girl's solo. With percussion, you don't have scales, you have rudiments. Well, this little beginner girl forgot what those were, so when she went to do hers, she wasn't sure what she needed to do, so she wrote up a long explanation instead, that it was late and she couldn't ask anyone, so she was going to do the thing where you hit the drum with both sticks at the same time, and she was sorry. OMG. Hysterical. Oh, kids.
--A few boys had recently gotten braces, which screws with your embouchure. One was an eighth grader who then couldn't hit any of his high notes. Wow, that really sucks. He even included a message at the end of his video apologizing for it. He had a couple other issues aside from that, and I could tell he'd put in a lot of work, so I made sure he got a first. The kids that clearly put in effort definitely got firsts; a number needed improvement, so I gave out a fair amount of seconds, though high seconds. A few were truly perplexing, knowing that they haven't had in-person instruction, which is really crucial. It was hard.
--Of my two baritone players, one was a beginner who'd started on trumpet and switched to baritone a month ago. He couldn't play above a C--low C. Like, the bottom of what he should be able to play. Yikes. For only having played baritone a month, he did pretty well with it. The other, an eighth grader I was told was not continuing in high school...oy. I'm glad to hear he's not continuing, because he's terrible. He has no sense of pitch and no sense of rhythm. Two of his scales were fine; two of them were nowhere near correct. It was like he was starting on the wrong partial. I couldn't get a bearing of what scale he was actually playing. Supposedly he was playing this one and that one, but those weren't the notes I was hearing...it was bad.
--Mr. M commented on the cute little oboe player and how good she was for being a beginner. I'd watched her videos when testing things out so I knew what he was talking about. I only saw her scale--I couldn't find her solo for some reason, only two videos of her scale--but she gave a big, cheesy grin at the start and finish. He also got my Peppa Pig clarinet girl, too.
Once done, they were ready to hang out for a bit. I'm so glad I saw them a week ago and they already knew I'd be weird with going out--I wanted to spend time with them, but between Lent and the virus, it was easier for me to leave my mask on and not eat or drink anything. Our normal hangout wasn't available, temporarily closed, so we ended up at Bahama Breeze. Wait a sec--I think this is where Laura told me she was pregnant! They have an indoor patio-style area with windows, so that's where we sat. I was worried we'd need reservations and they wouldn't let us in, but being an odd time, around 3 PM, it was fine. Mrs. S had gone there with her family in the past, and it happened to be her youngest daughter's birthday and she wanted to come there for dinner. Alas, at that point you would need reservations, and the earliest they could get one was 9 PM. Nope. Her daughters decided on Golden Corral instead at 5:30...but we didn't leave until 5:45, oops. Oh well. (The oldest daughter has her license, so Mrs. S was going to meet them there anyway. She'd already said not to wait for her.) We only see each other once a year anymore, so we make the most of it. Naturally, there were a number of stories, including the epic camp tale of 2007. Mrs. S had missed that by a few years and was stunned to hear how bad it was--the year we lost water and had to send everyone home on Thursday. I only went through about half of what all transpired, there was that much that went wrong. There's a reason we had t-shirts made. I mentioned how several of us, including a camp mom, drove around the lake in a golf cart at one point, and Mrs. S went, she now goes by *this name*, and she works in the preschool. ...OH REALLY?! Wow, okay, please say hi to her for me.
At one point Mr. M pulled up a picture on his phone and said, allow me to brag... He showed it to Mrs. S first, and I thought it was of his grandkids. Nope, his son, with all his various Navy ribbons on his jacket. He then told a story about his son skiing as a teenager, where he was hotdogging it but it didn't end well, basically this cartoonish fall down a mountain in Colorado which ended with him face-planting. Apparently the spectators to this spectacle cheered. I went, *that's* the guy I know, who I'm still stunned to discover became a lifelong Navy man. He's now stationed in New Jersey and works on a ship in the middle of a cornfield. No, really. It's the perfect job for someone of Polish heritage, heh. We also started talking Polish and German a bit, and how the grandkids call Mr. M the Polish name for grandpa, except they didn't know how to spell it at first, so that the first card he got was addressed to "Jaja." Mrs. S went, wait, that's not how it's spelled? I said, no, there's a couple Ds in there. Believe me, when I was a kid, I thought it was jaja, and that it meant any old man. My father would be driving along and talking about the "jaja" driving slowly. It was years before I found out it's actually dziadzia. Mr. M's grandkids have three grandfathers, so he said at the outset, they can call me dziadzia, you guys can fight over what you want to be called. We got into some interesting topics, that's for sure. They also felt bad about eating and drinking in front of me, but I said it was fine, and Mrs. S was happy to try a couple things that her family wouldn't eat and would be too much for her to eat alone. I was also thrilled that the waiter was cool with me not removing my mask. I've been to restaurants that made me order something if I wanted to sit there with my friends (this was back in high school after musicals and football games), so I was prepared to get something to go if it was an issue. The tortilla and plantain chips with guac sounded interesting, and I really want plantain chips now. (Between the time change and my feeling like I got hit by a truck today, we did not go grocery shopping; dad may go tomorrow.)
