Regular Band: Keepin' it chilly
Monday was nice out, and now that I have a newfound/rekindled appreciation for nature, I figured I'd get to the park and sit outside for a bit. And I got out of my car, with all my gear--flute bag and work bag, probably 15-20 pounds of stuff--and decided to take a quick walk around the park. It's not a very big park; the band building is at one end, the playground is at the other, and there's a bit of grassy space in between. I walked the path down and around the playground, and when I got to the spur that goes out to the adjacent busy street, I thought, why not keep going? So I did. Down the street, left at the nearest intersection, and at that point I kept going, up the hill, to the next cross street. And I kept going again. Just walking. I thought about doing the full rectangle but once I got to the parking lot for the park, I was tired and opted to go find a bench and read my paper. Funny that I'd lost about 7 pounds or so with everything that had happened in April, and I was thinking about how heavy my bags were, and how a fair portion of that had recently been attached to my body, weight-wise. At least when I sat down, I could remove these weights from my body.
(But now you know part of the reason I woke Tuesday morning with basically zero energy. Gotta remember to leave my stuff in the car if I want to go for a walk again.)
It was pleasant outside, but clouds rolled in, and with the sun covered it got a little chilly, so I put my jacket on. I went inside around 6:30, started to take my jacket off, then realized it was at least as cold as the outside, if not colder inside, and ended up wearing my jacket for the entirety of rehearsal. It wasn't even May 1st. Why is the AC on and why is it so cold? A fair amount of people had short sleeves and no jacket or sweater and they were freezing. I did end up pulling my right arm out of its sleeve to have that be a little freer and to not be quite so warm in my jacket, but there was no way it was coming off entirely.
We're getting close to the summer season starting, so we had a stack of new music in our slots. We were supposed to get to a new overture but didn't have time for it; I still ran through it before rehearsal started, when few people were there, and ADB said, we have at least one flute who can play it! We had a few revised marches that I think ADB had done; they're not on the list for the first concert, so I'm guessing they're for Memorial Day. One is the band's namesake march, written by the Director Emeritus, and reformatted into a marching version, not to mention actually engraved in a way. Many of DE's pieces were handwritten, which is special, so to have it formally printed, even via Finale or Sibelius, is so much better. There was another march I can't recall at the moment--oh, I think it's honoring the local VFW post--where the original flute part was handwritten and had the melody, but now at least I was given the piccolo part and all it has are runs into long notes. I was unaware this part even existed. Those two pieces, they were flip folder-size so you could play them while marching, but when I copied the music today I blew them up 150% to make them easier to read on a regular music stand. And the last one was our military medley that we've been playing since time immemorial, that longtime band members all have memorized, but then there was another service branch added and the older version is now obsolete. ADB took DE's version and added Semper Supra to it; that's the Space Force song. I feel like DE meant to do that and didn't get to it before he died, or perhaps he did start it and ADB finished it. Who knows. But this is also typed up and that is so nice. The only issue is that it ended up being four pages long (!) with no breaks. This is the one place where ADB drives me nuts; he doesn't seem to take the time to fiddle with the layout to facilitate page turns. Maybe I should mention that to him. I realized this after I photocopied the part; I'm looking at it going, the only break--the ONLY break--the flutes get is 7 measures in a line at the top of page 3. There was room at the bottom of page 2 to take the majority of the top line on page 3 to put it down there, including the 7-measure break, then take the last measure of the page 3 top line, squish it into the second line, and then have room to put the two lines that comprise page 4 at the bottom of page 3. (I ended up recopying page 2 with the top of page 3 stuck at the bottom so I could at least have that extra line on there so I could keep my pages in my binder. This way, 1 and 2, then 3 and 4 face each other while playing--no need for all 4 pages to be visible at once.) A little adjusting and not only are you down a page you didn't really need, you also have a perfect place for a page turn. Having to have four pages basically all out on your stand at once is awful, and that's not even taking into account that we'll be playing this with the door open, meaning wind could be a factor. Just...he might need to be aware of that.
When band started, we had another tuning session. Was it with the baritones and French horns again this time? I think so. (This rehearsal seems like it was a year ago at this point.) I really appreciate AD2 taking the time to do this, because clearly there are members of this band who weren't taught to train their ears. At the same time, musician etiquette in other parts of the band is low; AD2 was having to tell people, extraneous movements make it impossible to listen for tuning; please stand still. I believe this was directed to the percussion section, which is famous for just constant movement. Alas, they really need to get themselves together and set up their section before band starts.
