Fancy Band fidgetings
My winter break from band is almost over. I go back to Fancy Band next Thursday. The way this December has gone, I hardly feel like I've had a break; I'm really bummed about that.
Dr. K has been busy trying to move the group forward. He's sent out emails looking to have a band board; applications are due today, and in his initial email announcing the positions he mentioned that there would be an election during the 1-5-23 rehearsal. And then this week he sent out the itinerary for next week and nothing was mentioned of the sort. Sigh. He does stuff like that regularly, where he says he'll do something and does not follow through, likely because he forgets. Part of me is tempted to put my name in the hat, since I likely already do some of the stuff anyway, but I have zero interest in attending Zoom meetings (I told him I find them creepy) and I don't really have time for it. Also, he neglected to state what exactly the duties are for most of the positions. I think there are six and he only sent descriptions of two or three of them. Like, okay, you'd think secretary and treasurer have obvious job duties, but what do *you* expect of them in relation to this group? That's kind of important. I did email him about it this week and have not heard back. He may well be out of town and ignoring emails until next week.
The other thing is that we have section leaders. This was something I potentially was interested in doing, but the band manager position for me was still on the table when this was announced and he conveniently did not get back to me before the deadline for putting names into the hat for section leader had passed. Therefore, I imagine I wasn't considered. I did tell myself that any of the top three flutes--B, M, and W--would be fine in the position; it ended up being W. I don't know who put their names in the hat but part of me was surprised it was W since she's new this year, but she's made a strong, positive impact so ultimately I'm sure she'll be fine. I've already had to email her regarding questions about the music for the upcoming cycle. Our big piece, that we're not even performing until the fourth cycle, is a handwritten manuscript that is a bear to read and has all these weird notations on it. I had a bunch of questions about it and I copied both W and Dr. K on the email. She got back to me pretty quickly, mainly to say we'd have to check the scores once band resumes, and I replied to say I appreciated her efforts but yeah, that's what I figured. I wanted certain things to be on her radar in case they came up in rehearsal. I'm pretty nitpicky about stuff, especially when there are errors in the music. I think I found a couple of them, but without the scores it's not easy to tell. And, ugh, that handwritten one...why the publisher is sending that out, I don't know. It's messy, there are measures that cross into the next line of music, it's hard to tell if there's a measure of rest or if it's just scratched out and we're to ignore it; one part of it looks like a large section was erased and written over, but you can see the ghost marks of whatever had been there and it's really hard to read. Just engrave the darn thing already! We have the technology to add special notations to the music now. Why make it hard for the musicians attempting to read it and play it correctly? I really don't care that it's in the composer's own script. That doesn't make it more special. It makes me wish he'd learned how to draw rests correctly.
Edit: This was my 7,500th post! So glad it was a cranky one. :P
Dr. K has been busy trying to move the group forward. He's sent out emails looking to have a band board; applications are due today, and in his initial email announcing the positions he mentioned that there would be an election during the 1-5-23 rehearsal. And then this week he sent out the itinerary for next week and nothing was mentioned of the sort. Sigh. He does stuff like that regularly, where he says he'll do something and does not follow through, likely because he forgets. Part of me is tempted to put my name in the hat, since I likely already do some of the stuff anyway, but I have zero interest in attending Zoom meetings (I told him I find them creepy) and I don't really have time for it. Also, he neglected to state what exactly the duties are for most of the positions. I think there are six and he only sent descriptions of two or three of them. Like, okay, you'd think secretary and treasurer have obvious job duties, but what do *you* expect of them in relation to this group? That's kind of important. I did email him about it this week and have not heard back. He may well be out of town and ignoring emails until next week.
The other thing is that we have section leaders. This was something I potentially was interested in doing, but the band manager position for me was still on the table when this was announced and he conveniently did not get back to me before the deadline for putting names into the hat for section leader had passed. Therefore, I imagine I wasn't considered. I did tell myself that any of the top three flutes--B, M, and W--would be fine in the position; it ended up being W. I don't know who put their names in the hat but part of me was surprised it was W since she's new this year, but she's made a strong, positive impact so ultimately I'm sure she'll be fine. I've already had to email her regarding questions about the music for the upcoming cycle. Our big piece, that we're not even performing until the fourth cycle, is a handwritten manuscript that is a bear to read and has all these weird notations on it. I had a bunch of questions about it and I copied both W and Dr. K on the email. She got back to me pretty quickly, mainly to say we'd have to check the scores once band resumes, and I replied to say I appreciated her efforts but yeah, that's what I figured. I wanted certain things to be on her radar in case they came up in rehearsal. I'm pretty nitpicky about stuff, especially when there are errors in the music. I think I found a couple of them, but without the scores it's not easy to tell. And, ugh, that handwritten one...why the publisher is sending that out, I don't know. It's messy, there are measures that cross into the next line of music, it's hard to tell if there's a measure of rest or if it's just scratched out and we're to ignore it; one part of it looks like a large section was erased and written over, but you can see the ghost marks of whatever had been there and it's really hard to read. Just engrave the darn thing already! We have the technology to add special notations to the music now. Why make it hard for the musicians attempting to read it and play it correctly? I really don't care that it's in the composer's own script. That doesn't make it more special. It makes me wish he'd learned how to draw rests correctly.
Edit: This was my 7,500th post! So glad it was a cranky one. :P