It was nice to get to spend time with them. Mrs. S was really grateful for our help and companionship, and Mr. M told her, you should know by now that we're here for you. We know she's been through a lot, personally and professionally, in the past few years. We're happy to help. Plus we get along really nicely. Also, he insisted on paying when the bill came. She protested, saying she was the one running the contest and she should pay, and he basically went, zip it. I responded, okay, dad, heh; and she went, sometimes it's nice to be a girl. Yeah, Mr. M is old school like that. Plus, I mean, I was a cheap date. We sat in one of the warmest seats in the house, by the fire pit, so after I told the waiter I wasn't removing the mask he'd said, let me know if you get too warm and you need a water. I ended up being fine, but when I left, I went straight home because by that point the hunger had kicked in. I'd thought about running to Target, but no. Home sweet home it was.
I was curious how this was going to happen, pretty much since I first contacted Mrs. S about it in January. It's been a rough year on her. Teaching anything has been difficult during the pandemic; now add in instruments. Her programs are small to begin with, down from the heyday of 20-30 years ago. Families are smaller and not a lot of them want to send their kids to private school, especially when the area public schools are so good. Add to it that one of the schools lost a bunch of kids when free preschool became available in the public schools about 5 years ago; that's the class which entered fourth grade this year. A number of kids would enter that early and stay with the school for years; that's not happening any longer. The schools are done to one class per grade level. If there are only 20-30 kids to pull from, it's hard to create a band from that. You'll always have attrition from the beginners, but it's even worse when they're having to learn an instrument entirely online--no wind instruments are allowed in school per the archdiocese, even though the students are learning in person otherwise. And Mrs. S cannot do pull-out lessons, so she is having to teach band after school in the evenings, and she's doing it from the band room. She has long nights. It's not ideal.
So, basically all last week, we were trying to coordinate how we were going to do this. The students had until midnight Thursday night to get their videos loaded, she said, and then she'd divvy them out to us. When I had gone to look at the website Thursday night during our conference call, I'd noticed folders with our names on them, including a third name I didn't recognize. She did have three judges for all the kids, and she told me the third person was mainly a flute player, so she was going to try to give more flutes to that person. Eh, it's fine. I mean, I'm mainly a flute player, but I can fake with with the other instruments, heh. It's especially easy with the beginners because their music is so simple. Anyway, that person was going to meet with Mrs. S on Sunday.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, we were asked to come right to the band room. This school has doors to the outside for every classroom for whatever reason. The school is sort of an inverted-U shape, and the band room is at the bottom of the U. Funny story, on the memorial website for Mr. C, I shared a picture of the coffee pot that nearly burned down the church where we were teaching at the time, and I mentioned that thankfully the fire station is just around the corner. The current band room overlooks the fire station, that's honestly how close it is. There's even a tiny parking lot back there, and if you turn into the wrong driveway, you'll end up at the fire department. Luckily I chose correctly, and discovered Mrs. S' and Mr. M's cars already there. We were due in by 9 and I think I made it at least 10 minutes early.
Because of Mr. M's technology issues Thursday night, Mrs. S decided it was easier to use her own two laptops and log into them herself, though she did ask that we bring earbuds or headphones if we had them; she'd supply them if we didn't. I'd brought my iPad (baby's first excursion!) just in case but never pulled it out. We were set up at tables across the room from each other, and she was 90 degrees from us at her desk, picking out music for spring.
Now, she had figured we'd move at the same pace we would if the solos were live, so she thought we'd be done by noon and perhaps we could go out for lunch. I can tell you that I sat down at 9 and didn't get up again until about 2:30, when I finished. I had no idea it was that late, truthfully. A bit earlier, Mr. M had gotten up to use the bathroom and I panicked; was he done already? I still had a stack in front of me. Nope; just needed a break. I guess, after my busy Friday evening (in which I stood the whole time), I was just happy to sit and not move. Plus, the chair was comfy. However, this is the thing when everything's on video: You can pause the video to write down your notes, and you can go back and watch it again to see what you'd missed or to check on things. At one point I went back on a video to be like, did I just see someone jump past in the background? Yep. And, with Mrs. S sitting right there, we were able to say to her, so, tell me about this kid. I swear, one of those conversations lasted half an hour. It didn't help that this child, a little clarinet player, was right after another clarinet player who did the same solo. The boy was really, really good; the girl was not. I even said, would you be comfortable showing the boy's video to the girl, to show her how this solo is supposed to go? I mean, that's how much better the solo was. He got one point off perfect for something minor. (Nobody was flawless, though a few kids started off that way.)