I don't think we hit anything groundbreaking during the actual rehearsal. ADB was pretty clear, in working with the orchestral dance he'll be conducting, that what he taught to one section of instruments needed to be repeated when the same bits of music were played by other instruments. The composer had several repeated sections through the dance, the A section, B section, C section, D section, so ADB was jumping around and only working on, say, the B section, but he'd work it in one spot, then work with different instrumentation when it came back later in the piece. I think it went okay. It helps that the first time we read through this piece, my section leader marked up her music with the different section titles, and then she made a copy of her music for me since I was missing the first part for it. I already have the individual sections marked. That was really helpful.
(But now you know part of the reason I woke Tuesday morning with basically zero energy. Gotta remember to leave my stuff in the car if I want to go for a walk again.)
It was pleasant outside, but clouds rolled in, and with the sun covered it got a little chilly, so I put my jacket on. I went inside around 6:30, started to take my jacket off, then realized it was at least as cold as the outside, if not colder inside, and ended up wearing my jacket for the entirety of rehearsal. It wasn't even May 1st. Why is the AC on and why is it so cold? A fair amount of people had short sleeves and no jacket or sweater and they were freezing. I did end up pulling my right arm out of its sleeve to have that be a little freer and to not be quite so warm in my jacket, but there was no way it was coming off entirely.
We're getting close to the summer season starting, so we had a stack of new music in our slots. We were supposed to get to a new overture but didn't have time for it; I still ran through it before rehearsal started, when few people were there, and ADB said, we have at least one flute who can play it! We had a few revised marches that I think ADB had done; they're not on the list for the first concert, so I'm guessing they're for Memorial Day. One is the band's namesake march, written by the Director Emeritus, and reformatted into a marching version, not to mention actually engraved in a way. Many of DE's pieces were handwritten, which is special, so to have it formally printed, even via Finale or Sibelius, is so much better. There was another march I can't recall at the moment--oh, I think it's honoring the local VFW post--where the original flute part was handwritten and had the melody, but now at least I was given the piccolo part and all it has are runs into long notes. I was unaware this part even existed. Those two pieces, they were flip folder-size so you could play them while marching, but when I copied the music today I blew them up 150% to make them easier to read on a regular music stand. And the last one was our military medley that we've been playing since time immemorial, that longtime band members all have memorized, but then there was another service branch added and the older version is now obsolete. ADB took DE's version and added Semper Supra to it; that's the Space Force song. I feel like DE meant to do that and didn't get to it before he died, or perhaps he did start it and ADB finished it. Who knows. But this is also typed up and that is so nice. The only issue is that it ended up being four pages long (!) with no breaks. This is the one place where ADB drives me nuts; he doesn't seem to take the time to fiddle with the layout to facilitate page turns. Maybe I should mention that to him. I realized this after I photocopied the part; I'm looking at it going, the only break--the ONLY break--the flutes get is 7 measures in a line at the top of page 3. There was room at the bottom of page 2 to take the majority of the top line on page 3 to put it down there, including the 7-measure break, then take the last measure of the page 3 top line, squish it into the second line, and then have room to put the two lines that comprise page 4 at the bottom of page 3. (I ended up recopying page 2 with the top of page 3 stuck at the bottom so I could at least have that extra line on there so I could keep my pages in my binder. This way, 1 and 2, then 3 and 4 face each other while playing--no need for all 4 pages to be visible at once.) A little adjusting and not only are you down a page you didn't really need, you also have a perfect place for a page turn. Having to have four pages basically all out on your stand at once is awful, and that's not even taking into account that we'll be playing this with the door open, meaning wind could be a factor. Just...he might need to be aware of that.
When band started, we had another tuning session. Was it with the baritones and French horns again this time? I think so. (This rehearsal seems like it was a year ago at this point.) I really appreciate AD2 taking the time to do this, because clearly there are members of this band who weren't taught to train their ears. At the same time, musician etiquette in other parts of the band is low; AD2 was having to tell people, extraneous movements make it impossible to listen for tuning; please stand still. I believe this was directed to the percussion section, which is famous for just constant movement. Alas, they really need to get themselves together and set up their section before band starts.
I don't think we hit anything groundbreaking during the actual rehearsal. ADB was pretty clear, in working with the orchestral dance he'll be conducting, that what he taught to one section of instruments needed to be repeated when the same bits of music were played by other instruments. The composer had several repeated sections through the dance, the A section, B section, C section, D section, so ADB was jumping around and only working on, say, the B section, but he'd work it in one spot, then work with different instrumentation when it came back later in the piece. I think it went okay. It helps that the first time we read through this piece, my section leader marked up her music with the different section titles, and then she made a copy of her music for me since I was missing the first part for it. I already have the individual sections marked. That was really helpful.