Regular Band: It's pick on the oboe player day!
Monday night was sort of a gain some, lose some evening. The piccolo player was going to be gone; she and one of the trumpet players were doing a musical and had pit rehearsal that night. I know the trumpet player; he's not always the best at reminding the section he won't be there. So, I figured I'd mention something to the section leader, who did appear to be unaware the guy would be gone. (It also seemed like there were only three trumpet players back there total--the section leader, my college friend, and the loud girl. My college friend even got to play a solo in a new song since, like, nobody else was available.) That's when my college friends started talking to me, the trumpet friend about the missing trumpet player, and the bass clarinet player about Two-Chairs-Down. We're about a month out from the Memorial Day parade, and she's been part of the color guard in the past. The bass clarinet player had gone to the flute section leader to see if TCD would be participating, or if he'd have to find someone else to carry the flags with him. The answer he got was both a non-answer and kind of surprising, so he asked me, what's the flute section gossip? What's up with TCD? Um... Yeah, she hasn't been participating in band for covid-related reasons, namely that she's not vaccinated and didn't want to wear a mask, and I know our section leader was upset about that. It's pretty personal to her, someone with underlying health issues and family members who are too young to be vaccinated. I don't know that the section leader has heard anything about TCD and somehow I doubt TCD has reached out. I'm under the impression that TCD didn't like how everything went down in the fall and may not be looking to come back. So...you might want to find someone else to do guard with you, dude. He went, so, you wanna be in the color guard? Yeah, I'm not even sure I'm doing the parade. I used to go walking all the time and haven't in a couple years. I'm not sure I'll have the stamina. I'll need to figure it out soon, but I'm on the fence currently.
Meanwhile, we did have all three band directors this week, so that was good. We did not have E in the flute section. I asked the flute section leader about her, and I guess she must've contacted E during or shortly after band. This was the weird part: She let me know what was up--E is having unknown health concerns which are precluding her from coming to band--but I ended up getting a message...on my iPad. Like, I have never used the messaging app here at all. I'm not even sure how, and considering I can text on my phone, I'd rather just use that. I happened to see the notification when it came in Monday night and I was like, wait, what is this sorcery?! I'm thinking she must have an iPhone and somehow my username came up, which is odd, because my iPad hasn't been anywhere near band pretty much ever, so it wasn't a proximity thing. I'm just lucky I recognized her phone number to know who it was. So that was pretty bizarre. I'll have to ask her about it on Monday. My iPad doesn't have cellular capabilities, so it's not like it's tied into my cell phone and I get texts on both. Strange.
Finally, we did have an oboe player. She's been AWOL for a while due to her own health problems. I was glad to see her back, especially for the first piece, which is the state-named musical medley. The flutes have oboe cues at the beginning so I said to her, oh great, we don't have to play your cues here! Except she was fiddling with her reed and completely missed it. We played the beginning again, except not at the very beginning, but at circle 1 (the major measure numbers), but she missed that and went back to the very beginning, so she missed the part *again*, or at least when she should've played it. The bassoons and I were teasing her because here she is, she's finally here, but we're still not hearing her part. Eventually she got everything together, but we were still joking around about it at times.
I mentioned the K-number deal to her. This came up because, of course, there was another story--when the director was a child, there was a terrible train accident in the area, the sort of accident that actually changed procedures and things with how trains run throughout the country. We're talking this was a good 75+ years ago; he was just a little boy. The oboe player leaned over to me and said, you know, I knew he was going to tell that story today; one of my friends has a "this date in history" thing and mentioned the train story was today's tidbit. When I told her about the K-numbers she went, you know, I can't tell if it's mean or funny...and then she offered to buy a notebook to keep track of the stories. I mean, the man has many, many stories, but once you've been in the band for a while, they start to repeat.