As for the videos themselves, they were really interesting. They were supposed to do their scales and solos separately. Most did; some did them in one video. One kid did them second in the video with their solo and I panicked a little. Normally, scales are first, plus that is one of the topmost criteria on the judge's sheet. It's easiest to get that out of the way because otherwise you might smear your words lower on the page. That did happen. They're written in pencil and your hand rubs the graphite. One girl, probably the clarinet girl, had been learning a scale one way, then decided at the last minute to do it in a more traditional way. There was a reason she'd been learning it the other way; she can't make it over the break. Per Mrs. S, she has tiny hands and has a hard time covering the holes. Her low notes come out okay, so she didn't think it was the clarinet, but anything involving the register key was absolutely awful. There's a reason we were discussing her for a while. She also goes between two households, and the good copy (i.e., rewritten so she could play it) was at one house, and the original copy was at the other, and she last practiced the original copy. There might be some attention issues coming into play, too, because the girl didn't realize she wasn't playing on the correct copy. It was just a mess. This is some of what Mrs. S is having to contend with.
Other kids:
--One boy's mom held the camera...then proceeded to count for him out loud. The best part is, she wasn't always correct. He had some counting issues on his own (super common; he needs to hold his long tones full length), but I also mentioned that I needed to see if the musician had his own internal sense of the beat, and that's not possible if someone is counting for him. Nobody else had someone counting out loud. (This boy was super cute, though, bowing to the camera. Dang it, mom.)
--One girl put borders around her videos. The one was gold and sort of bubbly looking. I felt like I was at the Oscars.
--One little flute player looked like she was shoved into a corner. She was basically hunched into a ball. Sweetie, find another place if possible. You need room to your right and slightly behind you so you don't whack your flute on anything.
--A beginner sax player made me wince just looking at him. Honey, you need to be standing straight when you play. Otherwise in no time you'll be a chiropractor's dream. His head and hips were off to the left to an alarming degree.
--Mr. M was concerned about the kids playing their instruments backward! No, no--I figured it out. Sometimes they were able to have someone record them; they appeared correctly there. But sometimes they used their phones or iPads or whatever in selfie mode. This made them appear as a mirror image. I had a flute like that, I think my Oscar border girl, and it was super disconcerting.
--One little trumpet player did a really nice job. Mrs. S then mentioned her mom had gone to camp. Holy cow! Yes, I knew her--the girl's mom is my age and was a phenomenal trumpet player herself. Mrs. S even suggested I put a note on there to say hi to the mom, which I did. Okay, the daughter inherited her mom's natural talent.
--At the end, Mr. M finished first and I had several left to do--I was working on one and had three drummers left. Mrs. S grabbed two of them and got him into my folder so he could view those solos, and in short order I heard them chuckling across the room. What's up, guys? They told me when I was done, I had to read the note on one little girl's solo. With percussion, you don't have scales, you have rudiments. Well, this little beginner girl forgot what those were, so when she went to do hers, she wasn't sure what she needed to do, so she wrote up a long explanation instead, that it was late and she couldn't ask anyone, so she was going to do the thing where you hit the drum with both sticks at the same time, and she was sorry. OMG. Hysterical. Oh, kids.
--A few boys had recently gotten braces, which screws with your embouchure. One was an eighth grader who then couldn't hit any of his high notes. Wow, that really sucks. He even included a message at the end of his video apologizing for it. He had a couple other issues aside from that, and I could tell he'd put in a lot of work, so I made sure he got a first. The kids that clearly put in effort definitely got firsts; a number needed improvement, so I gave out a fair amount of seconds, though high seconds. A few were truly perplexing, knowing that they haven't had in-person instruction, which is really crucial. It was hard.
--Of my two baritone players, one was a beginner who'd started on trumpet and switched to baritone a month ago. He couldn't play above a C--low C. Like, the bottom of what he should be able to play. Yikes. For only having played baritone a month, he did pretty well with it. The other, an eighth grader I was told was not continuing in high school...oy. I'm glad to hear he's not continuing, because he's terrible. He has no sense of pitch and no sense of rhythm. Two of his scales were fine; two of them were nowhere near correct. It was like he was starting on the wrong partial. I couldn't get a bearing of what scale he was actually playing. Supposedly he was playing this one and that one, but those weren't the notes I was hearing...it was bad.
--Mr. M commented on the cute little oboe player and how good she was for being a beginner. I'd watched her videos when testing things out so I knew what he was talking about. I only saw her scale--I couldn't find her solo for some reason, only two videos of her scale--but she gave a big, cheesy grin at the start and finish. He also got my Peppa Pig clarinet girl, too.
Once done, they were ready to hang out for a bit. I'm so glad I saw them a week ago and they already knew I'd be weird with going out--I wanted to spend time with them, but between Lent and the virus, it was easier for me to leave my mask on and not eat or drink anything. Our normal hangout wasn't available, temporarily closed, so we ended up at Bahama Breeze. Wait a sec--I think this is where Laura told me she was pregnant! They have an indoor patio-style area with windows, so that's where we sat. I was worried we'd need reservations and they wouldn't let us in, but being an odd time, around 3 PM, it was fine. Mrs. S had gone there with her family in the past, and it happened to be her youngest daughter's birthday and she wanted to come there for dinner. Alas, at that point you would need reservations, and the earliest they could get one was 9 PM. Nope. Her daughters decided on Golden Corral instead at 5:30...but we didn't leave until 5:45, oops. Oh well. (The oldest daughter has her license, so Mrs. S was going to meet them there anyway. She'd already said not to wait for her.) We only see each other once a year anymore, so we make the most of it. Naturally, there were a number of stories, including the epic camp tale of 2007. Mrs. S had missed that by a few years and was stunned to hear how bad it was--the year we lost water and had to send everyone home on Thursday. I only went through about half of what all transpired, there was that much that went wrong. There's a reason we had t-shirts made. I mentioned how several of us, including a camp mom, drove around the lake in a golf cart at one point, and Mrs. S went, she now goes by *this name*, and she works in the preschool. ...OH REALLY?! Wow, okay, please say hi to her for me.
At one point Mr. M pulled up a picture on his phone and said, allow me to brag... He showed it to Mrs. S first, and I thought it was of his grandkids. Nope, his son, with all his various Navy ribbons on his jacket. He then told a story about his son skiing as a teenager, where he was hotdogging it but it didn't end well, basically this cartoonish fall down a mountain in Colorado which ended with him face-planting. Apparently the spectators to this spectacle cheered. I went, *that's* the guy I know, who I'm still stunned to discover became a lifelong Navy man. He's now stationed in New Jersey and works on a ship in the middle of a cornfield. No, really. It's the perfect job for someone of Polish heritage, heh. We also started talking Polish and German a bit, and how the grandkids call Mr. M the Polish name for grandpa, except they didn't know how to spell it at first, so that the first card he got was addressed to "Jaja." Mrs. S went, wait, that's not how it's spelled? I said, no, there's a couple Ds in there. Believe me, when I was a kid, I thought it was jaja, and that it meant any old man. My father would be driving along and talking about the "jaja" driving slowly. It was years before I found out it's actually dziadzia. Mr. M's grandkids have three grandfathers, so he said at the outset, they can call me dziadzia, you guys can fight over what you want to be called. We got into some interesting topics, that's for sure. They also felt bad about eating and drinking in front of me, but I said it was fine, and Mrs. S was happy to try a couple things that her family wouldn't eat and would be too much for her to eat alone. I was also thrilled that the waiter was cool with me not removing my mask. I've been to restaurants that made me order something if I wanted to sit there with my friends (this was back in high school after musicals and football games), so I was prepared to get something to go if it was an issue. The tortilla and plantain chips with guac sounded interesting, and I really want plantain chips now. (Between the time change and my feeling like I got hit by a truck today, we did not go grocery shopping; dad may go tomorrow.)
It was nice to get to spend time with them. Mrs. S was really grateful for our help and companionship, and Mr. M told her, you should know by now that we're here for you. We know she's been through a lot, personally and professionally, in the past few years. We're happy to help. Plus we get along really nicely. Also, he insisted on paying when the bill came. She protested, saying she was the one running the contest and she should pay, and he basically went, zip it. I responded, okay, dad, heh; and she went, sometimes it's nice to be a girl. Yeah, Mr. M is old school like that. Plus, I mean, I was a cheap date. We sat in one of the warmest seats in the house, by the fire pit, so after I told the waiter I wasn't removing the mask he'd said, let me know if you get too warm and you need a water. I ended up being fine, but when I left, I went straight home because by that point the hunger had kicked in. I'd thought about running to Target, but no. Home sweet home it was.