We're already prepping for summer and found two manila envelopes in our slots this week. Our new librarians are starting to change things up and label them not by the label on our regular folders, but with what part goes inside the envelope and what slot number we use. That's actually kind of revolutionary, really. My envelopes specify 2nd flute on them. I also grabbed the piccolo player's envelopes to copy what was inside, just in case. The oboe player got kind of anxious about the envelopes and said, you know, I think I'll put a sticky note on them so I know what's inside. We just have so much music in our folders right now that it's hard to keep track of it all, so I completely see where she's coming from. I actually took that idea from her. I've labeled all four of the envelopes with what parts are inside, which was helpful when I was copying all of them today so I could make sure I put everything back where it belonged. By the way, that also necessitated a quick run to Office Max, as when I went to print something off recently, I got a low ink warning and I had no backup black ink cartridges. Good thing I did: I got four sheets in and had to replace the ink. I have a feeling my printing off my taxes a few weeks back helped contribute to that. Anyway, I was able to check my records and I did already have some of the pieces from before, and I was able to add to my collection with either piccolo or 1st flute parts, so that was helpful. The only piece that concerns me is a new medley that apparently we'll be doing at our upcoming concert in two weeks. Why...why are we getting this now? And why is it another medley? I don't understand the obsession with medleys lately. The person the medley's about isn't even a known singer or musician, though he was a well-known, well-loved, long-lived entertainer (first name Robert, last name is neither faith nor charity, but their companion). I supposed he popularized the tunes on some of his specials? Whatever. It would just be nice if we'd spent the past month or so working on something for this concert, rather than flitting from one piece to another, and only now getting one last song.
Meanwhile, we did have all three band directors this week, so that was good. We did not have E in the flute section. I asked the flute section leader about her, and I guess she must've contacted E during or shortly after band. This was the weird part: She let me know what was up--E is having unknown health concerns which are precluding her from coming to band--but I ended up getting a message...on my iPad. Like, I have never used the messaging app here at all. I'm not even sure how, and considering I can text on my phone, I'd rather just use that. I happened to see the notification when it came in Monday night and I was like, wait, what is this sorcery?! I'm thinking she must have an iPhone and somehow my username came up, which is odd, because my iPad hasn't been anywhere near band pretty much ever, so it wasn't a proximity thing. I'm just lucky I recognized her phone number to know who it was. So that was pretty bizarre. I'll have to ask her about it on Monday. My iPad doesn't have cellular capabilities, so it's not like it's tied into my cell phone and I get texts on both. Strange.
Finally, we did have an oboe player. She's been AWOL for a while due to her own health problems. I was glad to see her back, especially for the first piece, which is the state-named musical medley. The flutes have oboe cues at the beginning so I said to her, oh great, we don't have to play your cues here! Except she was fiddling with her reed and completely missed it. We played the beginning again, except not at the very beginning, but at circle 1 (the major measure numbers), but she missed that and went back to the very beginning, so she missed the part *again*, or at least when she should've played it. The bassoons and I were teasing her because here she is, she's finally here, but we're still not hearing her part. Eventually she got everything together, but we were still joking around about it at times.
I mentioned the K-number deal to her. This came up because, of course, there was another story--when the director was a child, there was a terrible train accident in the area, the sort of accident that actually changed procedures and things with how trains run throughout the country. We're talking this was a good 75+ years ago; he was just a little boy. The oboe player leaned over to me and said, you know, I knew he was going to tell that story today; one of my friends has a "this date in history" thing and mentioned the train story was today's tidbit. When I told her about the K-numbers she went, you know, I can't tell if it's mean or funny...and then she offered to buy a notebook to keep track of the stories. I mean, the man has many, many stories, but once you've been in the band for a while, they start to repeat.
We're already prepping for summer and found two manila envelopes in our slots this week. Our new librarians are starting to change things up and label them not by the label on our regular folders, but with what part goes inside the envelope and what slot number we use. That's actually kind of revolutionary, really. My envelopes specify 2nd flute on them. I also grabbed the piccolo player's envelopes to copy what was inside, just in case. The oboe player got kind of anxious about the envelopes and said, you know, I think I'll put a sticky note on them so I know what's inside. We just have so much music in our folders right now that it's hard to keep track of it all, so I completely see where she's coming from. I actually took that idea from her. I've labeled all four of the envelopes with what parts are inside, which was helpful when I was copying all of them today so I could make sure I put everything back where it belonged. By the way, that also necessitated a quick run to Office Max, as when I went to print something off recently, I got a low ink warning and I had no backup black ink cartridges. Good thing I did: I got four sheets in and had to replace the ink. I have a feeling my printing off my taxes a few weeks back helped contribute to that. Anyway, I was able to check my records and I did already have some of the pieces from before, and I was able to add to my collection with either piccolo or 1st flute parts, so that was helpful. The only piece that concerns me is a new medley that apparently we'll be doing at our upcoming concert in two weeks. Why...why are we getting this now? And why is it another medley? I don't understand the obsession with medleys lately. The person the medley's about isn't even a known singer or musician, though he was a well-known, well-loved, long-lived entertainer (first name Robert, last name is neither faith nor charity, but their companion). I supposed he popularized the tunes on some of his specials? Whatever. It would just be nice if we'd spent the past month or so working on something for this concert, rather than flitting from one piece to another, and only now getting one last song.